It’s World War II, and on a tiny island somewhere in the Pacific, US troops storm the beach. Unfortunately, the island is held by the Japanese, and they completely wipe out the US forces…or so it seems. Two of the GIs are smart enough to play dead when the Japanese come to take a few souvenirs from the bodies, and later, after the Japanese have left the beach, one of them, Moe (Richard Devon), finds Ken (Ron Kennedy), the other survivor, still lying in the sand. Ken’s been shot in the back and has been paralyzed from the waist down. Moe throws Ken on his back and heads into the jungle. He finds a cave where he and Ken can hide out from the Japanese, and they set up trying to survive. Over the next hour of screen time, they’ll end up fighting the Japanese still on the island, fighting each other, conducting crude surgery, getting drunk, and finding a goat. But will they ever get off the island?
Originally appearing at the bottom half of a double-bill with Ski Troop Attack, Battle of Blood Island is a pretty strange film. The only real “battle” is at the very beginning of the film when the beach is stormed, and that can only be seen in the syndicated TV version of the film. After that, all of the action would be best described as “skirmishes” or even “fights.” (I have to mention the misleading tag line on the poster—“10,000 men attacked – 2 got through!”—which contains quite a bit of hyperbole, as we see no more than 15-20 servicemen in total attack the beach.) However, if you look at the term battle as a synonym for struggle, then, yeah, I guess I can see using the word in the title of the film. The poster shown above makes the film look as if it’s going to be very much like most other war movies: a lot of fighting, air strikes…the works. Instead, we’re offered a much more existential film, which is almost certainly due to its source material.
For me, the film’s biggest surprise occurred roughly four minutes into the TV version of the film during the credits, when the writing credit is shown. In the top-left quadrant of the screen, “Screenplay by Joel M. Rapp” appears, which makes sense, since Rapp is also the film’s director. But in the bottom-right quadrant of the screen, we see “From a short story by Philip Roth.” When I saw it, I thought to myself, “Surely that’s not THE Philip Roth!” As it turns out, it was. For those of you who don’t know who Philip Roth was, he was a writer who rose to fame in the ‘60s as the author of such best-selling novels as Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint. He was no Sidney Sheldon or Jacqueline Susann—his work was perceived as “real literature” by the reviewers, which put him on a different level than most other writers of the time. (My favorite book by Roth is his take on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis called The Breast, in which a guy turns into a giant human breast. I think it’s hysterically funny, but then again, you know the kinds of movies that I watch.) Roth had written a story called “Expect the Vandals” that Esquire magazine published in 1958; Joel Rapp came across it and thought that it would make an excellent next project for him, as he was wrapping up production on his first feature as writer/director, High School Big Shot. Rapp got the rights to Roth’s story, and we got Battle of Blood Island. For more about Roth’s short story’s journey from page to screen, click on the following link:
https://timothynoah.substack.com/p/philip-roth-meets-roger-corman
Battle of Blood Island has a main cast of two—Richard Devon and Ron Kennedy (although Roger Corman shows up for a cameo near the end). Richard Devon spent the majority of his career doing television work, but he also made his share of Psychotronic films, appearing in such films as Kid Galahad with Elvis, The Silencers with Dean Martin, and in five films for director Roger Corman, most memorably in The Undead. Ron Kennedy had been in director Joel Rapp’s previous film, High School Big Shot, and went on to be one of Hollywood’s busiest voiceover artists under his real name, Ron Gans. You’ve heard his voice in dozens of trailers, including those for The Arena and Angels Die Hard. If you can’t place him, here’s another trailer for which he did the voiceover work; you’ll probably recognize his voice immediately:
Unfortunately, I can’t find a trailer for Battle of Blood Island anywhere, so you’re out of luck on that front (pun not intended, but serendipitous nonetheless). However, as Roger Corman never saw the necessity of spending money for the fee to copyright any of Filmgroup’s releases, Battle of Blood Island is in the public domain. The good news as far as that’s concerned is that you can find the full-length feature all over the Internet and on many of the ad-supported streaming channels such as Tubi, Plex (in its theatrical version), and ShoutTV. The bad news is that, since it’s in the public domain, no company wants to spend any money to clean it up in order to release it—the vast majority of the copies online and at the streamers seem to have been taken from the same transfer of a moderately-battered 16mm syndication print made for television. So, until the fine folks at Film Masters decide to work their magic on it, we’ll have to do with what we have. Here it is on YouTube if you don’t feel like looking around for it yourself:
Up next: A hostile planet from outer space hurtles toward Earth on a collision course!
Psychotronica Redux 