Part two of the Philippines-lensed Blood Island franchise begins with a gimmicky prologue exhorting audience members to take the oath to join the Order of the Green Blood. William Castle would be mighty proud of this tacked-on bit, but he would detest the reliance on bare breasts that follows. That’s okay; Mad Doctor of Blood Island was made for us, not for him, and we find it delightful in its good-time depravity.
Government pathologist Bill Foster (John Ashley, Beach Blanket Bingo) heads for the titular site via boat, which also carries the buxom Sheila (Angelique Pettyjohn, Takin’ It Off), who hasn’t seen her isle-bound father since she was 12, and Carlos (veteran Filipino actor Ronaldo Valdez), who’s come to remove his mother from “this wretched island.” What makes the slice o’ paradise so wretched? Dr. Lorca (Ronald Remy, Blood Is the Color of Night), the limping scientist whose experiments toward eternal youth yield green-skinned men with crusty faces, like a progenitor to Swamp Thing.
Whenever director Eddie Romero (The Twilight People) aims his camera at these homicidal freaks of nature, the lens quickly zooms and in and out — not for a few seconds, but for the entire scene, in such a frenzy as to literally induce nausea. Gore is present via butcher-shop scraps placed atop cast members’ torsos. The entire affair is full of screaming mimis and hula dancers and sacrificed goats.
Oh, and bad acting, particularly with its ostensible hero. As wooden as Pettyjohn is pillowy, Ashley puts as much as pizzazz into a dramatic line like, “And these people you’ve caged and mutilated?” as he does a throwaway one such as, “I think your father could use some soup, Sheila.” The only time he seems to be fully charged and in the present moment is in his long-awaited fireside love scene, in which he goes Method to slowly grab a big, honking handful of leading lady. —Rod Lott