While attending a leisurely 5th Annual Police Conference in Siam (!), Tom Rowland is be- seeched by wealthy matron Maud Leighton (Loni Heuser) to find her missing adult daughter Phyllis (Hansi Linder, the sister of series frequenter Christa Linder). It is learned that Phyllis was the lat- est beautiful American visitor abducted to become a prostitute on a nearby Island of a Thousand Lotus Blossoms, a “pleasure is- land” catering to wealthy tourists, who must agree to be drugged before being taken there to pre- serve the absolute secret of its location. (Shades of Bat Gas!) Mrs. Leighton also insists on hir- ing a top private eye to assist Tom, resulting an emergency call placed to (“Oh, no!”) Jo Walker— who, in the series’ only egre- giously cheap gesture, we see answering the phone with his as- sistant Betty in his lap, footage of Tony Kendall and Hannelore Auer recycled from the previous film and redubbed. The abduc- tors and other killers traced to this white slave ring, including the returning Herbert Fux, all share in common the wrist tattoo of a three-headed serpent.
Filmed in scenic Bangkok, THE ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS
represents a return to the series’ penchant for Far Eastern exoticism, though the production’s penny-pinching is apparent in its use of lesser locations and hotels and rather more pedestrian clothes for the two leads. (For sartorial splen- dor, Herbert Fux steals the film with some bril- liantly colored shirts.) The climactic fight, also lacking in means or vision, takes place in the deep mud surrounding the island at low tide, with dozens of extras gathered to get into indi- vidual fights, but apparently the muscular effort required to take even a single step in this thigh- deep glop exhausted the cast to the point where the most of the anticipated epic pay-off was dropped. In addition to Brandi’s ersatz Dr. No, the film borrows some other shelfworn ideas from Bond (not to mention Louis Feuillade and Fritz Lang), including a duplicitous lover (Monica Pardo) who injects Jo with a paralyzing drug that
makes it impossible to defend himself from a cobra placed near his bed.
There’s no Jo Walker theme song this time
around and little of the usual good-humored ban- ter between the two leads, but there’s suddenly a lot of bare breasts on display (all belonging to the Thai women in the cast) and Tony Kendall plays Jo Walker fairly straight for a change—all indica- tions that the series had played out its welcome and that this film may have been made primarily to honor contracts.
Rounding out the disc is the German trailer (3m 25s, which does feature the theme song); a Super-8 digest reel (17m 34s); the pressbook, film- programme and poster gallery chapters; and, best of all, a 43m 12s interview with Brad Harris. This is a remarkably candid document: Harris, a life- long anti-smoker, admits to smoking so much hashish while on location with one of the films
25
Monica Pardo stands by as Tom takes aim at a deadly snake about to put the bite on Jo in THE ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS.
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