Revisiting 1985 horror gem The Island, Hong Kong cinema’s attempt at a rural gorefest
This brutal horror story about a field trip to a remote island inhabited by three crazed brothers was a rare outlier for Hong Kong cinema
American-style gorefests like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre were glaringly absent from 1980s Hong Kong cinema, which is why The Island (1985) was such a brutal outlier.
With the film now getting a new Blu-ray release from Eureka Entertainment, we spoke to film historian Frank Djeng, who provided the commentary, about this unique slasher.
The Island unspools like an American slasher film – Hong Kong directors rarely worked in that genre, did they?
Also, this is a kind of horror with folk-style touches, and that’s not something that you ever see much of in Hong Kong. It’s a rare type of movie.
Category III films, which appeared a few years later, always mixed genres, combining porny sex with horror, for instance. But this is a straightforward slasher film.