Drive In Sci-Fi: Unknown Island (1948)

A guy and his fiance hires a drunk captain with "A thousand ton boat" to bring them for a honeymoon to an island that is rumoured to have live dinosaur. the captain seems to know a lot about palaeontology being a old drunkard that he is. actually, he isnt that bad a captain. The guy seems to have seen them during the world war 2 and wants to return there and get rich getting them. king kong themes there i guess. He even took a picture while piloting a plane of that island. the picture is actually a drawing, but they pretend its a picture.
They know of a guy who has told the same story but noone believed him since he is "crazed from sun overdose in sea". he claims to have been on the island though. Apparently the guy crashed there couple years ago and he is the only member of the crew that survived. The guy is really crazy, its alike a shizophrenic in a nightmare. he refuses to go back to that island.
During the trip the captain tries to lure the girl onto his bed, but then tells her she cant order him. wrong way pal, wrong way. The ships crew look like something form a Caribbean pirates movie, but naked. they also have a legend that you cant even look into that island or you will die. so they organize a cue. They stop the cue though and tell them they will be shot if they try it again. that seems to work and the cruise goes on.
They reach the island and see diplodocus eating grass. Looks peaceful. Diplodocus is though to be total pacifists and fought only in self defence (and preferred to run and crush tyrannosauruses with their massive bodies instead).
They go on the island in a hunting party and let the guy that already been here lead the way. This looks A LOT like Jurassic part beginning. They go around looking at various dinosaurs. Then they set up a camp and think that will scare the beasts. They meet 2 tyrannosauruses and call them "Giant Lizards". Almost correct, Tyrannosaurus means Tyrant Lizard. After that servants organize another cue. But before that a giant ape almost attacks the camp, but goes away as another concurrent come and they start fighting for the food.
The girl gets scared and they decide to leave in the morning. But the captain has other plans, he want to capture of them alive and bring them back home with them. They go on a hunt again, and find a barren land with 10 tyrannosauruses. how they don't go fighting each-other is interesting, actually it looks like they all just cant move. This is the perfect time for a cue, but they actually kill of their own. So instead of running they decide to kill the monsters, even though they barely move and you could out-walk them (well not in reality but in this movie you could). The monsters all make weird noise like hamster in a blender. Eventually they all run back to the camp and make huge fire form trees as a barricade. The captain gets drunk and crazy and they end up all running from him while he's shooting at them. since the crew is gone now only the main cast is still around. Meanwhile the camp catches on fire and all their supplies burn. Well, everything but grenades, they don't care for fire right? The captain is going to find bottle of whiskey, another non-flammable object in this move universe while the rest are building a raft.
During that time, the captain tries to rape the girl AGAIN. stupid captain, he doesn't understand that in 1948 censors will not allow him to do that. A tyrannosaurus attacks him and he uses grenades as defence. it works, but others hear. however they are too late as the captain gets the girl unconscious and carries her away. He offers her a deal of getting on with him and getting out in his secret boat. she agrees and while he sleeps steals his weapon. But she is stupid enough to shoot at the monster and wakes him up. Then he tries to rape her AGAIN, but this time the crazy guy gets to them. the two fight it out with firsts till eventually the guy guy wins, of course.
They all leave him there unconscious and go away. a giant ape attacks the guy but they let him have it. karma works both ways and they meet two dinosaurs when they get to the beach. The two fight it off with each-other. They use this to escape to the boat and return back to land.

Story: 6/10. crazy captain is crazy, ill give you that.
Acting: 5/10. she cried with real tears! or at least a good quality makeup.
Sound: 2/10. less awful than very awful.
Sci factor: 6/10. they were pretty good at their dinosaurs, except the dancing t-rexes.
Lasting Appeal: 4/10. I guess its one of the first dinosaur on the island movies, but there were already many books like that so thats nothing to boast about.
Overall rating: 5/10.

Nice mate, I love how you put so much effort into writeing all these overviews/reviews of these movies and they are also very nice to read.

um, well, thank you. im glad at least some people read them

Scientists are testing a serum that would allow hibernation for space travel on monkeys. though they don't actually say what they are doing, i had to read the description. Or maybe they do say that but i fail to hear it appears that on this copy i have the background white noise is louder than speech. nothing wrong with loud sound effects, infact they are normal, but the speech is like a whisper.
anyway, the scientists gets locked inside and the resident supercomputer kills one of them, or rather, hibernates him to death.
The lone agent with a helicopter whose navigation is totally distorted by the resident supercomputer. NOVAK is the computers name.
They also find various transmitters and assume its a bomb guidance system from a saboteur. so they decide to keep everyone out of first two levels - 0 and 1 because that way they would be protected against atom bomb. if hydrogen bomb falls the whole thing is going up anyway so no point going further. beside level 4 is nuclear stockpile. The agent gets a tour of the whole complex and they are actually preparing to build a space station. they even get how sun looks right. that's nice. the tour is quite extensive and as far as i can see all scientifically correct.
Eventually something happens. the NOVAK detects a jet plane above sound speed. and almost kills everyone in the room while replicating it. They even visit NOVAK afterwards, Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer. thats quite a name. It was made in Switzerland too - yay. They see two robots - GOG and MAGOG. They are controlled by NOVAK of course. Do these robots Gag? They are like a big lumpy machines with many arms moving around on wheels, looks quite silly.
They go to nuclear stockpile and have a chat with loca engineer and they do thier first mistake. in second level apha particle radiation kills a girl. alpha particles cant kill anyone. our skin protect us against them. in order to have such amount of alpha particles that you die form inhaling them, especially at this speed there has to be 10 Hiroshimas in this place. but no, its actually spread by a plant! also the other two guys with no protection doesn't die, so its wierd. they find an isotope moved form stockpile to plan, so its not the plan itself. but gamma radiation would be more believable as gamma is the dangerous rays. another murder occurs, this time in the revolution chamber, when two test pilots gets killed by saboteur of the apparatus. they decide to tighten security but still continue working. next on is the mazer beam that attacks a woman dyeing her hair. but she manages to break the mirror. then the sound chamber goes nuts. it actually kills another scientist this time. the woman starts laughing. well she is supposed to be crying but shes laughing. the agent slaps her back into reality. nice one.
MAGOG goes missing, and they want to know who stole it. they figure out that a plane that keeps flying over the place is controlling NOVAK and thus killing everyone. GOG comes alive and kills the lab assistant by.... hugging him to death? they fire at it but the giatn metal robot doesn't really care, duh. He then strangles his own creator.
They retreat and decide to shoot down the plane, this time, with manned aircraft, without NOVAK help. Meanwhile they try to stop GOG with flemthrower and to stop nuclear pile form meltdown. there really is A LOT going on. eventually they manage to set the robots on fire, save the nuclear pile and shoot down the enemy plane. They do get radiation exposure all the way, but the "doctor says its nothing to worry about, just a little too much radiation". You dont faint from "nothing dangerous from radiation". They thne send a telescope into space to spy on the enemies (of undisclosed origin). they tell its going to be a "flying tv set". i guess they predicted the modern satellites pretty well.

Story: 8/10. It was fresh and exiting, a robot brain controlled by enemy plane. Though reminded me of the movie where supercomputer kills all humans aboard a spaceship, cant recall the name now.
Acting: 4/10. laughing instead of crying, come-on.
Sound: 3/10. well the usual, though a bit less noticable.
Sci factor: 10/10. minus a small mistake it was a great one. much much better than any other sci-fi b-movie of its time.
Lasting Appeal: 5/10. pretty shabby, but it will be remembered if only for its correct science.
Overall rating: 6/10.