I hope I don’t have to stay on TERMINAL ISLAND (1973)

Posted by Daniel Metz

Stephanie Rothman is a lady director of exploitation. I don’t care for her as much as I do for the first lady of sex films, Doris Wishman, but I am beginning to see some value in her work. Of her seven film oeuvre, I have seen but two: 1971’s The Velvet Vampire and now, 1973’s Terminal Island. She is coming to Austin in a few weeks, where she will show her films The Student Nurses from 1970 and Group Marriage from 1973. At that time, I will be familiar with four consecutive films from her corpus, and perhaps I will have more to say about her auteur style.

It is very strange for an exploitation director to have directed only seven films. Wishman directed thirty. Radley Metzger, twenty-one. Russ Meyer, twenty-seven. Joe Sarno, over a hundred, and that doesn’t include hardcore video titles that he directed under various pseudonyms. Rothman’s limited body of work suggests that she wasn’t exactly a sleaze-grinder. Such an abstemious craftswoman must surely have something special in her films that force her to choose her projects carefully.

That’s just the thing, though. Her films are really not that special or unique. The Velvet Vampire was basically a slightly less-weird Jess Franco movie. It had some great moments, most notably one with some sexual innuendo involving a dune buggy, but it was run-of-the-mill, early 1970s sex film fare.

Terminal Island has it's predecessors. Wasn't Pam Grier a badass?

Terminal Island is incredibly derivative of the Pam Grier Women-in-Prison movies of the early 1970s, The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage. It features a number of criminals in a jungle-type setting, living on the peak of sexual and aggressive impulses while being oppressed by domineering masculine types. In the Grier films, they are prisoners under the gaze of an overseeing guard; here, they are dominated by fellow prisoners who have created a Lord of the Flies hierarchy.

The film also reminds me of a Weird Wednesday from 2008, the Brian Trenchard-Smith film Turkey Shoot. The setting is similar, as, if I recall, is the representation of women. That film stars Olivia Hussey, who I love from Black Christmas and, to a lesser extent, Psycho IV and It. Throughout Terminal Island, I kept wishing that Olivia Hussey was in the movie. She is really great. Apparently she is still alive and making movies. We should probably try to get her to come to the Drafthouse.

Olivia Hussey: If you are googling yourself and you find this, please contact me and we'll work something out.

The most important thing to mention about this film, aside from the supporting role played by Tom Sellick, is the music. The main song is absolutely miserable, some Johnny Cash rip-off that is lyrically very stupid. I don’t remember the words, unfortunately, but believe me when I say the opening and closing credits were to be ignored. The main score theme, though, was a very nice little tune that was almost identical to the theme from the SNES game Donkey Kong Country.

After I saw the film, I went on a hunt to find that song on YouTube. Rather than including the original song, however, I am going to embed this great video of two very cool dudes performing their own rocking version. Enjoy.

I am excited for Rothman to come to Austin. The two films she is traveling with sound much more interesting than Terminal Island and The Velvet Vampire. To be honest, I am a sucker for student nurse movies. I also love “Big Love,” so obviously I’m into polygamy. I’ve got a lot to ask her, and I wonder if she’s as dirty as her movies are.