An unabashed rip off of "Blue Lagoon", updated with a speedier resolution and none of the Victorian charm. The characters are irritating and so poorly conceived that they don't generate any sympathy or interest. Bony Billy has slightly more appeal than the bratty if buxom Bonny and treats her with more generosity than her behavior warrants. The lush photography and outstanding music score of "Lagoon" are missing here, too, and are sorely needed to enhance the minimal action, threadbare plot and inane dialog. Prurient preteens may like it but it is difficult to imagine any other audience. Even Ciani's frequent if not incessant nudity quickly becomes numbing. When this "Island" comes up you'd be well advised to keep sailing by. Rated 3, only for the unrealized potential of "Billy."
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ccmiller14922 June 2007
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BandSAboutMovies10 August 2023After The Blue Lagoon came out in 1980, the idea of cashing in had to appeal to exploitation filmmakers all over the world. After all, all you needed was a young guy and girl willing to get naked and do some love scenes on an island paradise. In Canada, Stuart Gillard - the man who would one day direct Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III - made Paradise with Phoebe Cates and Willie Aames. In Italy, directors Enzo Doria and Luigi Russo - who would go on to produce the similar yet Biblical Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals a year later with Mark Gregory and Andrea Goldman - worked with writer Dardano Sacchetti (what movies didn't he write in the 80s in Italy?) to bring their own version of La Laguna Blu to Italian screens with Fabio Meyer as Billy and Sabrina Siani as Bonnie.
As always, Siani is probably the best reason to watch this. She seems supernatural, like some kind of goddess carved from clay on Themyscira. She does the same in so many of the movies that she appears in, like Conquest, The Throne of Fire, 2020 Texas Gladiators and Ator the Fighting Eagle.
They land on a deserted island after a plane crash and think they're all alone, but nope. There's someone else on the island - Shanghai (Mario Pedone) - who at times seems like an enemy and other times a friend but then becomes an enemy again and then he saves them from a poisonous mollusk. Ah, confusion in an Italian movie, I love it so very much.
This was called Due gocce d'acqua salata in Italy, which means Two Drops of Salt Water. Blue Island is a much better name for this movie.
That said, for all the attention that Brooke Shields got for her beauty, I'd definitely say that she's in Siani's shadow. -
lazarillo15 September 2007Obviously, this movie is a blatant rip-off "The Blue Lagoon". Nevertheless, that movie was so bad that even a cheap-jack Italian product like this could have easily improved on it--but no such luck. The original "Blue Lagoon", despite its cinematic pretensions (and PG rating), was little more than an excuse for perverts of all ages to leer at a pubescent Brooke Shields (and/or her pretty-boy co-star, Christopher Atkins), even though the former reportedly used a body double for all her nude scenes. This movie casts a 19-year-old Sabrina Siani, and is thus a little more straight-forward in its sexploitation angle. Unfortunately though, aside from a lot of breast-and-thong nudity and a couple tame sex scenes, this Italian time-waster otherwise apes the boring American movie with a laughably idyllic and sickeningly romantic coming-of-age-on-a-desert-island tale (the fact that these characters are a little long in the tooth to be just discovering the joys of sex is explained by making them Olympic athletes sequestered away in training before being marooned by a plane crash). I was hoping for maybe a sexy version of "Lord of the Flies", but this annoying pair is so nice that they can't even cook up a cute bunny to eat even though they're (presumedly) starving.
There's also a really dumb sub-plot involving a big hairy guy who is also on the island (for reasons never explained by the English soundtrack). He starts out as villain, then becomes a friend, then a villain again, and then he mercifully seems to drown, but then . . . no it's just too stupid. . .
The only, and I do mean only, thing this movie has going for it is Siani's incredible nude body, but it was used to better effect later in Fulci's "Conquest" (where her character wears a mask the whole time which partly conceals her godawful acting). Earlier, I guess, she had also been one of Jesus Franco's underage jungle girls in one his lesser cannibal movies. She is pretty impressive physically, but not even remotely worth enduring THIS movie for. -
bilmejeb04 November 2019If you consider its made 1982 its not bad at all... and also nice watching this beauty naked