Drive-in Double Feature: Barracuda (1978) and Island Fury (1983)

This is another of those DVDs that attempts to capture the experience of heading off to the movies, this time the drive-in, by giving us the chance to watch a double feature of movies.  Not only that but we get coming attractions and advertisements for the snack bar!  Boy do those 1960s greasy burgers look good. 

The first set of trailers really doesn’t fit with the movies we are about to watch.  First up is an exploitation movie about a couple of young girls trying to get thru life called Bonnie’s Kids.  This movie does look pretty decent and I have tracked down a copy to watch.  So at some point expect a review.  Next up is a trailer for a movie called Centerfold Girls, which looks just awful.  I mean if you can’t cut a decent trailer then I really cringe at how bad the movie probably is.  Finally we get a trailer for a movie called Part Time Wife, which manages to look worse than the Centerfold Girls.  No interest in tracking this one down either. 

Barracuda (aka The Lucifer Project) (1978)

Basically what you have here is your basic government conspiracy movie.  When a professor type from a community college discovers that a chemical company is dumping dangerous runoff into the ocean nearby he tries to expose it.  But it isn’t until the sheriff starts to find bodies that he pays attention.  See the government has been running an experiment that if you give people low blood sugar they begin to get violent!  Unfortunately the chemical plant isn’t the best-run place so some of the chemicals have been dumped into the ocean and created a school of Barracuda with low blood sugar, which makes them kill everything in site! 

This is hands down one of the best storylines that I’ve ever seen in a nature gone amuck movie.  I mean giving fish low blood sugar is going to make them kill?  That is absolutely classic drive-in cheese.  But the movie isn’t without it’s problems.  While I really dig the killer fish story the movie spends most of it’s time sorting out the government conspiracy.  You have secret agents all over town taking out anyone who might interfere with the project.  This stuff just doesn’t interest me at all, and is really kind of boring.  The movie is much better when the fish are swimming around chowing down on the locals.  Though I did get a kick out of the ending of the movie, which is all about the big bad government. 

The special effects are limited (again not enough killer fish for my tastes) but do work pretty well.  You footage of actually barracudas mixed in with the puppets that go in for the “kill”.  Most lower budget movies that I’ve seen which try and take on underwater action sequences fail.  But Barracuda actually does a really good job with it.  Again I just wish we had more of this and less of the boring government stuff. 

Basically Barracuda feels like a combination of Romero’s The Crazies and Dante’s Piranha.  I would have preferred more of the fish and less of the conspiracy, but overall it is still a fun movie to kill 90 or so minutes. 

2 ½ out of 4

Time to hit the snack bar and grab an ice cold Coke!  The second batch of trailers seems to fit the double feature much better.  First up is the Psychic Killer, which looks like a movie I need to be tracking down.  Sure the movie might suck, but the trailer shows enough mayhem that I have to give it a chance.  The second trailer is for a movie called Eaten Alive.  Now all of us should know that this is director Tobe Hooper’s attempt to recreate a Texas Chainsaw like movie.  The trailer is pretty good, but I’ve never been a big fan of the movie.  Still the trailer fits nicely with this double feature. 

Island Fury (aka Please Don’t Eat the Babies) (1983)

God I don’t even know where to start when trying to describe this mess of a movie.  The thing starts off with a couple of attractive girls walking around an outdoors market.  Some scary “bad” guys are following them, and after an overly long chase sequence (really it goes on and on) they are taken back to the head bad guy.  It seems that one of them is in possession of a gold coin that is related to a treasure.  The movie then goes into an extended flashback where we discover the two girls were part of a group of kids that were trapped on and hunted by a crazy family of cannibals.  There is an extended and boring tale about how they escaped the family with the help of one of the young boys.  Of course the bad guys take the girls back to the island to find the treasure and the now grown up kid picks them off one at a time.

This thing is just god awful bad.  In spite of having two completely different storylines the movie really doesn’t have much going on and is one of the most pointless and boring movies I’ve ever sat thru.  Really even the chase sequences (with the first one being 10 minutes long!) are boring as hell and poorly shot.  There are random earthquakes on the island that end up having nothing to do with the story, and some of the sequences are so surreal that they seem dreamlike.  But they aren’t so that is very confusing and makes no sense.  The only thing worse that the confusing and boring story is the inane acting that would embarrass a high school drama class drop out.  Did I mention that this thing was just awful? 

I could go on about the technical expertise, or really lack there of, but that would be pretty pointless.  The truth is that this is one of those movies that if you were really at the drive-in would encourage you to head home early.  That is if you were even paying attention during the second feature. 

½ out of 4

Overall this is a fun DVD and I would say that it is worth the purchase price for Barracuda alone.  I might watch that movie again, but I’ll never was another second on Island Fury. 

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer