The three-star rating is for the quality of the ISLAND WARRIORS DVD and not for the campy kung-fu movie.
ISLAND WARRIORS is a story about a remote island that's inhabited by kung-fu fighting amazon women. Only a handful of men live on the island and are held prisoner by the amazons for mating. On the surface it seems that these women can take care of themselves but because of a neighboring island of men--who turn out to be the grown men of the baby boys they set adrift in the sea--and pirates who invade the island in search of the amazons' treasure, the movie goes back to the age old story that these gals can't do it by themselves and that they need men after all.
Anyway, the storyline is cheesy but the kung-fu action is pretty good. And the women take center stage as the fighters.
The quality is not the best for DVD and seems to be taken from a video copy, but that could be because the film itself was made on the cheap and not preserved, coming out in the 80s (at least in the USA). Interlacing and other anomalies like dust and scratches appear throughout, along with about 1-2 seconds of missing footage--audio intact--in various places throughout the movie.
"Island Warriors," like most kung-fu movies, is dubbed in English and sometimes the mouth doesn't sync with the words. But then again that's the charm of this cult genre isn't it? The audio itself is fuzzy and the movie is not presented in widescreen the way it was filmed, just cropped 4:3 regular TV ratio, which cuts off some of the right and left parts of the screen.
There's only "play movie" and "scene selection" features to choose from in the menu.
I remember catching this program on "Kung-Fu Theater" back in the 80s and I've been looking for it ever since. I'm glad I found it along with
Master of the Flying Guillotine
. These were two martial arts films that I adored as a youngster and now I can add to my library.
Unless you remember this film like I do, my advice would be to rent it first. This is only a keeper for those who are hardcore collectors of martial art films--camp and all.
