Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

rodrig58 I saw the gifted Jan Bannen in many good movies: "The Hill", "The Flight of the Phoenix", "The Sailor from Gibraltar", "Sweeney!", "Jesus of Nazareth", "The Inglorious Bastards"(the original, directed by Enzo G. Castellari), "Gandhi", "Gorky Park", "Braveheart". I saw the beautiful Judy Geeson in "To Sir, with Love", "Brannigan", "The Eagle Has Landed", "Poldark"(TV Series). "Doomwatch" I've seen 2 times when I was a kid, at the Capitol cinema in Bucharest, that much I liked. I reviewed and 3rd time, with interest. It is still good after so long time. Well done, all the actors persuasive, precise direction of Peter Sasdy (neighbor of mine, he's Hungarian). Beautiful music too.

hengir The television series that predated the film was for its time one of the first to use ecological awareness as the driver for a series. It stated baldly that the misuse of science and technology is rotting the foundations of life; the air we breathe, the land we walk on, the sea that surrounds us. The first series particularly was gripping and shocking.For the film the Doomwatch team of the television series take a lesser part and Ian Bannen becomes the 'star' of the movie. At first it appears to be going towards a zombie film but the director Peter Sasdy keeps a restraining hand on the narrative so it exerts a firm but steady hold on the viewer. It becomes instead a domestic drama which shows the human cost of environmental spoliation. Ian Bannen gives a fine performance as he seeks answers on the unwelcoming and dour island. There is good acting all around, though the George Sanders role is not worthy of his talents, and modest but effective make up effects.The scene near the end where Bannen is confronted by the 'monsters' is sad and moving. This is not a monsters amok scene but one filled with bewilderment, pain and despair. The end of the film is bleak but appropriately so. There are no easy answers. Early on in the film there seemed a possible romance between Bannen and Judy Geeson but that is nullified by the greater drama around them. A low budget film but more unsettling than other megabuck films on the same theme.

junk-monkey Sent to take some routine measurements and samples from a small island Dr. Del Shaw (a clunker of a name) finds himself surrounded by the stock British movie type locals who mutter lines like: "We Don't take too kindly to strangers pokin' their noses in other people's affairs in these parts" before going off to mutter ominously in small groups.The Villagers obviously Have Something To Hide. And, after a lot of shouting down the island's only telephone, and trips to London to offend stiff military types, Doctor Del and the Doomwatch team discover the seas around the island are teaming with huge fish stuffed to the gills with illegally dumped human Pituitary growth hormone which is causing the island's population to develop an unpronounceable disease.Medical help is sent to the island and (potentialy) destroys the very community it went there to help.The plot of this film is full of holes. No more so, maybe, than any other film. But because of the total lack of tension and interest developed in what should be a terrible and horrifying situation they stand out like sore thumbs.Are we expected to believe for instance that Geeson's character (the school mistress) hasn't noticed one of her pupils has vanished? What the hell kind of spooky radiation "makes gas" in sealed containers of growth hormone. Would Human hormones make zooplankton grow to unusually large size - I doubt it; I can buy it having an affect on mammals but not microscopic plankton. Why does the fisherman from the mainland only sell his fish to the islanders? etc. etc. I know these sound like little nit-picky questions but when you are trying to make a intelligent piece, like the makers of this film obviously tried to do, you need to fill these logical gaps. When the screen is full of Naked Flesh eating Vanpire Lesbian Zombies riding Harleys you can let the odd solecism go by but when you are watching one driven man trying to solve a scientific mystery you've got to expect the audience to be more critical.The ending of this film should have been heartbreaking as the islanders pack up and leave for the mainland, their way of life destroyed by uncaring corporations, and then by the people who try to clean up the mess. But it isn't. The fault lies I suspect with the direction. The script is not good - structurally it's a mess, with the 'mystery' solved half way through, the story has nowhere else to go and just flops about as Bannon tries to organise a town meeting. Ian Bannen is a useful actor but here he just gives a very one note performance alternating, for the most part, between 'Angry' and 'Very Angry'. Again I suspect shoddy direction.

tuikie Firstly, this is NOT a horror movie (And who thought up the cannibalistic islanders?). The film is about the devastation that comes from the pollution of one the islands beaches with synthetic hormones.The islanders, having been made to suspect that the physical and mental deformities they're suffering from are caused by generations of inbreeding, regard the coming of an environmentalist as a threat to their community. They hide the sick and try to make sure that nothing 'wrong' is found. The movie is about the struggle of an environmentalist to find out what's the matter with the island, and then the struggle to educate the population about the cause and possible solutions for the problems.All in all not a bad environmental drama, reminds me a bit of the Minimata disaster in Japan. I give it a 7 out of 10, mainly for the atmosphere on the island and the balls it must have taken to make this film in '72.