Screamers (1979)

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When this Italian flick (originally titled Island of the Fish Men) was picked up for North American distribution, a new opening featuring some gloppy special effects and a handful of kills was added. That opening is the best part of this movie, even if it’s merely a visceral victory point.

Once the opening characters are all killed, the story follows a small boat full of convicts who crash on a mysterious island where monstrous fish-men creatures have a nasty tendency to swipe their clawed hands across people’s faces — conveniently killing them without showing any effects work. There’s a professor, of course — a Dr. Moreau type who has created a milky serum to keep the fish-men docile. His sexy daughter (Barbara Bach) rides a horse to the beach every night to feed the fish-men this serum, in what is probably the second most redeeming thing about of this movie. But there’s also a businessman who’s using the fish-men to gather treasure from the lost city of Atlantis, which we get to see through not-terribly-convincing miniature photography.

Screamers was marketed as a horror movie, and is still being marketed that way today (the cover has a slimy skeletal creature on it, but you only see something like that in the opening scene, and for about a split second). When you remove the added U.S. opening, it’s really more of a children’s Saturday matinee adventure with a few horror overtones. I was so bored, I could barely stay awake.