THE MYSTERY OF THUG ISLAND (1964)

3-year-old Ada, the daughter of a British officer, is kidnapped by a thuggee cult because they believe that she will become the human incarnation of Kali when she turns 18. Fifteen years later, as Souyadhana, her Thug handler, is preparing for her transformation, her father, Capt. McPherson, has closed in after all these years on her possible whereabouts on Snakes Island, where the Thugs live underground in secret. Also on the island is a group of snake hunters, one of whom, the handsome Tremel, eyes Ada (known by the cult as the Sacred Virgin) from afar and falls for her. They soon meet and Ada begins to question whether she really is the Sacred Virgin that Souyadhana insists she is; she is especially concerned with the human sacrifices that are made in her name. When Tremel is caught with Ada in the Thuggee lair, Souyadhana exclaims that Tremel has ruined what Souyadhana has spent years doing--trying to make her “insensible to human passions”--and forces him to return above ground and kill McPherson and bring back his head, which, when she is told that her birth father is dead, will make her hate Tremel and harden her feelings again. Can Tremel figure out a way to short-circuit Souyadhana’s nefarious plans and return Ada to civilization with him?

This is a German-Italian production with one Hollywood name, Guy Madison, first-billed in the credits, though he’s not the traditional lead. Though Madison was mostly known as a B-movie hero, here he plays the wicked Souyadhana. The hunky romantic hero is played by Italian actor Giacomo Rossi Stuart, who had a wide-ranging career in sci-fi, horror, and action films. Both actors are fine, as is Ingebog Schoener as Ada the Virgin. You’ll recognize Peter van Eyck, who usually played icy blond Nazis, as Ada’s father. The look of the movie is very cheap, not aided by the fact that the only print I could find of this was on YouTube and is a sometimes blurry pan-and-scanned version. There is a man vs. tiger scene which is so pathetic that I imagine even 8-year-old me would have groaned at its fakiness. Whenever a sacrifice occurs, some cartoonish theremin music plays for no obvious reason. But as a flashback to a kiddie matinee flick, this kept me interested, and on that level, I’d recommend it. Also known as KIDNAPPED TO MYSTERY ISLAND. Pictured are Schoener and Madison. [YouTube]