'ISLAND OF THE BURNING DAMNED'..........FRY HARD WITH A VENGEANCE......

Island Of The Burning Damned (a.k.a. Night Of The Big Heat) (1967)   A movie like this reminds us of how we became hopeless Anglophiles.............

               Any similar American movie.....a low budget, alien-invasion sci-fi-er, would most surely face withering ridicule from critics and loads of unintentional laughs from audiences.........

              But let the Brits do it........with their bottomless pool of exquisite acting talent........and the movie, dumb as it is, takes on a classy sheen all its own.......no matter how cheap and crazy.......

              And we're seriously talkin' cheap and crazy here........while the U.K suffers a freezing winter, a little island off the northern coast broils in heatwaves of 90 degrees and rising.......

             Baby, it's warm outside........fatally.

              How so?   Heat loving Alien creatures, thinking turnabout's fair play, manage to zap themselves down to this little island via the same satellite beams we bounce off the stars.........and go about their business.....to prepare for a full scale invasion by crainkin' up the thermostat and regularly turning the luckless islanders into well done Crispy Critters.......

              This doesn't sit well with the motley crew who constitute the island's populace.......a surly, mysterious scientist (Christopher Lee), a befuddled doctor (Peter Cushing), the combo novelist-innkeeper (Patrick Allen), his neglected wife (Sarah Lawson) and his newly arrived, smokin' hot mistress (Jane Merrow).......  (who, to our everlasting joy, gets to take a bikini swim before things start....uh.....heating up, so to speak....)

               Skilled actors, professionals to their core, they're all forced to kill a lot of time with dawdling drama until the film finally gets its ass in gear......and at long last trots out the alien creatures.......(trust us, don't wait for the big reveal with anticipatory, baited breath.....they're just slightly mobile, glowing rocks.....)

               Mini-skirted Merrow spends the second half of the film in a state of hysteria, barely surviving an enthusiastic attempted rape by one of the locals driven mad by either the heat or Merrow's hot bod.......(or maybe both)......

                Since none of these people are even remotely sympathetic or likable, you don't much care which of them get grilled up by the aliens......

                And speaking of those over-sized nightlights, the ultimate fate given them by this movie is ridiculously abrupt and obvious.......

               Even in a movie as goofy as this though,  Lee, Cushing, Allen and the rest acquit themselves with their usual dignity.........even as the make-up department's artfully applied sweat patches grow ever larger on them....(to the point where they look like they've been showering fully clothed)

               Bless their British hearts, for about 90 minutes, they really make us believe they're in danger of microwaving by prop department rocks.........2 & 1/2 stars.......we couldn't help having fun watching them stuck between some rocks and a hard place