Fantastic!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

D.D. Winters (a.k.a. 'Vanity') was highly nude from time to time in this odd little film. There were two other actors, one playing her abusive boyfriend and the other is a kind, sensitive emotionally available guy in a gorilla suit. The carachter was supposed to be an actual gorilla, but the cheap production values kill any suspension of disbelief. Tanya is stranded on the island with her thuggish boyfriend, but the gorilla has special qualities that win her heart and drag the body into near-bestiality.The last performance of Mae West was as a guest on the Mr. Ed show. She used her patented come-ons to the talking horse, plying him with seductive patter. That too, was odd. That episode and this film would make a fun double feature for a very select audience.

Depending on your point of view this movie is either an interesting Freudian exploration of the "beauty and the beast" myth, or it is a particularly pretentious example of what Robin Bougie of "Cinema Sewer" magazine hilariously dubbed the "bigfoot-rape" film. Evidence of the former would be that this was directed by Alfred Sole who directed the cult horror classic "Alice, Sweet Alice". This isn't a patch on that one,of course, but it's better than a lot of Soles other equally bizarre, post-"Alice" projects (like the off-the-wall slasher spoof "Pandemonium"). Evidence of the latter, however, would be that this movie stars D.D. Winters, a singer/actress who couldn't really sing and DEFINITELY couldn't act. She would later become Prince's protegee under the name of "Vanity" and then eventually a born-again Christian (and I'm not sure which is worse).This movie is about sexy and oft-naked woman and her husband who go off to live on an island for reasons that eluded me. The only other being on the island is a ape man/bigfoot type creature who the girl nicknames "Blue". The girl feels a strange affection, even perhaps an attraction, to the creature, which makes her husband increasingly jealous. He becomes determined to capture this monster and put it in a cage. The Freudian metaphor here is pretty obvious--the monster represents the wild, uncivilized side of the man, and he fears the woman's attraction to it and wants to repress both it and her. This intriguing idea is pretty seriously fumbled though by some truly horrid acting and a clichéd, cop-out ending usually used by filmmakers when they have totally run out of ideas.This movie greatly resembles the notorious Walerian Borozyx film "The Beast". It is also a arty, metaphoric exploration of bestiality (albeit a little less graphic than the Borozyx film). But while "The Beast" also starred a sexy but talentless actress (Sirpa Lane) as the object of the bestial affections, Borzyx had the good sense not to give her any lines. Winters has many lines in this movie and is unbelievably annoying when she's not having sex or getting naked. More importantly, however, "The Beast" had a strong ending that tied everything together, while this one . . .well, I won't spoil it--I'll just let it spoil itself. This is a potentially interesting but flawed film.

Although I do not monitor which old films are scheduled to be re-released as DVD's, I occasionally see references to this, and I am often surprised at the titles that have been chosen. Many are films which I would not expect to succeed as a newly released DVD, whilst other titles contemporary with them which I would expect to be much more successful remain ignored. A case in point is Tanya's Island - I had heard a report that this was scheduled for release as a DVD early in 2005, but from my recollections of the film I thought this must have been a mistake. However a recent enquiry at one of our local stores has elicited the information that a DVD of this film is indeed expected to be in stock by the end of this month. This means that many people who see it on the shelves will consult IMDb to help them decide whether or not they want to buy a copy. My advice would be not to do so, at least until it has reached the video rental stores so they can preview it. As a film it had a number of interesting themes which held my attention during first viewing twenty years ago, but looking back on it afterwards I felt that these were not handled in any depth and were treated in a rather amateur fashion. The story is of a young girl who feels she has been mistreated by her artist boyfriend and experiences a romantic dream or reverie in which he, she and an ape are living on a very idealised island. The ape and the boyfriend compete for her attention in an extremely school-boyish manner which is comic rather than serious, but the point of the film is the psychological undertones when the man shows increasingly brutish characteristics whilst the brute begins to develop human ones. Whether one can learn anything important about female expectations, or subconscious male drives and urges, from this film would need to be addressed by someone more qualified than myself; however I would only recommend its purchase to somebody who has a serious academic interest in psychology, others may find it interesting to watch but no more.

A strange film in content and delivery. Tanya who is dangerously attached to her abusive artist boyfriend, Lobo, has an extended dream, in which she and her belligerent beau live on a deserted island paradise (cue gratuitous nudity over the opening credits). Tanya befriends an ape, Lobo gets jealous, and the trio fight in a manner which comes close to slapstick. The comic violence combines with sexual symbolism to create an unnerving mix. Perhaps the weakness of the film is Tanya herself, who provides a feast for the eyes, but leaves the mind a bit empty. She seems to spend the whole film both confused and amused by the whole situation. If the film is about Tanya's sexual naievity, then this theme is not developed sufficiently. For its weaknesses, this film is certainly a unique and interesting creation, worth seeing