Another common film on the old dealers lists, and quite an oddball movie. I saw the feature on TV some time ago, at the time, it was edited for violence. That is not the case with this U8 release. My own print is joined together on one full 600ft spool and runs for 35 minutes.
As with most U8 releases, the quality is pretty good, and once again this is a title that today appears to be mostly red, or at least the ones i see for sale on ebay are, some almost beetroot red, fortunately, our print is very good with only early fade creeping in with reel 2 still seemingly fade free as the night shots show in my images. The early night scenes still dont have any red hue as yet.
We bought this soon after it was released so im guessing that it was over 30 years ago now. The sound is very good and the edit is not too bad. It certainly cuts out all the padding and like Xanado, this 35 minute version is much better to sit through than the full feature. Sadly U8 didn't join in with scope releases, i think this particular film would actually look pretty good in scope, this 4:3 print, as you can see from some of the images, puts characters almost out of frame in some sequences.

The Island is a 1980 American action adventure-thriller film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Michael Caine and David Warner. The film was based on a 1979 novel of the same name by Peter Benchley who also wrote the screenplay. The music is by Ennio Morriconie. It is about a savage group of pirates, made up of outcasts, thieves, and murderers, who are hidden from the outside world by an uncharted Caribbean island, and who have raided boats to sustain themselves, since the 18th century
Toward the end of the film the pirates manage to wipe out the crew of an US Coastguard ship and take over the vessel. Blair, (Michael Caine), sneaks aboard and, while most of the pirates are gathered on the aft deck of the ship, he discovers a deck-mounted M2 Machine Gun hidden underneath a tarp. He opens fire on the pirates, and continues to fire even after they are all dead, a violent and bloody sequence.
He then learns that Nau was not on the deck. The two men then stalk each other through various parts of the decimated vessel. Blair eventually gets the upper hand and kills Nau with a flare gun. Blair and his son, who no longer desires to be a pirate and seems much more respectful of his father, are reunited.

Tom,

Thanks for the pics and the details. Although I have heard of this, I have never seen it myself. Of course, Peter Benchley's most successful creation was "Jaws". He also wrote "The Deep". I do have a nice color trailer for that one.

This film is another one which doesn't seem to ever get shown on TV any more, the full feature is just over two hours so is quite drawn out. This edit is pretty good but there is one or cut which could have been vastly improved by using a dissolve rather than a sudden cut.
As you said Greg, Jaws is very much Peter Benchley's most well known story. Our 8mm copy of that was sold due to turning almost pink. It'l be interesting to see if the new version being released is the same edit or maybe has some new sections.
Personally, a full scope feature on 16mm would be ideal, but very unlikely.
I recently sold our 400ft version of the deep, i didn't mind the film but there wasn't too much in the way of action or thrills for me.

Interesting film there Tom ,I also have never seen this one will look out for it even on a silver disc just to have a view.

It's worth a look at Gwyn, some well know British names in there as well. The sequence where Michael Caines character mows down the pirates on the coast guard boat with a fixed M32 has to be seen to be believed, it's as graphic as anything they put out today, aside that, and the special effects are make up rather than CGI, they do look horrendous. Good old special effects.

Its a great cutdown - plenty of graphic violence courtesy of the Pirates and Michael Caine and that machine gun - but a great cast including David Warner, Don Henderson and a host of british supporting actors - my print still holds up well.

It is, and definatly a better film to view edited to this length rather than the full 114 minutes. The only way it could be improved would be to have a scope copy. I would imagine there are some good low fade 16mm prints there somewhere.

Now that would be a good one to have on 16mm and scope