In 1960, Roger Corman would go to Puerto Rico to take advantage of cheap production costs and exotic locations and while he was only there for a couple of weeks, being Roger Corman he was able to churn out three feature films while he was there. Those three films, all of which are public domain titles since the copyright lapsed on them, have now been put out on a double sided DVD by Retromedia, who have actually put some effort into this release, making it a far better option than the various budget releases of these films that are currently floating around on various labels of dubious quality.

The Last Woman On Earth:

Harold (Antony Carbone) is a low level thug married to a foxy lady named Evelyn (Betsy Jones-Moreland) and they decide to get away from it all and take in a little rest and relaxation with their lawyer and friend, Martin (screenwriter Robert Towne under the alias of Edward Wain). The three head out to Puerto Rico and charter a boat so that they can enjoy the scenery and get some quality scuba diving time in and everything seems to be going pretty smoothly for the three friends.

After enjoying their dive, the three come back to the boat and find that the captain of the ship is dead. They head back to land and find that the city is now littered with corpses – something horrible has happened and they appear to be the only survivors in the area, possibly the world! They try to make the best of the situation and so they take over a mansion in the nice part of town, using it however they see fit – if the owners are dead, they won't mind, right? Things start to turn ugly though when Martin realizes that Evelyn is in fact the titular last woman on Earth, and he starts making moves on her. She's receptive to his leanings, though her husband is anything but pleased by this development, and he now knows that neither of them can really be trusted.

Owing a little bit to a Vincent Price film of a similar name, The Last Woman On Earth succeeds more on atmosphere and interesting tension between the characters than it does on flat out gratuitous shocks. Though there are a few scenes that are eerily disturbing in which we see the bodies pilled up but other than that, Corman lets the characters and not the visuals keep us interesting. The love triangle might seem like an obvious plot piece to use but in this case it does work really well, with Evelyn eventually finding her the subject of two men, both fueled by primal instinct. The dialogue is excellent in the film, thanks to Towne's scripting (he'd later become famous for writing Chinatown but is one of the many successful Hollywood types who got his start as part of Corman's movie making machine) and decent performances from the three leads.

Battle For Blood Island:

The second film to be shot in Puerto Rico wasn't actually directed by Corman but by Joel M. Rapp, who does a pretty good job with a decent script and some interesting locations and performers to work with on this project.

After a battle between American and Japanese forces during the later part of the Second World War, the island where it takes place becomes covered in corpses. The entire American platoon was been laid to waste save for two sole survivors, Moe (Richard Devon) and Ken (Ron Kennedy). While Moe is in pretty decent shape, all things considered, Ken has been wounded pretty bad and is in need of medical attention. They decide to look for shelter and to find it, head for a cave but along the way they run into a few more enemy soldiers. They manage to kill off a few and escape the others, and eventually find a decent cave to hole up in.

When Ken and Moe witness a few other Japanese soldiers committing Seppuku, they realize that the war must be over and that the Allied forces must have won. They find a renewed sense of enthusiasm for live, at least temporarily, and start to try and figure out how they can get off the island and back to the good ol' U.S. of A, but soon suspicions arise and the two men start to doubt one another, resulting in anger and eventually, violence.

A solid work of creeping tension, Battle For Blood Island isn't nearly as exploitative as the title makes it sound. Sure there are some brief battle scenes and a shoot out or two which result in some grue but this one, like the first movie, works better thanks to an eerie atmosphere and some believable performances from the two lead actors. . The cave makes for a really good setting for the character development to unfold, and as tensions arise it seems to get more and more claustrophobic, closing in on the two survivors until they start to slowly unravel.

The Creature From The Haunted Sea:

Made at the end of the trip as quickly and as cheaply as possible, The Creature From The Haunted Sea is a laughably bad film that more or less works as a remake of the earlier and far superior Beast From The Haunted Cave, both of which were written by Charles Griffith, so the similarities are obviously not accidental.

Renzo (Antony Carbone again) is a thug from America who, along with his lady friend Mary Belle (Betsy Jones-Moreland again!) is enlisted with helping a couple of Cuban political types get out of the country alive after the revolution made it too dangerous for them to stay in their homeland any more. Renzo's doing this not out of the goodness of his heart or political motivation, but because these guys have got scads of money and a chest of gold that they're taking with them along for the ride on Renzo's boat.

Renzo sets out to try and get them on his boat and off they go, his passengers unaware of his murderous intentions. In fact, Renzo has already come up with an alibi he hopes to use if anyone questions what happened to his passengers – a sea monster ate them! Unfortunately for Renzo, his alibi turns out to be more truth than fiction and a real sea monster shows up to complicate his plan.

This one is famous for having one of the most retarded looking monsters in movie history. This things looks more like a Muppet than a sea monster, with googly eyes and some sort of ragged cloth exterior. He's not frightening at all, in fact he's downright hilarious and whatever suspense or horror or atmosphere that Corman was able to create is blown to smithereens as soon as that goofy monster makes an appearance. Aside from that, this one is pretty predictable, especially if you've seen Haunted Cave, but its' a fun time killer even if some of that enjoyment happens for all the wrong reasons.

Video:

Last Woman On Earth is presented 1.85.1 non-anamorphic widescreen, as is Creature From The Haunted Sea while Battle Of Blood Island shows up here fullframe. Last Woman looks noticeably better than the other two movies in the set but all three are decent looking and perfectly watchable even during some of the rougher spots in the presentation. Expect to see mild print damage and mild to moderate grain throughout each film, as well as some mild compression artifacts in some of the darker scenes – thankfully that's about as bad as it gets. It's a shame that the widescreen presentations aren't 16x9, but it's better than seeing them fullframe.