This is the “something” i eventually went with as an excuse for having to cut down One Piece August reviews (which are coming up soon after this), some rando film i had in my Amazon Prime Video watchlist, Demon Island…. under its Italian title, Pinata: Terror Island (still showing the title of Pinata: Survival Island in the film itself, as you do), which immediatly has primo “please rent me from Blockbuster, please!” direct-to-video trash film energy.
And now is a 20 years old aged serving of trash filet, hopefully so, let’s roll the dice with something from the directors of King Cobra (the cobra killer movie with Pat Morita i did review back then), National Lampoon’s Dorm Daze and the tv mini-series Deadtime Stories.
One might wonder why retitle a movie called “Demon Island” as “Pinata” or “Pinata Survival Island”…. unless you actually read a synopsis and realize it’s a bit more direct, since that’s the source of the daemons.
You see, an isolated tribe, cursed by spirits for their sins, decides to craft a pinata to house all their evil, and then sends the thing into the fuckin ocean to get rid of it and advert famines and such.
Not their problem anymore, i guess, so its up to a couple of teens to find the pinata on a island, while they are there to do a weird fraternity-sorority thing during Cinco De Mayo, which is getting fraternity guys and sorority girls put into teams of two and…..basically do a Senran Kagura questline that somehow never happened but easily could have, as in they compete for who can find the most underwear strewn around the island, with a prize of 20000 bucks for the winners.
Which is of course made difficult since a couple accidentally discovers the pinata, bringing it to life, so it can basically become a slasher villain and graphically kills and maim the college teens, until they finally manage to kill it with a molotov cocktail (i guess Acme’s dynamite was too much).
I can’t think of many movies – any off the top of my head – that have a killer pinata, let alone one that is basically a humanoid and can use shovels and shit to kill people.
Yeah, the pinata is able to grab a shovel.
Because it’s shaped in the form of a pigmy-pigdemon… until it later evolves into looking like a shitty lava-themed redesign of Haunter (or a tribal & shittier looking version of the “Dream Demons” from Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare) and then back into its pig-goblin form.
This does sound like the most Fred Olen Ray film to be directed by someone else…. but it lacks the sleaziness of his films, it sounds pornish but it’s surprisingly kinda tame, you see no nipples for once (god forbid), you’d think this is one of those made for SyFy, but there is decent amount of gore, decently made too…. which is good because the effects for the pinata demon are some early 2000s assburger filet, switching as they do CONSTANTLY from a creature suit (that honestly has that Power Rangers level of cheapness “aura” to it) and a really crappy CGI rendition of the monster, with its late 90s-to-early 2000s gormless plasticy feel to the nearly textureless models.
Which is extra hilarious when you learn the CGI shit was added at the last minute because the creature suit wasn’t deemed “scary enough”….. sure having it look like an enemy plucked from a late 90s PS1/Saturn videogame FMV cutscene helps. XD
This was consider an improvement.
At least it makes for some ridiculous but fun kills, can’t say i’ve ever seen a slasher where the killer literally hangs himself to act as bait, and there’s some variety, from decapitation to testies rip, though its so obviously clear they stopped caring by the end with the “offscreen inscreen” trick of moving around a tent to imply the kill. Kinda lame.
It’s the kind of fun enough direct-to-video trash you could stumble one while blindly renting something from the videostore (which is now just browsing a streaming service and picking up random crap that you don’t have to pay another subscription – on top of the one you already paid to access the service – to see, so the spirit lives on), people that can act…. badly, characters with the collective cognitive capabilities of a Funko Pop, at least until the demon thins out the ranks of “college age” dumbasses, then they grow some IQ and a semblance of survival instincts.
All served with some middling editing, a surprisingly okay soundtrack, decent production values, and a stupidity treshold that goes off the chart in the finale (which drags a bit even at just 90 minutes), with the nonsensical way they defeat the demon pinata. It’s dumb but honestly lighthearted, dumbass drive in drivel fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously nor it tries to be snarky about its own crappiness, it his the perfect middle ground of trash awareness that makes the whole thing a trashy but honestly fun.
You wanna watch some crap? This is crap.
But fun crap to watch with friends and some beer.
Wise Cafe (International) 