I remember in that multi flashback film Passage To Marseilles, Humphrey Bogart led a group of Devil's Island convicts with the clear purpose of escaping to fight for France even after the Nazis have taken it over. No such unity of purpose exists among four convicts who escape in 1916 to the mainland of French Guiana in I Escaped From Devil's Island. No talk here about going home to fight for France among the four who make it out. Perhaps they'd gotten word about Verdun.The four in this film are Jim Brown, Christopher George, Rick Ely, and James Luisi. Other than Devil's Island isn't exactly a tropical paradise they all have different reasons for wanting to leave. George in fact is a political prisoner, an anti-war pacifist and he wants to continue to do his political thing. In a place as brutal as Devil's Island he learns that pacifism sometimes just doesn't cut it.Ely's character is an interesting one, he's a gay man and in the all male Devil's Island he and his fellow gay prisoners are quite a premium, they're known as 'fancy boys' and command a lot for their services to relieve sexual tension among the prisoners. Still all that demand all that service leave Ely a bit on edge.The brothers Corman did this film and befitting the locale and the subject there's a lot of erotic sadism. I Escaped From Devil's Island is trashy and exploitive, but still somewhat fun to watch.

I saw this at 1 am Saturday on this TV out of Indianapolis and couldn't tape, tiVO or DVD it, so I stayed up to watch.I liked the rough, LOW budget Corman style of this movie without the "composition and mannered shots" of the big budget Papillon with McQueen and Hoffman.You could feel the roughness, smell, and atmosphere of being in prison in the middle of nowhere. The pig skinning was very realistic as was the language and full nudity.This is not Camp Granada.James Luisi goes on to become the constipated Lt. Doug Chapman in Rockford Files and Christopher George becomes an action cop on Hawaii five-O.James Brown is the lead, but absent in the top of credits on IMDb, and Corman utilizes this low budget action star who was in many low budget films to interesting effect.The guards, the brutality, the hopelessness... are all there in the French prison.It almost feels like a documentary through the kinetic energy and cutting of the movie.I really like Corman's attitude of "get 'er done" way before it became a catch phrase.Enjoy.

If they had released this movie in Britain, it would have likely become one of the infamous video nasties. It has all the elements: low production costs, natives in various stages of undress, animal abuse, shark attacks, cannibalism, torture.It just didn't really cross the line, however. The torture was not overtly explicit, the cannibals were never shown eating their victims, the undress was not excessive.If it had come out a month later and starred Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, instead of Jim Brown and Christopher George, they might have named it Papillon, and given it an Oscar or Golden Globe nomination. But, this is a Roger Corman production, so it is the R rated version of Papillon.Paul Richards, as Major Marteau, the head of Devil's Island, gave the best line after they tortured a woman to get information on the escaped prisoners: "She doesn't know any more. Anything else would be lies." He knew even then the uselessness of water-boarding.Great ending!

I saw this way back in 1983 when it was shown late one night on television , and I`m talking network televison in those days you didn`t have satillite or cable at least not in Britain where we were confined to a total of 4 channels. And the most shocking thing was that it contained very strong language , back then very very few films shown on television had swearing left intact but here it was untouched which was amazing when nearly every sentence contains the word " F*** " though much of the gore and gay sex seems to have been edited ( And badly edited at that ) for transmission especially a shark attack scene where it cuts to a shark fin then cuts to a man waving his bloody stump at the camera then cuts to a couple of fingers floating about the water , very strange and I ESCAPED FROM DEVILS ISLAND also has that low budget production value feel seen so often in video nasties that I can`t help feel that it in unedited form it would would be classed as a video nasty .Despite its flaws it`s a lot of fun , I can put my hand on heart and say I enjoyed it far more than PAPILLION and we get to see a sadistic guard who calls homosexuals bad names while twisting their nipples . Can`t get more sadistic than that