Die Insel der Verschollenen

This film from the early 20s could be overdubbed and feel like a 70s z horror just as well. I found it to have pretty good momentum kickstarting the narrative by immediately showing us some sap who reads about a message in a bottle in the news and recognises his lost fiancees handwriting. After that there is a bit of fluffing but once we get to the island its pretty cool if you have zero expectation. Weird human/animal hybrid costumes are great.

Urban Gad was a pioneer film director in Denmark with some interesting films in the early 1910s. I've never seen any of his films from this late stage of his career. The source material is still interesting, but his filmmaking itself was stuck 10 years in the past, and that was a long time during those pioneer years for feature films. A film curiously based on H. G. Wells' The Island Of Dr. Moreau, but so bad.... so bad. Sometimes so-bad-it's-good vibes.