A hotel magnate (Owen Cunningham) hires a noted skeptic, Philip Knight (Boris Karloff), to investigate a Polynesian island rumored to be cursed. The only survivor of the previous expedition (Glenn Dixon) was found washed up on a neighboring island in a catatonic state. Knight's team includes Cynical Boat Captain Who Secretly Cares Too Much (Rhodes Reason), Corporate Shill (Murvyn Vye), Ice Queen (Jean Engstrom), Spineless Greedy Sellout (Elisha Cook, Jr.), and Career Girl Who Needs to be Shown the True Meaning of Femininity (Beverly Tyler). Their investigation is plagued with problems, but Knight perseveres in his quest for logical explanations.
Voodoo Island serves as a shining example of why diversity in film is so important. Voodoo is West African and Caribbean, not Polynesian or East Indian. The leader of the "natives" is a French guy with bronzer. Coconut crabs will eat a person (RIP Amelia Earhart), though the one in the film is a taxidermied Alaskan King crab. The same extra shows up at the airfield and then later on a separate island, both times as Vaguely Menacing Brown Guy. Sure, some of this could be chalked up to budget constraints, but most of it is just '50s racism.
Karloff is a horror icon but he is not enough of a reason to seek this movie out. However, this is the debut of a baby-faced Adam West (!) playing the radio operator. I didn't even recognize his face (when too many white dudes are on screen, I find it hard to tell them apart) but his voice cannot be mistaken. It's on video sharing site dailymotion.com if you're interested, but I would watch only until you see West, then turn it off. There's nothing else salvageable.
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