AllMovie

In the grand cinematic tradition of Franklin Schaffner's Papillon (1971) and Alan Parker's Midnight Express (1978) comes the 1974 Mexican drama Island of Lost Souls. Adapted from the best-selling memoir by Jose Leon Sanchez, and directed by Rene Cardona (The Night of a 1,000 Cats), the film is a thinly disguised autobiographical account of Sanchez's gritty and harrowing travails as he is thrust into two decades of incarceration on The Island of Lost Souls. Bloody, brutal, and raw, the picture opens with a murder committed by Juanito (Erik del Castillo), who hunts down and slays a power-hungry politico for raping him. Violently cast into a penitentiary surrounded by the denizens of hell, and forced into hours of labor beneath the blazing Mexican sun, Juanito and his co-inmates edge toward escape. Wolf Rubinskis and Mariana Lobo co-star.