Prison life on Devil's Island is no picnic so fellow prisoners Le Bras (Jim Brown) and Davert (Christopher George) escape. Along their escape route, they encounter submissive native women and a colony of lepers.[3]
Jim Brown was signed to make the film in December 1972.[4]
Martin Scorsese says that Roger Corman offered him the chance to direct the film following Boxcar Bertha.[5] "The idea was if you shoot it fast enough, you could release the film before Papillon," he said. "I was still very keen on genre films." However Scorsese decided to make Mean Streets instead.[6] He says he had been talked out of doing exploitation films by his friend and colleague John Cassavetes who urged Scorsese to make something more personal. (Corman also offered Scorsese The Arena and the director turned that down as well.[7])
William Witney directed instead. Filming started in April 1973 in Acapulco.[8] During filming, Witney's wife died of throat cancer.[9]
The producers of the similar film Papillon (1973) sued for copyright infringement but were unsuccessful.[1]
Reception
Quentin Tarantino was an admirer of the film with a script that is "both entertaining and rather complex" and lead characters that "are refreshingly complicated and three dimensional" and a fresh "exploration of the societal dynamics of the community that the island prisoners exist in" in particular The Fancy Boys who "aren’t presented the way the queer population is usually depicted in novels about Alcatraz or other prison-set seventies adventures... [they] hold their own respected status inside of the island convict community without degradation. They’re respected both as individuals and as the group they represent. And are coveted objects of desire among the convict population."[10]
Video Release
Shout Factory released I Escaped from Devil's Island on DVD and Blu-ray on July 15, 2014.
