Night of the Big Heat is a 1967 British sci-fi horror film produced by Planet Film. Based on the 1959 novel of the same name by John Lymington, the film was directed by Terence Fisher, and stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Jane Merrow (Hands of the Ripper, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, The Appointment)
The film was eventually released theatrically in the United States in the winter of 1971 by Maron Films as Island of the Burning Damned, where it was paired up nationwide on a double bill with Godzilla’s Revenge. When the film was released years later on US television it was retitled Island of the Burning Doomed.
Jeff and Frankie Callum run the Swan, an inn on the remote Scottish island of Fara. Jeff, a novelist in his spare time, hires a secretary named Angela Roberts. Unknown to Frankie, Jeff and Angela are former lovers. The Callums moved to Fara Island so that Jeff could escape Angela’s amorous advances (although as far as Frankie knows, it was to escape the tedium of city life on the mainland). Angela wants to resume her fling with Jeff, despite Jeff wanting nothing to do with her. Not helping matters much is the fact that despite the fact it’s the middle of November, Fara Island is experiencing a stifling and inexplicable heat wave, with temperatures in the 90s and rising daily. It has become so hot that cars stall, beer bottles shatter, Televisions explode, and telephones have ceased to work. Into this tense situation comes Dr. Godfrey Hanson, a mysterious scientist from the mainland who rents a room…
“A good bit of hokum… Pity it’s an X: the kids would love it.” Kinematograph Weekly, 1967
“Island of the Burning Doomed’s greatest strength is the fact that it mainly keeps the aliens offscreen. This is not because of any intrinsic advantage in scare value that the unseen has over the seen (and in any event, this is about as unscary a movie as you could ask for), but rather because of what the aliens look like once they are finally revealed. The aliens, and I am being completely serious here, resemble nothing so much as fried eggs the size of St. Bernard dogs.” 1000 Misspent Hours… and Counting
“The creatures, when they belatedly appear, are hopelessly cheap and un-terrifying, rather reminiscent of the low budget Doctor Who inventions of the era … the creatures are infinitely more intriguing when they’re off-screen. The tatty, papier-mache, ‘made-in-the-garage’ creations that show up for the final act of the film are more laughable than scary. The climax also comes across a little rushed and muddled, though to give due credit it’s quite exciting in patches.” Leon Nicholson, FMV Magazine
“Making extraterrestrial spiders look convincing would have defeated a budget many times greater than the one on offer from Planet, so the writers transformed the menace into creatures resembling large fried eggs, sliding gracelessly through Black Park.” John Hamilton, X-Cert: The British Independent Horror Film: 1951 – 1970 (Hemlock Film, 2012)
