NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Delirium Home Video Blu-ray (August 2026): Delirium Home Video have transferred Sergio Martino's Island of the Fishmen to Blu-ray. Eric Cotenas compared the MYA Communication and NoShame (PAL) DVDs back in 2009 HERE. Sergio Martino’s film has a distinctly lush, wide-screen Italian genre look, shot in 2.35:1 by cinematographer Giancarlo Ferrando (The Suspicious Death of a Minor, The Violent Professionals, Torso, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key.) The photography is one of the movie’s clear strengths. Ferrando takes full advantage of the Sardinian locations, giving the “Caribbean” island a genuine sense of tropical isolation and natural grandeur rather than the usual backlot artificiality. Delirium Home Video’s Blu-ray presents the uncut original Italian version of Island of the Fishmen in 1080P, on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate. The transfer, derived from a high-quality source of the original 35mm elements, delivers a clean, stable image with solid fine detail in the Sardinian locations - particularly the sunlit beaches of Cala Luna and the atmospheric depths of Neptune’s Grotto. Colors are natural and well-saturated without excessive digital boosting, skin tones look healthy, and the practical fishmen suits retain their rubbery texture. Grain is present and film-like, while contrast holds up well in the darker cave and underwater sequences - although it can still be quite dark at times. Minor age-related imperfections remain, but overall the HD presentation is a clear step up from the compared SD editions and should satisfy fans seeking the film in its intended European form.

NOTE: We have added 76 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Delirium Home Video offer English DTS-HD Master 5.1 surround and a lossy 2.0 track. Dialogue is generally intelligible, though the inherent limitations of the original post-synced English track (typical of Italian genre productions of the era) mean some lines can sound a bit thin or unevenly mixed. Luciano Michelini’s (The Suspicious Death of a Minor,) music gives the film a sense of scale and pulp grandeur that the modest production values sometimes lack. The main “Island of the Fishmen” motif is suitably ominous and recurring, while the ritual and action cues are energetic and colorful. In the American Screamers cut, additional (and more dissonant) music by Sandy Berman was inserted, along with some library cues, changing the overall sonic feel of certain sequences. Sound design is straightforward Italian genre cinema of the period: the usual post-synced dialogue, exaggerated water and creature effects, and the occasional over-the-top scream or roar. The underwater sequences benefit from the natural acoustics of the grotto locations. The 5.1 option spreads the music and effects modestly without feeling artificially expanded, while the 2.0 track remains more faithful to the original mono/stereo mix. Delirium Home Video offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Delirium Home Video Blu-ray has supplements - starting with an audio commentary by writer and film historian Rob Kelly (artist - Real Retro Cinema Column, reviewer, podcaster, and film buff) provides informed context on Martino’s career, the film’s place in the late-1970s Italian adventure-horror cycle, its literary and cinematic influences (Dr. Moreau, Lovecraft, Creature from the Black Lagoon,) production anecdotes, and the tangled history of the American Screamers re-edit. The centerpiece is a new 65-minute interview with director Sergio Martino and art director / fishmen designer Antonello Geleng (The Card Player, Sleepless, The Wax Mask, The Stendhal Syndrome, Cemetery Man, The Church, Delirium, The Ark of the Sun God, The Scorpion with Two Tails, The House on the Edge of the Park, City of the Living Dead, Cannibal Holocaust, Slave of the Cannibal God); the two discuss the film’s origins, location shooting in Sardinia (including the challenges of working in Neptune’s Grotto), creature design and practical effects, casting, and Martino’s broader approach to genre filmmaking. We presume it is the same as the one on the NoShame DVD release, but with English subtitles and not with PAL speedup. A theatrical trailer rounds out the supplements.

Sergio Martino's Island of the Fishmen is a delirious, kitchen-sink Italian genre hybrid that sits at the intersection of pulp adventure, mad-science horror, and colonial exploitation fantasy. It is one of the more ambitious entries in Martino’s late-1970s “tropical trilogy” (alongside Mountain of the Cannibal God and The Great Alligator), and it remains a fascinating, uneven, and highly entertaining artifact of Italian B-cinema at the end of its golden age of genre inventiveness. After surviving a shipwreck, military doctor Lieutenant Claude de Ross (Claudio Cassinelli - What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, The Suspicious Death of a Minor, Tough Cop, Slave of the Cannibal God, The Great Alligator, The Scorpion with Two Tails, Murder Rock - Dancing Death,) and a group of convicts wash ashore on a remote Caribbean island, where they encounter deadly amphibious “fishmen” created through mad genetic experiments by Professor Ernest Marvin (Joseph Cotten - Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear, Shadow of a Doubt, Gaslight, Love Letters, Duel in the Sun, The Farmer's Daughter, Portrait of Jennie, The Third Man, Under Capricorn, Walk Softly, Stranger, Beyond the Forest, The Wild Heart, I'll Be Seeing You, Peking Express, Two Flags West, The Steel Trap, Niagara, The Killer Is Loose, Touch of Evil, From the Earth to the Moon, The Last Sunset, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The Hellbenders, Petulia, City Beneath the Sea, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Lady Frankenstein, The Screaming Woman, Baron Blood, Soylent Green, Syndicate Sadists, Twilight's Last Gleaming, Heaven's Gate, The Survivor); the island is ruled by the sadistic Edmond Rackham (Richard Johnson - The Haunting, The Pumpkin Eater, Operation Crossbow, The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, Khartoum, The Witch, Deadlier Than the Male, Some Girls Do, The Rover, Julius Caesar, Beyond the Door, The Message, The Great Alligator,) who forces the creatures to plunder underwater ruins believed to be Atlantis, while holding Marvin’s daughter Amanda (Barbara Bach - The Unseen, The Great Alligator, Force 10 from Navarone, Short Night of Glass Dolls, Black Belly of the Tarantula,) captive. Martino, known for gialli like Torso and All the Colors of the Dark, delivers a delirious mix of jungle adventure, creature-feature thrills, and exploitation flair, shot with atmospheric locations including Sardinia’s Neptune’s Grotto. The film wears its influences openly. The primary model is H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau (both the novel and the 1977 Burt Lancaster film, which had recently underperformed). Professor Marvin is a classic “evilutionary biologist” who believes he is creating the next dominant species, while Rackham is pure colonial greed. Secondary influences include Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth (human-to-fish transformation and a decaying coastal isolation), Creature from the Black Lagoon (the amphibious monsters themselves), Jules Verne-style lost-world adventure, and standard Italian exploitation elements of voodoo and “savage” natives. Thematically, the film is more interesting than it first appears. It stages a collision between two forms of domination: Western scientific hubris and colonial extraction. Rackham’s use of the fishmen as deep-sea laborers to loot Atlantis is even more nakedly exploitative. The creatures occupy an ambiguous moral space: they are both victims of mad science and agents of sudden, violent retribution. Their unexpected loyalty to Amanda (the only human who cares for them) introduces a faint “Beauty and the Beast” note that softens the pure monstrosity. Island of the Fishmen shows Martino at his most freewheeling. After the relative discipline of his gialli, he fully embraces the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach that characterized much of Italian genre filmmaking in the late 1970s. The result is not a masterpiece, but it is a lively, visually attractive, and consistently surprising piece of pulp cinema. Its mixture of mad science, lost civilization, and monster revolt anticipates later creature features while remaining firmly rooted in the Italian tradition of gleefully borrowing from and remixing classic genre templates. In the end, the film’s greatest strength is its refusal to take itself too seriously while still committing fully to its outlandish premise. It is the cinematic equivalent of a well-stocked adventure magazine from the 1930s - overplotted, occasionally incoherent, but packed with enough monsters, treachery, beauty, and exploding volcanoes to keep the pages turning. Delirium Home Video’s Blu-ray is a welcome, respectful presentation of Sergio Martino’s colorful pulp hybrid in its original uncut form. The video and audio are strong although the extras package is relatively lean, the combination of a solid transfer, a knowledgeable commentary, and an extensive interview with Martino and Geleng makes this the preferred English-friendly edition for most collectors. Fans of Italian genre cinema, Martino completists, and anyone who enjoys the film’s mix of mad science, rubber-suit monsters, and tropical adventure should find it a satisfying upgrade.

Gary Tooze