Vinegar Syndrome gets "scared alive" trying to guess WHODUNIT? on the "island of blood" with their new Blu-ray of this sluggish slasher sleeper.

A group of inexperienced young acting hopefuls – dancer-on-crutches Lyn (Jeanine Marie), beefy jerk Rick (Richard Helm), talentless young widow B.J. (Bari Suber), nerdy lead John (Jim Piper, SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS), able-bodied dancer Donna (PORT CHARLES' Marie-Alise Recasner), and musicians Phil (Steven Tash, GHOSTBUSTERS), Taylor (G. Rockett Phillips, KARATE COP), and Jim (Rick Dean, THE UNBORN) – head to an offshore island to make a wholesome and upbeat film about kids putting on an impromptu musical dance show to save their school. Fortunately, someone starts stalking and killing them in gory manners to the accompaniment of an annoying punk song ("Burn me! Boil me! Stab me! Face to face!"). The producer Steve (Terence Goodman, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION) is concerned about his investment, the director Phlegm (Ron Gardner) is willing to adapt the script to the dwindling cast, and their boatman Bert (Jared McVay, CLAYTON'S RIDERS) gripes about how none of this would be happening if the old widow left him the island in which the lurking local mayor/only realtor (DARK SHADOWS' Michael Stroka) is also interested.

Released at the height of the eighties slasher boom, the TEN LITLLE INDIANS-esque WHODUNIT? has a great twist – and the restraint not to spoil it early on (so much so that it could have been added in post) – but the first seventy-five-odd minutes consist of sketchily-defined characters whose names are hard to remember wandering about and acting poorly before they are bumped off with good-to-fair, budget-constrained make-up effects by Make-up Effects Laboratories (UNINVITED) to a truly horrible monotonous theme song before a stalk and slash climax in which two characters run back and forth between two rooms repeatedly. Although impenetrably dark on home video, the film possesses a modicum of visual style but that's about it. Director Bill Naud (BLACK JACK) and cinematographer/producer Thomas G. Spaulding (THE BLOB) collaborated on a handful of features throughout the sixties to the eighties in between television work before Naud reportedly skipped town with this film and went to Europe. His last efforts were the ROCKY parody RICKY I and the screenplay for the DTV flick NECROMANCER (also on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome).

Released three times on VHS in the United States under the titles WHODUNIT? (Vestron Video), ISLAND OF BLOOD (Applause Productions Inc.), and SCARED ALIVE (Tapeworm), ISLAND OF BLOOD has always looked murky due to the dark photography and the early video transfer. Current rights owner Filmrise resorted to a PAL video master (with the Italian title "Omicidi a Soggetto") synched to the English track for their streaming version. The higher resolution of the PAL format resulted in a slightly more detailed and brighter picture, but it was still not satisfactory. Transferred from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen has night scenes that are cool blue rather than murky gray and a better look at the sometimes good make-up effects while otherwise exposing the blandness of the film's look. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono and Dolby Digital 2.0 mono backup track reveal that the set sound recording was a professional job while the punk song heard throughout lacks the presence of Joel Goldsmith's suspense cues. Optional English SDH subtitles transcribe the lyrics as well.

ISLAND OF BLOOD is perhaps the most-deserving slasher of an audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues, not only because the film is deserving of mockery but because the podcasters actually did quite a bit of research early on for their own podcast about the film, including an interview with actor McVey where we first learned about Naud not paying any of the actors. They discuss the film's past video incarnations, how it improves with subsequent viewings (although even they are puzzled how the song underscoring the killings ties in with the plot twist), note that the plot of the musical sounds like BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, discuss Naud's earlier credits and the subsequent work of the cast (many of whom got their SAG cards on this film), and the earworm song. In "Blood & Sweaters" (14:29), actor Goodman recalls Naud as a "wheeler-dealer" but also a "nice guy", recalls the "island setting" (a coastal deserted school building and Naud's own San Fernando Valley home), and his relationship with actress Suber.