Shock Waves

A small boat runs into trouble at sea and its passengers end up stranded on a remote island. There they find a dilapidated hotel and its sole resident, an elderly German who clearly wants nothing to do with them and urges them to leave. Their relief at finding shelter gives way to fear as people among them die and figures in military uniforms begin to appear and vanish in the undergrowth. The island holds an old secret from the Second World War, and the man in the hotel knows more about it than he is willing to say.

Ken Wiederhorn directed this 1977 American production from a screenplay he wrote with John Kent Harrison and Ken Pare. It was the first feature he directed, ahead of Dark Tower and Return of the Living Dead Part II. The cast is led by Peter Cushing as the SS commander and John Carradine as the boat's captain, with Brooke Adams, Fred Buch, Jack Davidson and Luke Halpin among the passengers; twenty-one performers are credited in all. Reuben Trane produced, and the film runs eighty-five minutes.

The film draws a mixed response. On IMDb it holds a rating of 5.4 from around 7,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 4.9 from 139 votes. A small set of critics' reviews gives it 5.9 out of 10, a shade above the audience scores, suggesting reviewers saw somewhat more in the material than general viewers did.