Death Island (1967)

Death Island (original title: La isla de la muerte; a.k.a.: Island of the Doomed) is a 1967 Spanish-German horror film directed by American expatriate Mel Welles.

It stars Cameron Mitchell as a mad scientist who has developed and nurtured a vampire-like tree.

Plot
A group of tourists travel to an island to see its exotic botanicals. There they meet Baron von Weser, a reclusive scientist studying rare horticulture and experimenting with crossbreeding dangerous varieties of plants.

Shortly after their arrival the tourists begin to die one by one and they are always without blood, when they are found dead. It also reminds them of such rare cases who already happened in that island.

In time one of them, Prof. Julius Demerist, a scientist like von Weser, discovers through his own investigation, that one of the Baron's creations, a tree, is the killer. It kills its victims in order to drain blood from them later (through a small hole in their cheek), which it then uses as as food for itself.

When he confronts the Baron about the discovery, he also finds out that von Weser knowingly attracted them to this island in order to make sure the tree will kill them so that the tree can extract their blood and use it as food in order to continue to thrive.

After his discovery von Weser murders him in cold blood and later frames it on another, who dies, in order to prevent him from telling the few remaining others about what he found out, who still cannot leave the island for the next few days.

Finally, one night, the tree attacks Beth Christiansen, but another becomes a witness of it and informs David Moss about it. Aware of the truth regarding the events, he tries to strangle von Weser, while David does everything to save Beth. Von Weser, however, manages to kill his attacker and then tries to stop Moss from killing the tree with an axe, which he used to free Beth and in order to destroy the tree later, wounding it too.

In the ensuing fight between them, in which they both use axes, Baron von Weser, who is obsessed with his creation, accidentally and mortally wounds the tree through an erroneous deep hit in the trunk destined for Moss and the tree, in revenge, before it dies, kills him. Only Beth and David come out of it alive.

Cast

 * Cameron Mitchell as Baron von Weser
 * Elisa Montés as Beth Christiansen
 * George Martin as David Moss
 * Kai Fischer as Cora Robinson
 * Hermann Nehlsen as Prof. Julius Demerist
 * Rolf von Nauckhoff as James Robinson
 * Matilde Muñoz Sampedro as Myrtle Callahan

Production
The film was made in several locations in Spain.

Release
It was first released in Spain on 20 February 1967 and in West Germany on 21 July 1967. It was released in the United States on 15 November 1967.