"The lucky ones got their brains blown out!"
— Tagline
Island of Death, originally titled Ta pediá tou Diavólou (Τα Παιδιά Του Διαβόλου, literally "Children of the Devil"), is a 1976 Greek exploitation slasher film directed by Nico Mastorakis and starring Robert Belling, Jane Lyle, Jessica Dublin, Gerard Gonalons, Jannice McConnell, and Nikos Tsachiridis. It tells the story of a man named Christopher (Belling) and a woman named Celia (Lyle), posing as newlyweds, who visit the Greek island of Mykonos and start a rampage of murder, killing anyone they believe to be sinful or perverted.
This film provides examples of the following tropes:
- Asshole Victim: The two hippies who attempt to rape Celia in the bathtub, only to find themselves on the receiving end of Christopher's wrath. And of course, Christopher and Celia themselves.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: One of the first indicators of Christopher's evil is when he rapes a goat and then slashes the poor beast's throat, leaving it to bleed to death.
- Camp Gay: One of Christopher and Celia's victims is a flamboyant, middle-aged gay man about to be married to his Greek partner, who invites the two to attend his wedding.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Christopher and Celia seem very fond of dispatching these. Among their methods of murder are crucifixion, hanging a man from an airplane, decapitation via bulldozer, a spear gun, drowning in the toiletnote , and using an aerosol spray to burn someone's face. Christopher eventually suffers one himself, being dissolved in a lye pit, though his is certainly well-deserved.
- Does Not Like Men: Leslie the bartender, which is understandable considering her sexual orientation.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Celia regularly experiences premonitions of a strange man leading the two to their demise. The man turns out to be a local farmer, who rapes the two before throwing Christopher into a lye pit.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Celia may be a Serial Killer, but she nevertheless shows some hesitation when her partner-in-crime targets Patricia, the local cougar.
- Everyone Looks Sexier if French: The duo's first victim is a French painter who expresses sexual interest in Celia.
- Homophobic Hate Crime: The duo commits two over the course of the film. Firstly, they break into a gay couple's house on their wedding night, stabbing one of them to death and forcing the other to fellate a pistol before shooting him in the head. Secondly, Christopher beats a local lesbian bartender unconscious, injects her with a lethal dose of heroin, and burns her face off.
- Hypocrite: Christopher and Celia claim to be on a mission to weed out those they regard as perverted, even though they themselves have engaged in some genuinely perverse behavior themselves, namely incest and sexual sadism. Meanwhile, their victims' only "crimes" are expressing natural sexual desires and/or not being straight.
- Karmic Death: After spending the entire film murdering innocent people in cruel and horrifying ways, Christopher gets what's coming to him when he's thrown into a lye pit and left there to dissolve.
- Meaningful Name: The lesbian bartender is named Leslie. Doubles as a Punny Name.
- Moral Guardians: How Christopher and Celia see themselves. In reality, they're just hiding behind a façade of moral purity to justify their crimes.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The duo aren't merely prudish, they're also virulent homophobes and misogynists.
- Sadist: The murderous duo dispatch their victims with utter glee, to the point where they derive sexual pleasure from doing so.
- Villain Protagonist: Christopher and Celia are a pair of bigoted serial killers targeting completely innocent people on the island of Mykonos.
- Villainous Incest: It is eventually revealed that the two are actually brother and sister, and are engaged in an incestuous relationship.
