Master of the macabre Boris Karloff delivers a rare non-monster performance as the leader of an investigation of mysterious disappearances on a South Pacific island that is the proposed site of an exclusive resort. But after a few encounters with carnivorous plants and zombies, he realizes that this might not be the ideal place for a vacation and that his team will be lucky to make it off the island alive.

Boris Karloff amiably walks through his undemanding starring role in VOODOO ISLAND. Lensed in Hawaii, the film casts Karloff as Phillip Knight, a professional skeptic who enjoys skewering those who believe in the supernatural. Accompanied by his secretary, Sara (Beverly Adams), Knight arrives on a tiny Pacific island to disprove claims that a voodoo curse has invested itself in the community. After several horrible murders, however, it looks as though there really is voodoo activity in the region. Characters essential to the action are Elisha Cook Jr. as a zombie-fied petty thief, and a rather surly carnivorous plant! Some prints of VOODOO ISLAND have eliminated a subplot involving lesbian interior decorator Claire Winter (Jean Engstrom).