TERMINAL ISLAND

Some time in the future. Carmen is sentenced to San Bruno Island off the coast of California, a prison where convicted murderers are abandoned by society. On the island she is forcibly recruited into the encampment led by Bobby Farr, where she learns that it is her duty, along with the other women prisoners, to service the sexual needs of the male prisoners, and act as a workhorse. But she and the women are liberated by a group of outcasts from Bobby's camp and enjoy a kind of freedom amongst their rescuers. But this pitches the two encampments into war with one another.
Rothman uses the plot for serious sociological themes and has clearly imbued the film with her own feminist undertow - the story is told through the eyes of the four women who are the ones who end up being responsible for the discoveries that help to win the war. And it ends with an appealingly Utopian wish-fulfilment - with the prisoners, having eliminated all the violent elements, finding their own redemption and going on to create a peaceful society on an idyllic island away from the rest of the world. (Richard Scheib)

All the people on Terminal Island are about the sage age - which is to say, somewhere between Tatum O'Neal and Tab Hunter - and they are all good-looking. Especially the girls, who manage to run forever through the underbrush while keeping that sheen in their hair and their makeup on. I know girls who can't run for the bus with those kind of results. (Roger Ebert, «Chicago Sun-Times», 1973)