Ok enough of bad horror films this year. I had seen Island of Lost Souls, a film not easy to see for years in the 80s. Not sure how or where, there video release so maybe that was it. I had not seen it since and after watching the Criterion restoration it felt like the first time. The quality is excellent and my vague memories of the films were nothing to how it affected me this time.
This film is horrifying in the best ways, the look, the makeup, the acting of Charles Laughton as one of the creepiest and evil villains you might ever see on screen. All of this done with no gore but with enough hints of what is happening to freak you out. It's hard to believe they got away with some of the elements in this movie - and they didn't after the Hates Codes came into effect a couple years later and the film was banned. Laughton's Dr Moreau, as in the book Island of Dr Moreau it's adapted from, is the epitome of inhumane. His plan to turn animals into humans under the guise of scientific advancement but really done under the perversion of sadistic cruelty is shocking even today. He creates a woman and tries to get a shipwrecked guy to knock her up just to see if she can be. That falls apart when the man's finance shows up to rescue him, and he decides maybe one of the less successful beast men he created should rape her and see she can carry that baby to term. His plan seems to be create in "lower animals" the one thing he will never have - humanity.
The great performances don't end there. Bela Lugosi knocks it out of the park as the "giver of the law". He is barely recognizable under all the makeup but his intense eyes give him away. A small role that he runs away with, his final scenes as the animals turn on Moreau, led by him truly is scary as he traps the Doctor in own "house of pain.
The panther woman (Lota) played by Kathleen Burke is not over the top and you feel for her as a person. She doesn't over play "cat" stereotypes, she isn't Catwoman in the Batman TV show, she sells her role completely to the audience.
The rest of the cast is fine, not really standing out and to be honest there isn't room for more standouts with the previous three actors mentioned on the set.
Makeup of the creatures on the island is really disturbing and believable. If you were not familiar with the book you would be confused and put off by what they might represent until what they actually are is revealed. At 70 minutes, you don't wait too long for answers and the pace of the film might be slow by today's standards but certainly isn't boring.
One negative is the odd choice to not name Kathleen Burke in the opening titles but instead credit "The Panther Woman". She is only one of 2 women in the piece and the only one the island at first so her reveal as being one of Moreau's tortured creations is not a surprise. Moreau also talks about her in a way that takes any surprise out the castaway getting a kiss from her and coming to realization of what she really is. For me, this robbed the actress of some of the power in her performance.
In summary... this is a fantastic, disturbing film that makes you think and will unnerve you in ways you didn't think an early 30s still could. I wish I could see it in a theatre!
