Island of Lost Souls
Charles Laughton is the wicked Dr. Moreau, messing with things he shouldn't be messing with.
Island of Lost Souls (1932). Grade: B-
Hey, did you know that Hollywood sometimes likes to cash in on whatever the latest hit was, and tries to make more money with something kinda like it?
Weird, huh?
Well, that’s what they did here. 1931’s Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde had both been hits; both featured monsters coming after defenseless beauties, and is Mr. Hyde’s case, the monster was somewhat ape-ish. So Paramount figured they could strike gold again with something similar, and had several writers take a crack at squeezing a “damsel in distress” into H.G. Welles’s 1896 The Island of Dr. Moreau.
I haven’t read the Welles book, but I am familiar with some of his stuff. Welles used science fiction to make social commentary. Take War of the Worlds, for instance. Strange-looking beings in strange crafts arrive unexpectedly, and just start wiping everyone out; their technology is so advanced, there’s no chance of defeating them. Fortunately, they catch some germs that they’re not immune to and die. Quite obviously, that’s a parallel to what happened with indigenous populations in America and Australia; although in those cases, the invaders brought the deadly germs with them.
Scifist.net’s Janne Wass HAS read the book, and shares a useful summary here. Wass says that the book was making social commentary on several levels. First, on the morality of animal vivisection; there’s also parallels with slavery, colonialism, eugenics, totalitarian rule. Oddly, in a 1924 edition, Welles wrote in a short preface that “There was a scandalous trial about that time, the graceless and pitiful downfall of a man of genius, and this story was the response of an imaginative mind to the reminder that humanity is but animal rough-hewn to a reasonable shape and in perpetual internal conflict between instinct and injunction.” The “scandalous trial” refers to Oscar Wilde’s trial.
You won’t get anything suggesting Wilde in this movie, although some of Welles’s other themes are there. Basically, the evil Dr. Moreau has been performing brutal expeiments on animals in order to “speed up” their evolution by making them more human. (He states at one point that the evolutionary goal of every species is to become human; it’s not, it’s to become a better-adapted coelacanth or dung beetle.) Moreau rules his island of beast-humans with the whip and the Law; any who violate the Law are subject to unmentionable terrors in the House of Pain.
If you think, “wait a minute, wasn’t there a terrible band called House of Pain with a terrible song called “Jump Around” that was a huge hit in 1992?” you are thinking correctly! They took their name from this movie.
And when Moreau makes the beast-humans repeat the Law, they end each commandment with the phrase “are we not men?” Yes, that’s where Devo got the idea for their album title, too. There’s also a Diana Ross song, with a pretty silly movie-inspired video.
Mostly, the movie is an excuse for the great Charles Laughton to ham it up gleefully as Moreau, and for the best makeup artists of their day (headed by Wally Westmore) to strut their stuff. On the Criterion disc, there’s a semi-interesting interview with retired makeup wizard Rick Baker and makeup/prop historian Bob Burns; they point out that most modern makeup gimmickry hadn’t been invented yet, so the makeup team on this one was really inventive as heck.
That interview’s conducted by 1980s director John Landis, who comes across like a friendlier Leonard Maltin and says some rather unexpected things. He mentions how most of the other films by Island director Erle C. Kenton were hacky and blah; that’s an odd statement from the director of Spies Like Us and ¡Three Amigos!.
Even more oddly, Landis says that most other “science has gone too far!” stories/movies were politically conservative, but this one isn’t. That’s a curious definition of “conservative.” (It’s also odd to hear Landis voice any political thoughts whatsoever.) Metropolis was hugely pro-worker. Frankenstein is based on a book by womens’ rights advocate Mary Shelley. I’m honestly not aware of a major movie that said “science has gone too far!” which was anti-science in any conservative sense, as in the Vatican condemning Galileo.
This is mostly dumb fun stuff. The fun comes from the goofy dialogue (“are we not men?”) and from Charles Laughton, who sports an Evil Goatee and is always scheming something. You know he’s lying whenever he smiles at you. (Or, YOU do; hunky/lunky Richard Arlen convincingly gives off the impression of being rather slow on the uptake.) Laughton was married to Elsa Lanchester (she played the Bride of Frankenstein, and tons of funny roles later as prissy British ladies); mostly, Lanchester was a beard, as mostly, Laughton was pretty gay. Lanchester had been in silent short films written by H.G. Welles, too! Bluebottles, Daydreams, and The Tonic, all from 1928.
Anyone wanting Laughton at his best should see the fantastic Hobson’s Choice; this is merely a quickie role, although he’s very enjoyable in it. He’d just come to Hollywood after a very successful stage career; this was his first American movie. He’d bounce back and forth between England and America for the rest of his life, and became a US citizen in 1950, along with Lanchester; he was a Stevenson supporter. (Arlen became a Goldwater guy.)
The cinematography’s by Karl Strauss, who had worked with German Expressionists like F.W. Murnau; there’s some cool shadow shots, but to much of this is too murky and a little difficult to see. That may be deterioration in the print; per Wiki, Criterion considered this “one of the most difficult restorations they had done.” It could also be intentionally low-lit to keep the makeup seams from showing.
Strauss and Erle. C. Kenton achieve one bit of real genius here, at the end. As Laughton’s Moreau torments and dominates and experiments on the beast-humans, you know they’re gonna come get him in the end, and they do. It’s spooky and effective and looks great. It’s not as good as the ending of Freaks, but what is?
Speaking of the beast-humans, one of them’s played by Bela Lugosi of Dracula fame; he’s under a ton of makeup, so you won’t recognize him, but you may get a kick out of hearing his heavily-Hungarian-accented English. “You made us... things! Not men! Not beasts! Part man... part beast! Things!” Lugosi was broke — the Dracula money was already gone — and took the part for peanuts. Paramount probably spent more on ads featuring his name than they did on paying him.
They spent a whole lot on casting the part of “Lota, The Panther Woman.” A nationwide contest supposedly recieved 60,000 photo applications; the part went to Kathleen Burke, a dental assistant/model from Chicago. Burke found film shoots lonely and very tiring, and quit movies at age 28. Her job here is for Richard Arlen to almost sleep with her, until he’s repulsed by her claw-like fingernails, and maybe kinda remembers he’s got a fiancee somewhere so he possibly shouldn’t be diddling with a Cat Lady.
You can read Christine Smallwood’s Criterion essay here. She mentions several of the Wellesian undercurrents in the film. The real stunner from her essay is that this movie was partially banned in Australia — but only for Aboriginal people! Honky descendants of thieves could watch it, but not the natives. Which says something about the censors, in that they A) didn’t want the movie’s overthrow of Moreau to result in a “the natives are restless” situation (yep, this is where that misquoted line came from), and that B) they equated Aboriginal people with half-monsters.
This was infamously remade in 1996 with Marlon Brando as Moreau and David Thewlis in the shipwrecked-hero Arlen role; amazingly, Rob Morrow (of Northern Exposure) was originally in it before bailing out. And yes, for you Twins fans out there, someone did make the obvious Justin Morneau comparison:
