"Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men?" (Island Of Lost Souls (VHS))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Island Of Lost Souls (VHS)
Date:	06/07/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Creepy for its time, great lead performance

Disadvantages: A bit short, and ends abruptly

A review of just the film. This has become something of a lost classic. There was a region 2 DVD release, in a double bill with The Mystery of the Wax Museum. Expect to pay through the nose for a copy, at least until the rumoured region 1 release next year. In the meantime, you can probably pick up a VHS copy through amazon or ebay.

It's bizarre that a film of its era that's so well thought of should be so difficult to see. The early 30s was the golden age of American horror films, and Island of Lost Souls (1932) has the reputation of being one of the most impressive. Not only is it based on a classic of horror literature (The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells) but it was highly controversial in its day.

A shipwrecked all-American chap, Parker, on his way to marry his fiancée, ends up on an unnamed island owned by the sadistic Dr Moreau. The 'natives' of the island are a grotesque menagerie of half-man-half-beast creatures, created by Moreau in his feared laboratory, the 'House of Pain'. Moreau has plans to mate Parker with his most successful creation, an alluring panther woman called Lota, but inevitably, things don't quite go to plan...

This isn't a completely faithful adaptation of the book, which didn't feature a love-interest. (I'm also convinced they're pronouncing the main character's name incorrectly; I think the emphasis should be on the second syllable, not the first.) Wells himself was displeased, though the film was banned in Britain anyway. But it remains the best adaptation to date, with neither the dull 70s version starring Burt Lancaster nor the monumentally silly Marlon Brando version capturing any of the perversity of the book.

Because although this was made more than seven decades ago, it still has an uncanny frisson that most horrors of its age lack. Moreau's creations lurk in the background or at the edge of the frame, and have an unsettling, slack-jawed stillness about them. The background noises - inhuman howls and shrieks - are also genuinely unsettling. The beastmen look weird enough to still make you shudder, at least a little, and the great mob of them rushing the camera at the film's climax is as powerful as the end of Freaks, but without any of the awkward questions about exploitation.

This is a film of its time, so it wouldn't do to overstate things, but it's one of the few vintage horrors that still works as a horror film rather than an exercise in imaginative time travel. On the other hand, they evidently did suspense very differently back then, as this isn't scary, even in night-time chases through the jungle, which ought to really ratchet up the tension but totally don't. Like a lot of films of its era, it's short (75 minutes) and ends rather abruptly - everything is more or less resolved, but it does feel like this stops rather than ends.

It's helped immeasurably by Charles Laughton as the whip-cracking Moreau. Laughton was one of the early character-actor stars of the sound era, and would generally choose classier movies than this from this point on. But he's superb as the flabby, well-spoken Moreau, ever-so-slightly camp, with a delicious rolling of the eye and pursing of the lip. He gets some great dialogue about being like god (similar to some of the dialogue in Frankenstein, made a year earlier) and has some lovely little moments (like his unaccountable hilarity about some giant asparagus). Most of his dialogue is quasi-fascist stuff about science and evolution, and he's clearly both a representative of colonialism gone too far (he has a paternalistic contempt for his creations), and a precursor of Joseph Mengele. He's one of the best mad scientists in any film, a relaxed, arrogant great slug of a man. Almost all 30s horror films cast Europeans as the villains, and gave them at least a hint of sexual ambiguity; Laughton is only topped by Ernest Thesiger in Bride of Frankenstein, and he's deliberately camping it up.

The rest of the cast are a bit of a let-down compared to Laughton. Parker is played by Richard Arlen, and apart from his enjoyable willingness to hit people, he's a bit bland. His fiancée is dull. Lota the panther girl (Kathleen Burke) is incredibly sexy, but is necessarily a rather one-dimensional character. Horror legend Bela Lugosi plays the most vocal of the beastmen, and for once his awkward pronunciations are perfect for the part he's playing (although perhaps a bit too Hungarian). His constant chant of 'Are we not men?' is nicely weird, though.

Although the plot is nasty, no explicit violence is shown. But it's an unexpectedly adult film for its time. Moreau is unequivocal about his goal - he wants to mate a human and an animal, hardly the kind of thing one expects from an early 30s movie. And there's a lot of female flesh on display (nothing *too* revealing, of course, but bare legs were racy enough in those days...). It's very predictable - you don't have to have read the book to guess how this one will end - but hey, it's the journey, not the destination that's important, right?

That this film is so hard to see is inexcusable. Possibly it's because it was made by Paramount, rather than Universal (the iconic horror studio), but that doesn't seem like a realistic reason to keep it hidden. This will surely end up getting a decent release sooner or later. Until it does, just hope it appears on TV. Worth seeking out.

Summary: A neglected horror classic