Visiting and Revisiting:The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) Pt. 2

[This is the second part of a two-part piece discussing the 1977 film version of H.G. Welles' science fiction classic, Island of Dr. Moreau. To read Part One, please click here.]

Rik: Besides the character of Montgomery, whom you mentioned in passing [in Part I] (and who I feel is still played very strongly by Nigel Davenport), there are a couple of other major characters in the film we haven’t touched on. First, there is the Sayer of the Law, who serves as quite literally what is imparted in his name. In this version, Richard Basehart, whom I knew very well from television on Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, plays the Sayer. When I first saw the Sayer of the Law in this version of Moreau, I never made the connection that it was the captain of the Seaview wearing a mask, even though upon reflection, his basic features can be made out underneath the makeup. Because I was never enamored of Basehart as an actor (I always thought he was kind of stiff), I likewise never really connected with his performance here. I did spend time teaching my brothers to recite The Law after I saw the film, as I coached them into performing scenes from the film so we could run around as Beast-Men, but it really wasn’t because of him.

Aaron: Of the three films, Richard Basehart struck me as the most forgettable Sayer of the Law. That may be a combination of both acting and makeup, as I found the look to be fairly nondescript. It’s basically a ring of white hair around his face and a vaguely canine nose that from many angles looks merely like a larger-than-average schnozz. Obviously this is to give the Sayer of the Law a distinct appearance, apart from the humanimals but yet not quite human, and yet it lacks anything distinctive. He could just be another shipwrecked soul. Bela Lugosi’s Sayer of the Law was also less distinctively animal than some of the other beasts in Island of Lost Souls, wearing what was essentially fur glued to his face, but Lugosi has that voice, and those eyes! He’s a captivating presence even when he’s not speaking, and seems otherworldly at all times. Richard Basehart basically let the makeup convey the animalistic side of the character, while remaining fairly human in his actual performance.

Rik: Lugosi has always seemed like the perfect choice for the Sayer to me. His performance resonates with me the most (as I expect it would with a majority of humanity). The casting of Ron Perlman in the 1996 version seems like the most obvious one to make, especially given his success in playing characters saddled with extreme makeup effects. And Perlman is a very strong actor. The problem for me is I cannot recall his performance at all when I think back to the film. For that matter, I have a hard time recalling anything except Brando and his little person pal. And that ice bucket. Oh, that ice bucket…

Aaron: Yeah, Perlman had a great look to him in the film, and he was fine with what they gave him to do, but that film is such a mess that it’s hard to pick anything out aside from Brando and his increasingly bizarre character choices. 

Rik: I would love to remember his performance, but I simply can’t. I saw the film last when it came out in the theatre, and I think, apart from seeing scenes in the Stanley documentary, have largely expunged it from my mind.

The last major character we haven’t tackled is the one I would most love to, and that is Maria, played by a lovely, fragile-looking Barbara Carrera. In my memory, I continue to think of Carrera as a Bond girl of that period, but she wasn't in a Bond flick until the non-Broccoli Never Say Never Again in 1983, where she played Fatima to Connery's returning super-spy. I fell in love the instant I saw her on the cover of that Moreau novelization. She basically represents the puma in the novel who will ultimately battle Moreau to the death, and Lota the Panther Woman in the 1933 version who is at the center of all the bestiality hubbub regarding that infamous take on the tale.

Here, her character is sweet but really rather dull, almost like she is being used only for scenery (much like the cover photo that drew me to her) and/or to throw us off the scent a bit. I had always assumed just from her appearance on the island that Moreau had experimented on her. She also walks around holding an ocelot much of the time, which says to me they were at least trying to make us believe she is more than what she appears. The final scene on the boat, when a passing ship discovers them, is very strange. When we first see the lifeboat (the Lady Vain, the one in which Braddock first arrived, so that now he leaves the island the same way), we only see Maria, her face obscured by her hair. When Braddock, now changed fully back to his human form, crawls out from under his blanket, her back is to us. It is pretty clear to me that they are at least hinting that she has transformed into something else. Braddock gets distracted by the noise of the ship's horn trying to get their attention, and we see only one shot of Maria's face, and she looks unlike she does anywhere else in the film. Yes, she is crying, but her eyes seem very odd and her face seems puffier. Then the film is over.

It makes me wonder if there was an alternate ending filmed where we see her eyes are yellow as she begins to transform. Honestly, I thought she was starting to change into a cat when I went to the film that first time. And it stuck in my head that she was, and every time I see it since, I always get riled up about the ending. But there are two very good reasons for my belief that she is some sort of ocelot or panther woman: the original movie poster. The top third of the frame is definitely a female who goes through the process of switching into a ferocious panther. Since this does not appear anywhere in the film, it leads me to believe it may have been filmed and then cut (I can't imagine why you would go to the expense and then trash it, unless it was really terrible).

The second comes from the novelization, which as I mentioned is based on the original screenplay. This is the final paragraph of the book: "Maria spoke no words. She only opened her mouth, revealing two fangs, two puma-like, animal fangs."

What is your take on Maria and the case of the missing panther-woman, Aaron?

Aaron: I think anyone with any sort of familiarity with this story would recognize Maria as a panther-woman from the very outset, when she first arrives on film. Certainly the ocelot she’s constantly carrying with her would be another clue, for those not yet in the know.

And so I find it odd that the film tries to be coy about it at all. Possibly that was a move meant to keep some of the stricter censors off of the film’s scent, because when Michael York and Barbara Carrera first have sex, my initial thought was ‘wow, so the film actually went there’. If the film had been more upfront in stating that she was actually a cat, I doubt those love scenes would have been included. But then, why continue that coyness even to the end? It’s obvious as soon as the two of them are adrift on the life raft, just from the character’s positions alone, that something is wrong with Maria, and yet the film keeps holding off on showing us what we already know, only to let the shoe drop with a literal blink-and-you’ll-miss-it insert shot of Maria with a slightly lumpy face. It’s strangely anticlimactic, giving the ending a weird shapeless feel, and leaves so little an impression that even the film’s Wikipedia page neglects to include this information in the otherwise rather detailed synopsis.

Rik: Not much respect has been paid to the film in its releases on video. I had a VHS copy for many years, which I replaced with the MGM Presents Midnite Movies DVD when it came out in 2001. The only special feature is the original theatrical trailer. It would have been really nice to have a commentary to confirm some of my suspicions about the Maria character. I just found out that it was released earlier this year on an all-regions Blu-Ray disc, but there are no extra features that I can find, apart from a widescreen 1:85:1 frame, which I already have on my DVD version. I doubt we will get many answers about it anytime soon, if ever.

While I loved the makeup of the humanimals when it came out, time has not been kind. They seem rather immovable and too inorganic to me. While I like his work, it is not surprisingly to learn that John Chambers, who won an Oscar for the original Planet of the Apes, was the creator of the makeup effects. Tom Burman is credited with the makeup design. I know Burman from many horror and fantasy films he did in the ‘80s and ‘90s (though he now wastes his talent on things like Grey’s Anatomy… still, steady work is nice). How do you feel about the makeup work?

Aaron: Well, I’ll say that it makes sense now that I know the makeup effects artist worked on Planet of the Apes, because the designs and execution here have a similar rubber-mask feel, and are not expressive at all. Everyone’s expressions are constantly fixed, and when characters speak the mouth remains almost motionless but the nose portion of the mask will wobble up and down unrealistically. That said, I don’t think they look horrible in their design. They do look a bit like mythical beasts, and not so much like what I imagine transmogrified man-animals would look like, but they are distinctive enough that I could see being impressed by them if I had seen this at the age you had seen it.

We keep going back to it, but if you look at some of the beasts in Island of Lost Souls, they look like what you’d imagine when you think of someone cutting up animals and piecing them together like jigsaw puzzles. Some characters will have features that look vaguely catlike, and then a segment of their face will be clearly avian. It’s truly nightmarish, and another example of why that film stands head and shoulders over the rest of the films made. Compare that with this version of the film, where many of the non-featured humanimals seem to just have lumpy, furry faces, like maybe their having an allergic reaction to something. Outside of the main creatures, I don’t think you can look at most of the humanimals in this version and deduce what animal they used to be. They all have very similar physiognomies.

Rik: Something of which you may not be aware, Aaron, and I really wasn’t at the time, but the character of M’Ling, the Beast-Man servant, is played by Nick Cravat. Growing up watching The Crimson Pirate (and another swashbuckler featuring Lancaster called The Flame and the Arrow), I knew Cravat as Burt’s right hand guy, a generally mute character with whom Lancaster would perform acrobatics in the film. They were best friends since childhood and real life, and performed in the circus together for years before Lancaster broke through in Hollywood. His appearance with Lancaster in Moreau was the last of their nine film appearances together. I also knew Cravat from a small role in Disney’s Davy Crockett film. I never picked up on Cravat even watching the credits, probably because I really didn’t know his name at the time, just his face, which is absolutely obscured by makeup (though once again, it is easy to make out his basic features if you know what he looks like in real life).

Aaron: I’m not familiar enough with Nick Cravat to have picked him out of a lineup, but I think you’re glossing over what may be his most pertinent bit of work history prior to this: Cravat was apparently the Gremlin in the original Nightmare at 20,000 Feet episode of The Twilight Zone.

I feel bad for not mentioning M’Ling before now, because he is quite a sympathetic character who also has some important bits of business to do. But the character seems underutilized in this film, showing up every once in awhile, and disappearing for so long that when he helps Braddock and Maria escape at the end I had kind of forgotten him. The character gets no real chance to develop on his own.

Rik: My final opinion on the film is that I still enjoy it after all this time, though it pales in comparison to Island of Lost Souls. Lancaster's performance holds up for me, as do those of Davenport and York. But in the end, the film feels today like a Hallmark production (the ones regularly aired on NBC and CBS in the '70s, not the current TV network), or like a Reader's Digest condensed version of the tale, where they have scrubbed some of the more inflammatory material to make it palatable to the general public. For production value alone and the latent memories I have of it, this version still warrants a 6/9 on my scale, which is "good". But I would prefer people watch Island of Lost Souls if they want to see a really incredible version of this story (whether or not they end up loving it as we do).

Aaron: That’s a good point about this feeling like a condensed or sanitized version of the story, which also strikes me as a bit bizarre, because my favorite parts of this film, dealing with Braddock’s transformation and Moreau’s downfall at the hands of his creations, strive towards something that could be genuinely challenging. This movie hints at something more inflammatory than some of the other moments in the other versions, and yet the film seems to pull back from those ideas before completely committing to them. If it had gone farther in those directions, and actually addressed any of the philosophical implications of what it means to be human, or whether we can ever conquer our own natures, this could have been a classic for the ages. Reading this back, I feel like I come across as too harsh on the film, which is not as bad as I maybe make it out to be. As it is, I think my rating would be slightly lower than yours. I’d give it a 5/9 on the same scale you use, which in my eyes means it was worth seeing, but I didn’t completely like it.

Once again we've reached the end of our Visiting and Revisiting discussion. If you enjoyed this back and forth, and look forward to more, be sure to check back for our discussion of Hirokazu Kore-eda's 1998 film, After Life.

Visiting and Revisiting: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) Pt. 1

[Rik: This is Part I of a two-part article in which my good friend Aaron Lowe (Working Dead Productions) and I discuss the 1977 film version of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau.]

Rik: The 1977 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau was the first film that I ever saw by myself in a movie theatre. My craving to see the film led to my mother dropping the twelve-year-old me off at the Fireweed Theater in Anchorage, Alaska, while she and my brothers went shopping. At the time, we lived in Eagle River, about fourteen miles outside of Anchorage proper (which is considered to be a "suburb" of the bigger city, but growing up there, we always thought of it as a town unto itself since there is no real physical connection). It was also a very different time, and while I do recall being a little weirded out at being all alone in a movie theatre with random strangers about me, all of that went away when I realized that I was in my element. I had finally found my church. It is a mood that has stuck with me the rest of my life.

What fired me up about seeing the film was a book. Not THE book. Not the novella written by H.G. Wells in 1896, but rather a novelization of his famous story, built around the screenplay for the film. I had picked up a copy of it on a visit to a Mom-and-Pop bookstore in Eagle River (I do not remember the name, but it was same store where I first purchased my Marvel Star Wars comic books that summer). I had seen the trailers for Moreau on television as well, and those had me pretty excited, but the book in my fingers not only had pictures of all the characters on the front and back covers, along with movie credits, but there was also a generous supply of black-and-white plates in the middle of the book mainly featuring photos of the "humanimals" (the trademarked name for the half-human creatures in the film) and some behind the scenes shots as well.

I had not read the original story at that time, though I had read several Wells novels like The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds. And truthfully, I forged through the book not realizing it was a novelization (by Joseph Silva, which does appear on the lowest part of the back cover and on the title page, but not anywhere on the front cover). It was certainly not in Wells' style I knew at the time, but I loved it all the same, and immediately began demanding that we go see the movie. Of course, while just a PG film, it was definitely not material for the younger set, so I totally understand why I ended up on my own at the theatre without my little brothers. [Just to set a time frame a little more, the film that I got to see at the movies in faraway Anchorage before this one was Star Wars, with the whole family (sans my divorced father), and the next film I would see would be The Spy Who Loved Me, which my mom and I took in, sat in the front row, snuck in Doritos and shaky cheese, and watched all the way through the second feature, Won Ton Ton: The Dog That Saved Hollywood.]

I remember being both scared of and awed by the creatures in the film, and fascinated by the story itself and its lead actor, Burt Lancaster, who plays the mesmerizing Dr. Moreau, a scientist obsessed with creating his own race of beings by fusing man and beast together in various combinations. I knew Lancaster mainly from one film at that age, another of my favorites, The Crimson Pirate. Being that there are exactly 25 years between the films, I don't believe that I caught on to the fact they were the same actor until it was explained to me. I just thought Dr. Moreau was an incredible character, though his methods shocked me as I was fanatical at the time about becoming a veterinarian. That said, I find his portrayal of the doctor to be the most humane version at the outset, where he doesn’t appear immediately insane or outrageously flamboyant as in the other versions. You can believe he is a serious scientist deeply involved in research that he believes will better mankind.

Aaron, this is your first time with the movie. What is your history with the film? Did you remember hearing or knowing about growing up, and is there a specific reason why you waited so long to see it?

Aaron: I don’t really have a history with this film, and I can’t think of any specific reason I never saw it, other than the fact that I just wasn’t ever around it. I don’t recall seeing it on the shelves of the nearby Video City that became my second home for many years, though it’s likely that I just kept passing over it on my regular perusals. The first time I really remember seeing the movie on a shelf was when I worked at Suncoast in the early-to-mid 2000s. The DVD featured a menacing Burt Lancaster holding a hypodermic needle, a screaming Michael York, looking rather ridiculous in both facial expression and in the mid-metamorphosis makeup he’s wearing, and a few of the humanimals looking concerned in the lower corner. It was not the most interesting cover, and made the film look like any number of hokey, brightly colored ‘60s/’70s fantasy films.

But then I’ve never had much of a history with H.G. Wells, either. I’ve read a couple of his novels, and of course have a longstanding love of all things War of the Worlds (even the bizarre musical version from Jeff Wayne, featuring members of Thin Lizzy, The Moody Blues, and Manfred Mann), and yet as a writer he’s never been a favorite. I like his plots, and I think he has great striking ideas, but I find his writing at times to be too clinical and detached. Although The Invisible Man has some great moments of dry humor in it.

Or possibly it was my memories of another H.G. Wells adaptation from the same period, and actually part of the same cycle produced by AIP: The Food of the Gods. [Editor’s note: The third film of that cycle is Empire of the Ants.] Now, The Food of the Gods is a film I actually do enjoy, though I think that owes more to the age at which I first saw it, back when I was young enough to not recognize the trickery that went into creating those giant rats and bees. I didn’t think of miniatures or rear projection; I thought they had actually found a giant chicken to menace those people..

There’s also something about a bad movie from the ‘60s or ‘70s that affects me unlike a bad movie from any other decade. While I can find some genuine enjoyment, and even some form of comfort, in a schlocky “B” movie from the ‘40s and ‘50s, or even the ‘80s and ‘90’s, a bad film from the ‘60s and ‘70s will often strike me as unpleasantly cheap and seedy, with an ever-present air of anger and violence. It’s no secret why that is; that period’s rage and frustration made its way into every genre of film, and probably most explicitly in horror films. But while I admire and enjoy that subtext in films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes, I see those as standouts in the field. The period is often called a great turning point in American cinema, and rightly so, but it’s probably my least favorite period for horror. That being said, the movie truly started to win me over only once some of that seediness and anger began to push its way to the forefront, or perhaps I’m just grasping at straws there.

Rik: Aaron, I believe that not that long ago, if I remember correctly, you first saw the far superior 1933 version called Island of Lost Souls when Criterion Collection released it on Blu-Ray. I saw Souls after this one when I was in my teens, and it blew my mind. I had read the real novel by that point, and even though there were naturally some changes, I felt it stuck closer to the true spirit of what Wells intended (though Wells apparently hated the more horrific sequences). How do you feel the two versions stack up? And feel free to riff on the 1996 Brando/Frankenheimer abomination if you wish.

Aaron: That is correct, the first experience I had directly with this story was through my purchase of Island of Lost Souls on the absolutely essential Criterion disc. Just by virtue of my addiction to pop culture I was pretty familiar with the underlying Moreau story, and yet Souls really surprised me. Not only was the violence disturbing, but the sexual content was absolutely shocking. Laughton’s portrayal of Dr. Moreau is less a scientist, and more a vile, leering hedonist, even before he begins pushing Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) into having sex with his animal women. Laughton’s Moreau doesn’t seem to be interested in any real scientific advancement, only in casting himself as a Greek god in reverse, coming down in human form to mate with the animals.

Obviously my heart lies with Island of Lost Souls. I find it has an eerie, slightly unwholesome power, almost immediately from the first frame. That’s not something I would say about the 1977 version, which I found to be a bit dull for the first half. Maybe it was overfamiliarity with the plot (at this point I’ve seen both of the other versions, and, in the case of Souls, multiple times), but this version seemed to have the least personality at the outset. Burt Lancaster is indeed the most humane, and believable, Dr. Moreau in all the films, and while I love him as an actor and enjoyed him onscreen, I think the character needs more of a touch of madness, certainly more than Lancaster brings to the role for most of his screen time. And then you can look at the infamous 1996 version, where Marlon Brando went way too far with the character’s madness, to the point where it just doesn’t seem believable that this guy would have the presence of mind to figure out, and implement, a method for turning animals into humans. I don’t have a lot to say about the 1996 version, because I’ve only seen it the once and better writers than I have already dissected (or should it be vivisected?) that film completely. I will just say it’s the worst of the three versions. I usually love crazy, extravagant fiascos that get batshit insane, and the ’96 Moreau surely fits that bill, but it’s also too meandering and lazy to be entertaining.

Rik: I am so with you on the Island of Lost Souls, sir. For me, it is not just one of the best horror films of the 1930s, but one of the greatest and most perverse of all time. It is truly twisted in a way that is impossible to believe could be achieved in those days. The John Frankenheimer version in ’96 is also a mind-melt, mostly due to Brando’s machinations, but it is also regrettably an unpleasant, sweaty, and uncomfortable experience. It is not the film the already immensely successful Frankenheimer signed on for after the dismissal of original director/screenwriter Richard Stanley (battles recounted in the rich documentary from 2014, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau). It really got out of his hands.

Getting back to the 1977 version now, Michael York plays the lone human protagonist, Andrew Braddock (Edward Prendick in the true novel), who ends up on Moreau's island after being lost at sea. Watching the film again, I am shocked at how thin (though still muscular) York appears, and this may be purposeful since he is supposed to have been at sea with no food or water for a considerable period. I knew York from The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, where he played D'Artagnan, and York was somewhat of a hero of mine at that age. I suppose my swashbuckling fanaticism at that time was another reason I was able to convince my mother to let me see the film, but I am fairly unsure of that point.

Aaron: I believe this is the only version of the story where the Prendick/Braddock character falls victim to Moreau’s experimentation, and it’s through that subplot that my true enjoyment in this film originates. For a while it seems like Braddock might be coming around to Moreau’s way of thinking. If he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable with the experiments being carried out in the compound, he’s at least decided to not rock the boat. That changes when Moreau and Braddock hunt down a humanimal who has shed blood, which is strictly against Moreau’s law. This is punishable by a trip to the House of Pain, where Moreau’s hideous and painful experiments take place. The humanimal is injured in the chase, and pleads with Braddock to kill him instead of hand him over to Dr. Moreau, and Braddock complies. This is in violation of the Law, and Dr. Moreau must punish Braddock for his transgression, or ignite distrust and anger in the population of humanimals. That’s open to debate, of course, because Moreau is such a godlike figure to these creatures that he likely could have avoided punishing Braddock. It actually seemed to me like Moreau was simply curious as to whether he could turn a man into an animal, instead of the other way around. And why wouldn’t he be? It’s something I’d always asked myself while watching the other versions of this story, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been repeated in any of the other iterations of this concept. 

This section of the film was the most compelling to me, and the most chilling, as Moreau calmly describes to Braddock the changes his body and mind will be going through. His thoughts begin to break down and words are replaced by images and instinct. His screams of pain seem to inspire even the sympathy of the humanimals, who certainly know better than anyone what he’s going through. It also inspires the sympathy of Moreau’s right hand man, Montgomery, who opposes Moreau’s decision only to get shot for it. This angers the humanimals, who witness Moreau breaking his own law, and sets the stage for the final confrontation when the beasts storm Moreau’s compound. There’s a nice touch in this section, after the humanimals have killed Moreau, where Braddock and Maria string Moreau’s body up over the compound’s gates and try to convince the humanimals that Moreau is still alive. This actually works, for a few seconds, and I thought that was a nice detail that shows how animalistic the thinking of the humanimals was, and how high Moreau’s stature was in their eyes. He wasn’t another animal, he wasn’t even mortal, he was a god to them, and even seeing their lifeless god hanging from a rope was intimidating.

Rik: This version really downplays the fact that in the original novel, Moreau is a vivisectionist who experiments quite messily to achieve his results in creating the Beast-Men. Once again, I didn't know this at the time, and did not even know the term "vivisectionist," so I suppose if they stuck to the original intent, I would have been even more shocked than I was by Moreau's domineering behavior. Here, the doctor mainly sticks his subjects with a syringe; using some sort of serum he has developed using human genes that can somehow transform the animals into human beings. What a rotten turn for the animals. They were certainly better off before.

Part II of this discussion can be read by clicking here.