299 - Island of Lost Souls, United States, 1932. Dir. Erle C. Kenton.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

299 - Island of Lost Souls, United States, 1932.  Dir. Erle C. Kenton.

The natives are restless.

They are restless tonight.

They are more than usually restless tonight.

So says Dr. Moreau.

The natives are animals transforming into people, and Dr. Moreau is the mad, er, great scientist responsible for the transforming.

He began his experiments in London but had to move to the island when a creature formerly known as a dog escaped and terrorized the city.

Now he conducts his experiments in isolation.  On the island.  An island without a name.  An island not on the chart.  He is off the charts!  "It's Dr. Moreau's island, and it stinks all over the South Seas."

Dr. Moreau performs his experiments without anesthetics, on creatures who are fully awake.  They feel everything.  Therefore, they refer to his operating room as the House of Pain.

If you grew up listening to Van Halen and know their song "House of Pain," then you now know where that song idea came from.

Edward Parker is listed as one of the passengers missing from the S.S. Lady Vain.  He wires his fiancee, Miss Ruth Thomas, at the Continental Hotel, that he will arrive in Apia on the sixth, by way of the S.S. Covena.  Too bad the captain of the Covena, Captain Davies, a drunk, does not want him.  He tosses him over into the smaller boat as soon as the clients disembark to go to the island.

Parker will not arrive in Apia on the sixth.  He will be on the island.

Location:  Latitude 15 South, Longitude 170 West.

When Dr. Moreau finds Parker on his island, he gets an idea.  He has this panther he has been transforming into a woman.

Lota.

She is afraid of Dr. Moreau and his assistant Montgomery, because they rule by fear.  But perhaps she will not be afraid of Parker, an outsider, a new man.  Perhaps he will engage her heart.  Perhaps she will develop feelings for him.  Perhaps she will fall in love.

If only she did not still have those claws that dig into his back when she hugs him.

H. G. Wells wrote the 1896 novel on which this movie is based.  He wrote during the fin de siecle, when science and science fiction were the rage, when novelists and their readers were contemplating the ethics of man creating man.

You may know these titles:

The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898).

In all Wells wrote more than 50 novels.

This film may may have been directed by the least-known director we have seen so far this year: Erle C. Kenton.  Ever heard of him?

It stars as Dr. Moreau that most fascinating person, Charles Laughton.

Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).  The director of The Night of the Hunter (1955).  We talked about him more in our blog of that film.

When Parker does not arrive in Apia on the sixth, Ruth Thomas takes Skipper Davies to the U.S. Consul to complain.

Davies asserts that he dropped Parker off at port.  He says that is all that is required of him.

The U.S. Consul has something to say about that.  If he finds any irregularities, he will revoke Davies' license.

He sends another sailor, Donahue, with Ruth Thomas to find Parker.

Which means everyone will converge on the island.

Something is going to go down.

And it might not be good.

When a group of creatures with the instincts and the strength of animals, who have new powers of thought and free will, come together in anger, well . . .

Let us just say that the doctor does not wish to become the patient.

The film was remade in 1977 starring Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Nigel Davenport, Richard Basehart, and Barbara Carrera, and again in 1996, by John Frankenheimer, starring Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, and Fairuza Balk.

We recommend you do not go out into the jungle.

The natives are restless tonight.


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Parker - Those animals, they talk.
Moreau - That was my first great achievement.  Articulate speech controlled by the brain.

Do you know what it means to feel like God?

An animal with a woman's emotions, a woman's heartbreak, a woman's suffering.  Why, that's criminal.

I could have overlooked those others.  I could have shown you that much consideration.  But not now.

Are you leaving?  I think you'd better sit down and make yourself comfortable.

I imagined Edward in some terrible place, but this is charming.

There's no twilight in the Tropics.  Night falls like a curtain.