The Island of Dr. Moreau Blu-ray Review
The horror! The horror!
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 27, 2012
It takes some real
chutzpah to "out eccentric" Marlon Brando, especially in Brando's later career, but evidently
Val Kilmer found it to be a not very big challenge during the filming of the 1996 version of
The Island of Dr
Moreau. This iconic H.G. Wells tale, which first found life as a film as
Island of Lost Souls in 1932, seemed in the
1996 version to be, much like the horrifying animal-human hybrids which are at the heart of the story, to have been
born under a dark star. Virtually everything that could go wrong with a film did go wrong with this one, including huge
fights between the actors and the director(s) (there were two of them, but more about that in a moment), a script that
was undergoing so many rewrites that Brando reportedly had his lines literally phoned into him via an earpiece, and a
generally confusing ambience that left New Line with a decidedly different property than they had gambled on. The
general critical consensus about
The Island of Dr. Moreau is that it is an unmitigated disaster, but I would like to
put forward a slightly different thesis, namely that while the film is indeed disastrously flawed, it's an absolutely
fascinating piece in both the John Frankenheimer and Marlon Brando
oeuvres, and it deserves a reexamination
now that the PR dust has settled and the film can be appreciated on some perhaps slightly more objective criteria. The
fact is,
The Island of Dr. Moreau is, despite its many missteps, a fairly riveting piece of film craft, one that doesn't
shy away from the eccentricities of either Kilmer or Brando, and indeed seems to celebrate these decidedly peculiar
actors, for better or worse. The film is moody, disturbing and at times incredibly visceral—and those are all good things
for a modern day science fiction tinged thriller to aspire to. Is the film at least partially sunk by the shenanigans of its
two headlining stars? No doubt But for anyone who's ever seen this
Island of Dr. Moreau, there are a number
of unforgettable moments in it, beyond the mere carnival like scenes of Brando in white face or blasting through a two
piano duet of Chopin with a midget playing a toy keyboard.
Much like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells is often thought of as a visionary who presciently predicted various elements which
have
become part and parcel of our modern world. If Verne's contributions in this regard tend to be more about actual
inventions (like the submarine), Wells was perhaps a more conceptual "idea" man, offering up everything from the
cataclysm of world war (alien or otherwise) to, in the case of
The Island of Dr Moreau, the idea of tinkering with
Mankind's genetic makeup to create new species. Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party favorite who made headlines for
proclaiming in an infamous political ad "I'm not a witch", is perhaps a little less remembered for another astounding
statement she made (one which has been regular fodder for comedians, including some funny bits on
The Daily
Show) where she insisted gene splicing had created mice with fully functioning human brains. As silly as it sounds,
that's more or less the exact idea behind
The Island of Dr. Moreau, albeit colored ever so slightly with a
Darwinian
subtext that includes both evolution and devolution. The basic concept of
Moreau was probably downright
shocking in 1932 when
Island of Lost Souls came out, but by the late nineties, it should have seemed like an
idea
positively "ripped from the headlines", which gives some of the more cartoonish elements of the film an unfortunate
feel.
The film actually starts off very well, with a riveting sequence featuring United Nations diplomat Edward Douglas (David
Thewlis, in the role reportedly originally cast with Val Kilmer) adrift on a life raft after his plane has crashed in the ocean.
Also on board the inflatable are two none too subtly animalistic survivors who are engaged in a fight to the death over
the last canteen of water. It's an obvious ploy to show us the more vicious side of human nature, but it's a decidedly
compelling little sequence and it sets up a mood of ominous foreboding that carries through at least the first part of the
film. Douglas is soon found by a passing cargo ship whose only American passenger is the enigmatic Dr. Montgomery
(Kilmer, who evidently matriculated to this role because he wanted less—yes, less—screen time). Montgomery nurses
the badly dehydrated Douglas back to health and then (in a move that really isn't well explained) lets Douglas
accompany him onto the titular island of the film, where Douglas slowly but surely becomes aware of the horrifying
experiments Moreau and Montgomery have been conducting far away from any meddling by governments or media.
Some would argue
The Island of Dr. Moreau starts heading unavoidably off the rails once Marlon Brando shows up, wearing bizarre
white face and channeling an equally bizarre English accent that makes his
Apocalpyse Now Kurtz character seem like an arch
conservative. (Is Brando aping Boris Karloff or perhaps even Charles Laughton, the original Dr. Moreau of
Island of Lost Souls? Only
Stella Adler and/or Stanislavsky know for sure.) But I would argue that Brando, as weirdly effete as his take on the character is, isn't
actually the main problem.
That would be Val Kilmer, and just for one salient example take the moment when the actor thrusts a
large purple orchid into his mouth and sits in his chair like a petulant child. What was
that about? But there's no escaping the fact
the film just devolves into hysterical melodrama by the time the animal-human hybrids decide to revolt against their maker and the film
descends into something that not even the worst sequels to
Planet of the Apes ever imagined.
There's also little doubt that David Thewlis was probably the wrong person to play Douglas. The actor's weirdly twisted visage just doesn't
lend itself toward a typical hero's role, nor to the romantic subplot that develops between Douglas and one of the more apparently human
characters on the island, the lovely young woman Aissa (Fairuza Balk). Would Kilmer have been more believable in the role? That probably
depends on how many large purple orchids were dropping out of his mouth at any given moment.
The Island of Dr. Moreau actually
starts out quite brilliantly, and there are signs throughout the film of Frankenheimer's genius (and what better director to helm a story about
cobbled together monsters than a man with "Franken" in his surname?). He also elicits a typically wonderful performance from Ron Perlman,
once again buried under pounds and pounds of latex as the animals' "prophet". But as alluded to above, Frankenheimer was brought onto
this project under duress, after original writer-director Richard Stanley was fired after not being able to either get along with or properly
corral Kilmer. Unfortunately things evidently only got worse once Frankenheimer came on board, no doubt because he was a much better
known quantity and wasn't about to take any upstart's guff.
The Island of Dr. Moreau really isn't as flat out horrible as it's been made out to be, and in fact on its own patently goofy terms, it's
really rather enjoyable. It seems to be a case of a valiant director struggling mightily against hubristic actors, and, frankly, failing. Still, even
with its abundant flaws, the film is often quite exciting and it certainly contains a showdown of titan sized actor egos where virtually no one
is left standing by the film's end.
