Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

HotToastyRag H.G. Wells created a host of memorable science fiction stories, and if you know the character of Dr. Moreau, you'll be a little more familiar with the story of Island of Lost Souls than I was. Richard Arlen gets shipwrecked on an island inhabited by strange human-animal hybrids, and the mastermind behind them is the deranged mad scientist Charles Laughton. Richard's fiancé Leila Hyams tries to find him, and Charles tries to get Richard to fall for Kathleen Burke, a "panther woman" in the meantime. This pre-code movie is pretty creepy. I did hide my eyes during a couple of scenes, so if you have little kiddies with you, you might want to rent another movie instead. It's easy to see the similarities between this story and The Time Machine, which I also found scary as a kid. Bela Lugosi and a dozen extras are made up to be "ape-men", with hair all over their face and body. If anyone tried to make this movie two or three years later, it would doubtlessly be much different, with less torture scenes and a more conservative costume for Kathleen, whose figure is put on full display every time she's in front of the camera.Unless you go in for old horror movies-this one reminded me of Freaks-I would stick with The Time Machine if I were you. This movie really isn't that great unless it's your niche of choice.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . Devo, we learn from the background materials included with the 2011 Criterion Edition for ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. Before the alcoholic haze of their automaton job drudgery produced Akron's exploding tires scandal, forcing all the rubber plants to take root off-shore in the more civilized nations of Asia, local law enforcement was sharp-shooting Lake Erie area college kids for sport, whenever they made a peep of protest against Tricky Dick's illegal foreign wars. If the USA's King Richard III told them that he was Hell-bent upon breaking every Geneva Convention and committing every imaginable War Crime despite 40 years' of Pentagon Papers proving that God was dictating an American defeat in Vietnam, Akron's church-goers continued to back Milhouse's baby killers 1,000%, Devo sang to the rubber toilers in their Happy Hour Beer Halls. Paramount's make-up artists prophetically churned out a legion of Island Ape Men who could pass for the tire molders of the 1970s, Devo observed. Though novelist H.G. Wells and his source material for this story might be British, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS never rang more true than among the so-called "faithful" of Northern Ohio in the 1970s, Devo contends, noting that such Nixonian catch phrases as "onward and upward," "bright future," and "progress" have been a total crock since at least World War Two.

JLRVancouver Based on H.G. Well's novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau", "The Island of Lost Souls" finds shipwrecked traveler Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) trapped on the titular island where 'mad scientist' Moreau (Charles Laughton) is conducting vivisection experiments in attempt to transform animals into men. The movie differs substantially from the novel, with an emphasis horror at the expense of Well's philosophical focus on the meaning of humanity and the power of science. Given the film's vintage, the transformed 'animals' are quite good, with the actors effectively using posture and movement to convey the bestiality of their characters; however, the film omits much of the complexity of the 'beast-people' that made the novel so compelling (e.g. the significance of having 5 fingers). The movie is pre-code and features a pervasive sexual subtext (absent in the novel) involving Moreau's plan to breed his modified animals with humans. Featured prominently in the movie's posters, Kathleen Burke plays Lota, the sexy Panther Lady who Moreau intends to be Parker's mate. The film also adds Hollywood's obligatory 'woman in peril' as Parker's fiancé shows up, providing Moreau with a second female to use in his devilish breeding program. Laughton is great as the whip-snapping doctor and the rest of the cast is serviceable in an interesting but not outstanding, pre-code horror film.

john_vance-20806 This is a pre-code production and it shows. Even today this movie would get some serious push-back.There is no nudity or explicit sexual behavior. The physical violence is not extraordinary. What permeates through the whole film is a sense of primal wrongness. Not just that Dr Moreau has crossed the boundaries of nature but that he's done it with prurient cruelty and indifference. He's accomplished something truly extraordinary but he's done it in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons and knows it - he simply does not care.In a way, this is like an obscene version of Pygmalion or Frankenstein. Instead of the creator loving or at least respecting his creations, he finds even the most successful versions as curious abominations that exist only for his perverse pleasure and twisted curiosity.It's hard to watch the Charles Laughton's lascivious, leering portrayal of Dr Moreau and not feel truly repulsed. Much as if one were watching Dr Mengele perform his monstrous experiments or Genghis Khan optimizing his torture techniques. I'm not sure I can recall a character so coldly repugnant.The fear, suffering and resentment of his experimental subjects is palpable and unsettling. Dr Moreau walks in their midst with a sneer of absolute superiority and fearlessness, lording over them what he's done and what he can do again. Their animalistic impulses are only barely contained and they project a cold, primitive rage balanced and checked by Dr Moreau's cold, calculating omnipotence.This isn't a slasher flick where pretty young girls are savaged by a sociopath. This is evil portrayed in it's most stark and fundamental form - the human without a soul.