ISLAND OF LOST SOULS

   Film (1932). Paramount. Dir Erle C. Kenton, starring Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Kathleen Burke, Bela Lugosi, Alan Ladd, Randolph Scott. Screenplay Waldemar Young, Philip WYLIE, based on The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) by H.G. WELLS. 72 mins. B/w.

   Though somewhat altered from the Wells original, and adding such Hollywood touches as a seductive Panther Girl, this memorable film incorporates much of the novel's moody atmosphere. A young man is marooned on an ISLAND where he is found by his fiancee and where the leering, whip-cracking Moreau (Laughton), by means of vivisection and other cruel medical techniques, istrying to turn animals into men. (Wells disliked the depiction of his twisted idealist, Moreau, as a sadist.) The pathetic beast-men - rendered with first-rate and often horrific make-up - are kept in check by their belief that Moreau is a god. But, when they see him murdering his human assistant and thereby breaking one of his own commandments, their fear of him dissolves and they carry him off to the House of Pain - the laboratory where they were all created - and wreak bloody, surgical vengeance. A remake was The ISLAND OF DR MOREAU (1977).

   JB

   See also: MONSTER MOVIES.