The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
The second of the official Moreau adaptations (between Island of Lost Souls and this, there were a pair of Filipino knock-offs, Terror is a Man, and The Twilight People), this was produced by American International Pictures (AIP). This was in the late 70s, when they were really flailing around to come up with some new angle to stay relevant, with this being one of three H.G. Wells based films they did. The other two were previous offenders featured on here The Food of the Gods, and Empire of the Ants… so it’s safe to say that this was the most faithful of the lot. It’s also the first version of the story that I saw, with it being shown late night on ITV as part of a little sci-fi season; remember when the main channels did things like that? Good times.
I’m giving a lot of details like this up front by the way simply because there actually is surprisingly little to talk about with this one, it’s just kind of boring. Nice touches are in here, such as Michael York really giving it all even in fairly b-grade material, but it’s just kind of dull. Even some of the big set-pieces are just ones restated from Island of Lost Souls, like the saying of the Law. The whole thing is really flatly directed, whilst the Beast People make up is technically good, none of them are really that memorable, and the film wusses out on the set up to a pretty good “gotcha!” bleak ending. In one or two ways it’s closer to the book, but in the wrong ways. Minor spoiler here, but in the book, Moreau dies part way through, and quite a bit of time is spent seeing the island devolve without him. This film does the same thing, but it just highlights the problem with the idea; once that happens, you have a big section of the story where the most interesting character is gone, and you feel his absence. I don’t want to be too harsh on this one, it was a source of fascination for me growing up (especially since by mistake my VHS recording cut out just past halfway through!), but it’s just not an interesting one to talk about. Ah well. Later this week though, we’ll be getting to the main reason I started this “Moreauathon” if you will, but first, I’ll be sharing a few things I’ve been meaning to have on here for a while to give a bit of context…
