It's lots of macabre fun. I imagine H. G. Wells meant it to be taken seriously when he published "The Island of Lost Souls" a bit less than fifty years after Darwin's "Origins of Species." Intellectual life was in chaos and the book was Wells' take on what was happening -- namely that anybody, even God, can turn animals into humans but without the proper spark, that old élan, what you wind up with is an assemblage of dumb organs. And you have to watch out because, lacking humanity, those organs can collectively turn on you at any time. Like decorticate preparations they're driven by fear and rage.
At the same time you can't take it all TOO seriously. And I have a feeling Director Kenton was somewhere in the middle, a good place to be. If I were a writer or director, I would hate not being taken seriously. The only thing worse would be being taken TOO seriously.
I'll give you an example of what I mean. Charles Laughton with a smudgy mustached runs the remote Island of Dr. Moreau, where he experiments on animals in an attempt to turn them human. So far, his success is, let's say, partial. There are dozens of hairy chimera skulking around, acting as bearers, messengers, waiters, and gofers. That's as far as Laughton has gotten.
A couple of visitors from the real world drop in unexpectedly, knowing nothing about what's going on. Laughton greets them at the dock and invites them to dinner, a nice young man and a nice girl in a long white dress. As they walk through the jungle towards the plantation, Laughton gives them a kind of tourists' guide's talk about the plants they see and so forth. None of the "animals" are visible but there is this occasional rustling in the dark bush that's beginning to unsettle the nervous girl. At the dinner table the talk turns to cannibalism ("long pig"). Finally, the girl manages to get a glimpse of one of the hideous faces peering at them, and she gives a shout. "What is it?", everyone asks in alarm. "Oh, nothing," she replies with a breathless giggle, "You know how I always get excited over some little thing." Now, nobody could write a line like that -- in that context -- and expect it to be taken seriously.
Actually, there are times when the story turns pretty horrifying. Laughton sometimes has to take apart the results of his "experiments" to see what's happened on the inside, and he doesn't always do what the rat runners call "sacrificing" the animal first. I mean, vivisection -- and in the building called evocatively "The House of Pain." Nobody goes gently into that good-night either. They're not Mel Gibson in Braveheart. They howl like the agony-consumed animals they are. We don't see what's going on but when Laughton himself hauled away and strapped on the table and we hear him scream over and over, we get a reasonably good mental picture. Currently, even in some dumb Indian Jones ripoff, you'd get to see someone squeezing the blood out of a still-beating heart as if it were a sopping wet dishrag. Can't we turn that paradigm around and crank it back to where it was seventy years ago?
At the same time you can't take it all TOO seriously. And I have a feeling Director Kenton was somewhere in the middle, a good place to be. If I were a writer or director, I would hate not being taken seriously. The only thing worse would be being taken TOO seriously.
I'll give you an example of what I mean. Charles Laughton with a smudgy mustached runs the remote Island of Dr. Moreau, where he experiments on animals in an attempt to turn them human. So far, his success is, let's say, partial. There are dozens of hairy chimera skulking around, acting as bearers, messengers, waiters, and gofers. That's as far as Laughton has gotten.
A couple of visitors from the real world drop in unexpectedly, knowing nothing about what's going on. Laughton greets them at the dock and invites them to dinner, a nice young man and a nice girl in a long white dress. As they walk through the jungle towards the plantation, Laughton gives them a kind of tourists' guide's talk about the plants they see and so forth. None of the "animals" are visible but there is this occasional rustling in the dark bush that's beginning to unsettle the nervous girl. At the dinner table the talk turns to cannibalism ("long pig"). Finally, the girl manages to get a glimpse of one of the hideous faces peering at them, and she gives a shout. "What is it?", everyone asks in alarm. "Oh, nothing," she replies with a breathless giggle, "You know how I always get excited over some little thing." Now, nobody could write a line like that -- in that context -- and expect it to be taken seriously.
Actually, there are times when the story turns pretty horrifying. Laughton sometimes has to take apart the results of his "experiments" to see what's happened on the inside, and he doesn't always do what the rat runners call "sacrificing" the animal first. I mean, vivisection -- and in the building called evocatively "The House of Pain." Nobody goes gently into that good-night either. They're not Mel Gibson in Braveheart. They howl like the agony-consumed animals they are. We don't see what's going on but when Laughton himself hauled away and strapped on the table and we hear him scream over and over, we get a reasonably good mental picture. Currently, even in some dumb Indian Jones ripoff, you'd get to see someone squeezing the blood out of a still-beating heart as if it were a sopping wet dishrag. Can't we turn that paradigm around and crank it back to where it was seventy years ago?