Roundtable: Halloween Horror: Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Anton: Most of our 3 Brothers Roundtables focus on new releases, so I thought we should take the opportunity this October to discuss an old film that we each happened to watch recently, and which complements our Halloween Horror feature that takes over the website each October. 

Island of Lost Souls (1932), directed by Erle C. Kenton, is an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ 1896 science fiction novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau. The screenplay is by Waldemar Young and Philip Wylie. The story is about a man who is stranded on a remote island inhabited by a mad scientist and his man-beast experiments. 

We were able to watch what has long been a difficult-to-find film thanks to Criterion including the movie in its current “Pre-Code Horror” Collection.

Island of Lost Souls as an Adaptation of H. G. Wells’ Novel

Anton: To begin, I’m curious, have you each read the novel, and have you seen any other film adaptations of it?

Aren: I have read the novel, but this is the first adaptation I’ve watched. The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of my favourite Wells novels, perhaps just a notch beneath The Time Machine in my estimation. It’s also one of the few horror novels from the turn of the century that truly scares me. I remember the descriptions of the vivisections and the Leopard Man in particular as being horrifying.

Anders: I have not read the novel, but it’s a story that is very familiar in the broad strokes even to those who haven’t read the original. Like Frankenstein, the story feels like its influence is just so pervasive in both science fiction and horror storytelling. It feels super fresh. However, I do remember going to see the John Frankenheimer helmed version of the film from 1996 (starring Marlon Brando as Moreau and Val Kilmer). I’ve never revisited it, but my thoughts at the time were that its reputation as a total disaster was well-earned. And I had read the old Classics Illustrated comic book from our father’s collection.

Anton: I have read Wells’ novel, but only once, and over a decade ago. I think it’s brilliant. Its premise is arresting and its themes are still incredibly relevant. 

The film, like most Hollywood adaptations of the period, makes numerous changes, most significantly adding in a romance plot. In this case, the protagonist, Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), is enticed by the lone woman on the island, Lota (Kathleen Burke), who turns out to be a panther-woman hybrid—advertised prominently on the theatrical release poster as “The Panther Woman”! At the same time, Parker’s fiancée, Ruth Thomas (Leila Hyams), who is in Apia, Samoa, mounts a rescue of Parker. So Young and Wylie’s script takes Wells’ premise and fashions a more conventional Hollywood horror narrative around it. As a narrative on its own, I think the film works, but the novel is more intellectually intriguing and thematically grim.

I have read that H. G. Wells saw the movie and disliked it. Overall, I think the film captures many of the key elements and themes of the novel, even if Young and Wylie’s script is more interested in the horrifying potential of the story, such as revulsion at a man discovering he is attracted to a human-like animal. Wells is more interested in the societal and evolutionary, rather than emotional and even prurient, implications of the story’s concept. At the same time, the film retains the central question of what distinguishes humans from animals. Would you agree?

Aren: I’d agree because characterizations and conventional dramatics are not Wells’ strengths in his novels. Wells is better at conjuring these societal and scientific concepts and exploring all avenues of them, as we get in The Food of the Gods, for instance. It’s only in The Invisible Man, I’d argue, that we get a truly compelling and three-dimensional portrait of a human being. Doctor Moreau is compelling, but he’s more monster than man in a sense. So Island of Lost Souls streamlines Wells and crafts a more conventional arc, while Wells’ novel has the lasting impact. I understand the changes. I like the book more, but I don’t think I would want to watch a movie that truly goes all-in on the nightmarish material of the novel.

Anton: I might, actually.

Anders: I can’t really compare the film to the book, but in terms of how the film fashions the story for contemporaneous filmmaking of the pre-Code era I think it’s successful in making it into a truly horrifying film.

Anton: The title caught my eye: Island of Lost Souls as opposed to The Island of Dr. Moreau. It would seem to be a better marketing approach for an unfamiliar audience. The novel invites us to ask, who is Dr. Moreau? Island of Lost Souls is more evocative and situates the film more firmly in the horror genre. But what I find notable is that you wouldn’t adapt an H. G. Wells novel today and alter the title. The original theatrical poster only mentions Wells in small font. So the film is marketed as a horror movie, rather than a science fiction adaptation of H. G. Wells. 

Island of Lost Souls as a 1930s Horror Movie

Anton: Made by Paramount, Island of Lost Souls is very much a part of the early 1930s pre-Production Code horror vogue. Everyone knows the Universal horror movies of the period (which Aren ranked in 2021)—Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, etc.—as well as RKO’s great King Kong (1933). But I’m also thinking of RKO’s The Most Dangerous Game (1932), which I wrote about a couple years ago. What else am I missing?

Aren: Edward G. Ulmar’s The Black Cat from 1934, too, if we’re looking at those pre-Code Poe adaptations. But the tropical setting and the romantic angle of this movie make me think of a film a decade after: I Walked with a Zombie (1943) by Jacques Tourneur. I’d have to do more reading, but I get the sense that Island of Lost Souls was rather influential on certain horror films to follow it.

Anton: All these films came out early in the new sound period, and so they have a certain audiovisual character. For instance, the films lack persistent musical scores (although they do have music at times), and much of the dialogue comes across as slowly and deliberately delivered. Think of the early scenes in King Kong, especially on the ship before they arrive at the island. There’s something stilted about these films.

Anders: Actually, King Kong is the other film that I was reminded of in moments, perhaps because of the island narrative and the pathos generated by the ostensible monster or monsters, in this case. Both films kind of boil their stories down to their essence, because of their relatively short run times and the slightly stilted nature you describe. Part of it is the incorporation of the special effects, make up, and other forms of spectacle as well.

Anton: The production constraints also seem to have cultivated an unique atmosphere for horror. The quietness. The deliberate approach of the narratives. As with King Kong, in Island of Lost Souls, the initial scenes at sea carefully build up our anticipation of the arrival at the island. As with The Most Dangerous Game, the horrible truth of the situation is implied long before it is revealed. It is there for us to read early on, before it is spelled out in a moment of terror.

Aren: Even the sets of the films are similar. They have lush soundstage jungles and boat decks. The slow build of the early going on the boat—which is a generous use of “slow,” I admit, the film being only 72 minutes long—is essential to us growing interested and then terrified by what Parker is going to find on the island.

Anton: I also thought the production design was quite good in Island of Lost Souls. The architecture of Moreau’s compound. The jungle sets. Even the make-up for the creatures, while not convincingly realistic today, is still effective in a nightmarish way, like in most of these 1930s horror classics.

The Performances in Island of Lost Souls

Anton: Charles Laughton steals the show, hands down. Everyone has admitted that much since the film’s release 91 years ago. His performance is brilliant and essential to the effectiveness of the whole work.

Aren: He’s a great actor, one I appreciate the more I watch of him. He’s great in Robert Siodmak’s The Suspect (1944) and Frank Lloyd’s Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) as well.

Anton: Yes, I watched The Suspect recently, as it is part of Criterion’s “Noir by Gaslight” collection. It is very good, and Laughton carries the film. His performance as the tyrannical Captain William Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty is brilliant.

Anders: Absolutely. I enjoy him in some of these pre-Code films quite a bit. In the spring I watched Cecile B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932), and his Nero is great. He has a way of inhabiting these flamboyant and larger-than-life villains.

Anton: In Island of Lost Souls, Laughton manages to convey the utter hubris of Dr. Moreau, while also suggesting a sinister subtext. I think you could play Moreau as a monomaniacal scientist, so consumed with his research goals that he ignores the ethics of what he is doing. But Laughton’s Moreau shows disdain for nature. Nature, including both animals and human beings, is merely matter for the godlike-scientist to manipulate. His desire to control and steer evolution comes through in the dialogue. The way he wields his whip against the man-beasts is akin to his use of vivisection. Laughton brings out the cruelty of it all, even of his interest in seeing if Lota can reproduce with Parker. At one point he shouts at her, “This time I’ll burn out all the animal in her.”

Aren: That’s a great line reading, one I can hear clearly in my mind even as I write this. Laughton presents as sensitive and intelligent in the early-going, but he’s also so amoral as to be truly horrific as an individual. Despite Wells’ staunch atheism, Moreau is a great Luciferian figure, who can only create life by perverting it, who can create something that’s only a pale shadow of humanity, but animated by the impulses of the flesh. Laughton plays up both the seduction and the revulsion of his Moreau in a truly satanic way.

Anton: That’s a good way of describing the different turns in his performance.

What did you make of Kathleen Burke’s “Panther Woman,” who seems to have been originally positioned as the main lurid selling point if you look at the old marketing? This feline female in a bikini was the centerpiece of the old movie poster, but I found her make-up and performance somewhat unconvincing today. I don’t really believe her origins as a cat. It’s a difficult role, as she has to play a character who is new to all human communication.

Anders: I did find the marketing of the character, and even the way that they kind of tease her as “The Panther Woman” on the poster and in the opening credits to be quite amusing. Because of the restrictions that came into being in Hollywood soon after this, it is easy for current audiences to forget that pre-Code films could almost have the same kind of “exploitation” of prurient interests like sex and violence as later films in the 1970s.

Anton: There is that one good creepy moment when he sees her hands, which are reverting back to claws.

Aren: She’s a bland character, but it’s a shocking concept to have much of the plot revolve around Moreau trying to get Parker to sleep with the Panther Woman. It’s not something you’d find in a film made even a few years later, and it still proves rather shocking today.

Anton: The main male lead, Richard Arlen, is a bit of a dud. He’s better than the main guy in King Kong, but he is still not very charismatic.

Anders: Yeah, he’s fine. Nothing to write home about, but it’s a very conventional role.

The Horror of the Subtext and the Relevance of the Themes

Anton: For me, this is the kind of movie that doesn’t really scare me but I still admire it. People might say, “Oh, but would any old movie scare you?” As Aren said in our most recent podcast, Nosferatu is still scary. The first time I watched it late at night I was very creeped out. This film doesn’t make me want to look away ever; it doesn’t induce fear in me in the experience of watching it.

Instead I was unnerved. I was disturbed by the implications of much of what is going on. Even though this is pre-Code, many of the most sinister aspects are implied. I can understand the scandal of the film’s implications, especially in 1932 but even today.

Anders: I think that “disturbing” is the right way to describe it. I think it’s still somewhat “horrifying” in the sense that when you realize what Moreau is doing you’re disgusted, unnerved, and left unsettled.

I think the make-up effects are good enough that you also buy into the man-beasts as being realistic. It almost plays like a lost document of a strange world; more akin to Freaks and its real-life circus performers, which I think is a testament to the power of the make-up effects. It’s interesting that they don’t try to hide them or anything, but are happy to just display them in broad daylight on the ship in the early scenes. They’re confident that they look good and scary.

Aren: I think the frenzy at the end when the man-beasts realize they can break the law is actually scary, even if in a different way than today. Kenton and his crew use centre-framing close-ups to create a hypnotic effect, with the man-beasts, particularly Bela Lugosi’s Speaker of the Law, screaming into the camera and rushing forward. It’s the one time in the film where the filmmaking becomes truly heightened and subjective, breaking free of the more theatrical conventions of the period. 

Anton: I also think this is a movie that has lasting impact, and it’s there in Wells’ novel, of course. In the themes about science gone awry. I mean, here it is vivisection, so surgery on living animals, unsedated, but today it's more genetics and manipulation in subtler ways. But when you learn some of the horror stories of the labs today, like man-pig chimeras and such, the film’s exploration of the hubristic and detached approach to “research,” we can see the same problems.

Anders: Its legacy is definitely still with us. Modern science fiction still deals with similar themes, even if the details of how they are performed are different. Even this year, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 is basically a Moreau tale in the revelations around the experiments of the Grand Evolutionary. The strength of the story of Dr. Moreau is such that it’s still quite horrifying, even in different contexts and time-periods.

Island of Lost Souls (1932, USA)

Directed by Erle C. Kenton; screenplay by Waldemar Young and Philip Wylie, based on the novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H. G. Wells; starring Charles Laughton, Bela Lugosi, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, Kathleen Burke.

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