THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk, Daniel Rigney, Ron Perlman, Temuera Morrison. Screenplay: Richard Stanley, Ron Hutchinson. Director: John Frankenheimer. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Apparently the chaos involved in the making of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU was such that even the publicity people at New Line couldn't keep up; the press release had Val Kilmer playing the wrong role. About the only constant in the production was the title, as writers (Michael Herr and Walon Green replaced by Ron Hutchinson), directors (Richard Stanley replaced by John Frankenheimer) and actors (Rob Morrow replaced by David Thewlis) all played musical chairs. And that isn't even mentioning the production delays brought on by tropical storms and Kilmer's ego (you decide which was bigger). Sounds like the making of APOCALYPSE NOW, right down to the presence of Brando. The major difference? The end result. APOCALYPSE NOW was an inspired fever dream, while THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is just a nightmare.
The story begins in a raft on the Java Sea, where U.N. representative Edward Douglas (Thewlis) finds himself the only survivor of a plane crash. He is found by a supply boat bringing a doctor named Montgomery (Kilmer) back to his base of operations, a small Pacific island. There Montgomery works with Dr. R. G. V. Moreau (Brando), a Nobel Prize-winning biologist who had disappeared years earlier. Douglas wants nothing more than to radio for help and be on his way, but once he discovers the nature of Moreau's experiments, it becomes unlikely that he will be allowed to leave. Those experiments have Moreau combining human and animal DNA, resulting in mutant creatures in an attempt to isolate the source of human aggression. But his island is not a paradise, especially once the animals observe cruelty in action and decide to return the favor.
The H. G. Wells novel on which THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is based has been committed to film twice before, in 1933 and 1977, and naturally this version tries very hard to convince us that there is a compelling reason to do it again, and important themes the other versions failed to uncover. The great revelation in the script (credited to Hutchinson and erstwhile director Stanley) is -- get this -- that humans are actually quite animalistic themselves. This bit of wisdom worth of the Burning Bush is delivered scattershot -- a piece here in the split-second intro which finds a pair of Thewlis' fellow survivors throwing themselves to a conveniently circling shark in a fight over water, a piece there in a montage of documentary footage you expect to be underscored by "Imagine."
It's all spectacularly sloppy, but it's hard to know whom to blame. Stanley might have wanted to do a cerebral observation on violence and/or religion, but Frankenheimer seems to want a good old thriller, and the two angles are not at all complementary. Somebody cut this film to ribbons trying to find a point to it all, resulting in a giddy incomprehensibility. Exactly what was Douglas' role in Moreau's experiments supposed to be, anyway? Why are the mutant rats isolated to the boat? What exactly did Douglas use to pick the lock in his room? THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU just keeps staggering forward and swinging wildly, like an overweight boxer without the faintest glimmer of strategy.
Speaking of overweight...oh, but that's far too easy. It would be too simple to observe that when Brando makes his first appearance, covered in heavy white makeup and a white muu-muu the size of a circus tent, he looks like nothing so much as the Michelin Man on safari. It's too simple and somewhat unfair, because even under the burden of all that weight and a ridiculous accent, there is still something compelling about Brando on screen. His Moreau is what Richard Attenborough should have been trying to go for as Hammond in JURASSIC PARK, a pleasant enough chap with a monstrous god complex. Val Kilmer, who is said to have quite a god complex in real life, seems to have decided to act in a completely different film, one which is much more fun. His Montgomery is a casually nasty pot-head, but at least he is entertaining to watch, particularly when he does his dead-on Brando impression. And poor David Thewlis, whose character has no common sense and no particular reason for being a U.N. peace negotiator (you'd think that might have been a useful subtext to the war which breaks out on the island), tries to look frightened by more than the lack of direction in the film, with little success.
The production design for THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is quite sharp, and Stan Winston's make-up effects are worth a nod of recognition; it is also interesting to find Ron Perlman (of TV's "Beauty and the Beast") once more buried under mounds of makeup as the Sayer of the Law. But this is a badly fragmented piece of work which manages to achieve tedium in only 96 minutes. Perhaps some day they will make a documentary about the making of the film, like they did with APOCALYPSE NOW in HEARTS OF DARKNESS. Then maybe it won't have been a total loss.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 beast intentions: 3.
Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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