THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996)

Starring: Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk, Ron Perlman, Marco Hofschneider, Temuera Morrison. Written by Walon Green. Michael Herr, Ron Hutchinson, Richard Stanley. Based on the novella by H.G. Wells. Directed by John Frankenheimer. USA. 96 minutes.

Richard Stanley (the inventive South African director of Hardware and Dust Devil) who got his start doing Fields of the Nephilim videos) had written and planned to deliver this as a nerve-snapping, bone-crunching horror movie inspired by the notorious Italian splatter movies Zombie and Cannibal Holocaust. Amazingly enough, the script garnered such a considerable reputation that big name stars like Brando and Kilmer climbed on board. After working on the project for four years, Stanley was unceremoniously sacked the third day of filming.

Allegedly it was Kilmer's routine behind-the-scenes antics (like not showing up for the first few days of filming) that made the producers skittish. So they gave Stanley the boot, hiring John Frankenheimer at the last second to replace him and rewrote the script as they went along, jettisoning the Stanley's bolder, ballsier, more adventurous story (in which the Beast People grow marijuana crops and roast Balk's character on a spit and eat her) in favor of a more "conventional" (read: safer and more predictable) approach. What's worse, the legendary Barbara Steele was slated to play "Mrs. Moreau", but the last minute alteration put the kibosh on those plans, thus cheating legions of horror fans out of her return to the genre.

The flick opens as a reasonably faithful adaptation of the Wells novel (which was intended as an indictment of vivisection), but quickly deteriorates into a convoluted mess in which brutish anthropomorphics lumber about firing automatic weapons and blow shit up. Less than a half an hour into this, I sat there in my seat thinking: "I've SEEN this movie before." And sure enough I had. This version of Moreau is like Battle For the Planet of the Apes with a script by a third grader and slightly (but not much) better make-up (by the somewhat over-rated Stan Winston). Concepts that were central to the original story, such as the House of Pain, are glaringly omitted. As Stanley himself opined, making a Moreau movie minus the House of Pain is like making a 1984 movie without Room 101.

The film's two saving graces are the typically remarkable David Thewlis as "Douglas" (changed from "Prendick" in both the novel and Stanley's original script) and sultry ingenue Fairuza Balk in the "Panther Woman" role from the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls. Despite finding themselves in a rapidly sinking ship, these two actually manage to generate some real chemistry with what little they have to work with. Thewlis (who also improvised some of his own dialog for his astonishing performance in Mike Leigh's Naked) reportedly rewrote his part during filming in a desperate last ditch effort to give his character some depth. And it nearly worked.

Bloated Brando seems lazy and disinterested as the not-so-good doctor, embodying all the haminess of Charles Laughton's memorable turn as the character in Souls, but without any of the latter's gleefully evil zeal. This is a kinder, gentler Moreau, not the megalomaniacal tyrant of the 1932 film or the sociopathic, pitiless vivisectionist of the Wells story. Frankenheimer's Moreau is as pompously, brow-beatingly preachy as his didactic mutant bear epic Prophecy (1979) but minus that film's goofy big-budget B movie charm. Producer Ed Pressman might have allowed Stanley make his "Voodoo Gothic Science-Fiction film" if he'd had the balls. But, predictably, he didn't. And instead we're left with this comfortably predictable hackjob. P-TOOEY!

*1/2 One and a half Skulls Full of Maggots out of Four.

* Dead meat, ripe and reeking.
** Moribund, but showing a slight flicker of life.
*** Good and healthy.
**** Brimming with vitality.