Movies Seen Recently: The Island of Dr. Moreau, Next, The Reptile

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) – I despair of ever getting a fully faithful version of H.G. Wells’ novel in the age of genetic engineering.  Yes, I understand that the original premise of using vivisection and other physical modification to turn animals into pseudo-men is completely unworkable.  But I think that that unworkability is really part of the original premise, even before the modern understanding of genetics — that brute force and human will cannot force nature to behave how we want.  As soon as you introduce genetics into the mix, the “House of Pain” becomes a lot less disturbing, plus there’s always the temptation to do like this 1977 adaptation, in which Dr. Moreau (Burt Lancaster) decides to turn it around and inject the shipwrecked Braddock (Michael York, the “Prendick” character from the novel) with a generic “animalizing” serum.  That seems to me the very opposite of what Dr. Moreau, the original human-chauvinist “uplifter,” would do.

Most puzzling of all is Barbara Carrera’s role as “Maria.”  The 1932 version, Island of Lost Souls, brought the relatively minor character of the Puma Girl to front and center, and it’s pretty clear that the original script for this version had Barbara Carrera pegged as that, with her transformation to human being so complete that her revelation as a cat girl (mrowr) would be something in the final act.  In fact, everything is set up here so that that revelation is meant to be the final shot — but then it punts.  She isn’t a cat girl.  She’s just, you know, Barbara Carrera (mrowr).  I wonder who in the production team got cold feet about the final reveal and decided that a “happy” ending was worth not cashing the check that the rest of the movie had written.

Next (2007) – Nicolas Cage is a Cris Johnson, Vegas magician-mentalist who can actually see about two minutes into the future.  That’s great when your main source of income is blackjack; that’s not great when FBI agent Julianne Moore thinks that your mental powers can help her find a rogue nuke.

But also, Cris has had this recurring vision of a particular girl (Jessica Biel) in a particular diner at a particular time who may be “the one” (I guess when you see her in a vision, you can put some wait on that “foreordained soulmate” thing).  So life becomes: Avoid the casino police, intentionally meet-cute the girl without seeming like a creeper for crushing on someone 18 years your junior, avoid the FBI, and avoid the frickin’ nuclear bomb.

Not really that easy, even with a two-minute head start all the time, but I guess if you’ve got Nic Cage’s sad, soulful eyes, it gets a little easier.

The Reptile (1966) – All of those historical Hammer horror movies look like they’re set in one particular village, don’t they? It’s not a good place to live — if you’re not being beset upon by the living dead or used as raw material for Dr. Frankenstein’s latest project, you might be someone dying of the “Black Death,” as in this movie — people caught out of doors at night turn up with swollen, blackened skin and froth on their lips.  The brother of one such victim moves to town with his young bride, just across the moor from the secretive doctor of theology (most spooky villages have at least one), his alluring but troubled daughter played by Jacqueline Pearce, and his mysterious Indian manservant who doesn’t seem as subservient as he ought.

Featuring midnight exhumations, a crazy drunk who should have been listened to before he died, a courageous pub owner, secretive snake cults, sulfur hot springs in the cellar (every house should have one!), midnight exhumations, and the bizarre inability of rural villagers to recognize the symptoms of venomous snakebite.  (Of course, the mystery would be completely solved if they just looked at the poster, but…) They just don’t make movies like this anymore.

Abandoned movies: The Black Cat, Hellmouth.