The Island of Dr Moreau (1996, Kilmer, Brando) – Bad Movie 1

Director John Frankenheimer’s 1996 movie is one of his worst films, an appalling, totally inept remake of the classic novel by H G Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau, filmed in 1933 as The Island of Lost Souls with Charles Laughton and again in 1977 as The Island of Dr Moreau with Burt Lancaster and Michael York.

This time Val Kilmer is embarrassingly miscast and unengaged as the hero Montgomery, Dr Moreau’s assistant, and Marlon Brando is lost like a beached whale  and mumbles pointlessly. There’s nothing to recommend The Island of Dr Moreau, other than the pleasure of enjoying a few scoffing laughs at its expense. Brando is a sight to give anyone sore eyes as the evil Dr Moreau, the crazed scientist genetically engineering a race of half-human creatures on a South Pacific island.

David Thewlis helps a bit as air-crash survivor Edward Douglas, who is taken to Moreau’s mysterious island, where he must try to stop Dr Moreau’s experiments before it is too late. Making little impression, Fairuza Balk plays Dr Moreau’s daughter.

This sad occasion is a breathtakingly awful folly taking us into the twilight zone way beyond bad.

Brando is often considered the greatest movie actor of all time. He died on July 1 2004, aged 80.

Originally rated R, but cut by Frankenheimer to try to reach ‘a wider audience’. The director’s cut runs 99 minutes, three minutes longer than the release version.

To say it was a troubled production is an understatement. Kilmer later described the shoot as ‘crazy’. Brando was recovering from his daughter’s suicide and the day production started the French set off an underwater atomic bomb near Tahiti where he owned an atoll. The same day Kilmer turned on the TV and learned he was being divorced. Two days later, original director Richard Stanley was fired by the studio due to their concerns over his direction. Frankenheimer was taken on but clashed throughout with Brando, Kilmer, and studio bosses over the direction.

Frankenheimer made The Manchurian Candidate, Reindeer Games and Ronin. He died on July 6 2002, aged 72.

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(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Bad Movie 1 derekwinnert.com