Island of Lost Souls
Filmed on location on Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles, the film opens as Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), the sole survivor of a shipwreck, is deposited along with a shipment of wild animals on the private island of Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), where he will catch the next freighter out. The island is inhabited by strange creatures, half man, half beast, the results of Moreau's "bio-anthropological research." It is the doctor's theory that just as man evolved from a lower species, animals can evolve into humans, through experimental skin grafting. Moreau's attempts to speed up the evolution process, however, are anything but humane and rendered through painful surgical procedures on the animals. It is also a way to control and dominate their savage impulses which are kept in check by group recitations of Moreau's commandments led by the "Sayer of the Law" (Bela Lugosi). Moreau also has an ulterior motive for wanting to keep Parker on the island. He plans to "mate" him with the exotic Lota (Kathleen Burke), a female panther in human form, and produce the first animal-human offspring. But Moreau's reign of cruelty, already on the verge of collapse, starts to unravel with the arrival of Captain Donahue (Paul Hurst) and Parker's fiancée Ruth (Leila Hyams) who have arrived to bring the missing seaman home.
The pre-production on Island of Lost Souls included a talent search contest for the role of "The Panther Woman." The winner, Kathleen Burke, also received a free five-week stay at the glamorous Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. For the role of Moreau, however, no contest was needed. Charles Laughton, the brilliant and versatile British actor, had already made his mark in Hollywood as Nero in Cecil B. DeMille's The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Island of Lost Souls, made the same year, was his fifth U.S. production. As Moreau, Laughton created one of the great horror film archetypes, which as the Herald Tribune later described it, was "an engaging combination of child, madman and genius," but his actual appearance was inspired by an unlikely source, according to writer Arthur Lennig. "With his little turf of beard, thin mustache, and soft, almost infantile face, Laughton modeled his makeup on an eye specialist he had visited several times." (from The Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi). As for Moreau's skill at handling a whip, that came from Laughton's training with a London street performer for a previous stage play.
Wally Westmore's extraordinary makeup for the half-human creatures was the talk of the Paramount lot and created quite a stir among the studio personnel during the early stages of production when the extras would take breaks and stroll around in all of their hairy glory. "I remember each horror and monster had more hair than the one before," Laughton recalled. "Hair was all over the place. I was dreaming of hair. I even thought I had hair in my food." Hiding underneath the mounds of hair were up-and-coming actors Alan Ladd and Randolph Scott though Bela Lugosi in the pivotal role of the "Sayer of the Law" is much more recognizable. His scenes with Moreau and his fellow creatures feature the film's most memorable dialogue, as emblematic and unforgettable as the chanting chorus of freaks - "One of us, one of us" - in the wedding party sequence from Tod Browning's 1932 classic. It was obviously an inspiration for Devo's first album as well - "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" (1976) - but was, in fact, not completely original. Wells was actually paraphrasing the song of the Bandarlog, the monkey people who figure prominently in The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:
The Sayer: Not to run on all fours. That is the law. Are we not men?
Moreau: What is the law?
