When there are racks and racks of putrid horror crap in every video store, why oh why is this masterpiece not on DVD? I just watched it again on my old VHS copy, taped off of AMC back before the beast men took over there.... and wow. Even chopped up and blurry, this is the best and most frightening classic horror movie ever made.
"Lost Souls" has it all -- mystery ship sailing through the fog to forbidden island; mutants on the loose; Bela Lugosi (buried in hair but his voice vibrant with suffering); and a bugface crazy mad scientist playing God and paying for it big time.
Charles Laughton is terrific as the white-suited Dr. Moreau, whispering lasciviously, bellowing in frustration, and lording it over his half-evolved creations with dogma and bullwhip. As critic Mick LaSalle points out, the movie poses some potent metaphysical questions -- what is the law? are we not men? and what if God is actually just a sadistic fraud?
This being a Paramount horror movie, it all comes down to sex, baby. Failing in his attempt to speed up evolution by having his panther woman seduce the hero (who almost goes for it until she unsheathes her claws too soon), Moreau decides instead to simply put an ape man and the nice girl together in a cage and see what happens.
The movie builds and builds to a genuinely disturbing, horrifying climax in which a roiling throng of beast men carry Moreau into his own laboratory ("the House of Pain"), put him on the table, and grab the scalpels. Laughton once said he could never go near a zoo again... if you're lucky enough to see this gem someday, you'll know just how he feels.
"Lost Souls" has it all -- mystery ship sailing through the fog to forbidden island; mutants on the loose; Bela Lugosi (buried in hair but his voice vibrant with suffering); and a bugface crazy mad scientist playing God and paying for it big time.
Charles Laughton is terrific as the white-suited Dr. Moreau, whispering lasciviously, bellowing in frustration, and lording it over his half-evolved creations with dogma and bullwhip. As critic Mick LaSalle points out, the movie poses some potent metaphysical questions -- what is the law? are we not men? and what if God is actually just a sadistic fraud?
This being a Paramount horror movie, it all comes down to sex, baby. Failing in his attempt to speed up evolution by having his panther woman seduce the hero (who almost goes for it until she unsheathes her claws too soon), Moreau decides instead to simply put an ape man and the nice girl together in a cage and see what happens.
The movie builds and builds to a genuinely disturbing, horrifying climax in which a roiling throng of beast men carry Moreau into his own laboratory ("the House of Pain"), put him on the table, and grab the scalpels. Laughton once said he could never go near a zoo again... if you're lucky enough to see this gem someday, you'll know just how he feels.