Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon Finale: The one with a happy ending

 

Title: The Island of Dr. Moreau

What Year?: 1977

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: What The Hell??? (3/5)

 

It’s time to wrap up this mini-series, and the final entry will be the one you knew was coming all along. I opened this lineup with an infamous H.G. Wells adaptation that came out when I was in high school. Now, I’m closing it with an adaptation of the same source material that I personal saw years before that one came out. As such, it is quite possibly my first encounter with H.G. Wells, and at the time, I was very impressed by it. As we will see momentarily, times change, and even a fairly short time can make a big difference. Here is The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1970s version, from the people who thought Futureworld was a good idea.

Our story begins with a man adrift at sea with a single companion. Things are looking up as they reach shore on an unfamiliar island, but one of them is attacking by a mysterious person or creature in the forest. The remaining survivor, named Braddock, finds himself in a compound that is the closest thing to civilization around, under the care of a physician named Montgomery and a more reclusive scientist named Dr. Moreau. In what will now sound familiar, he meets the other inhabitants of the island, including a lady friend, and soon realizes they are not ordinary people. In fact, they are animals transformed into intelligent humanoids by some haphazardly explained process, definitely with varying degrees of success. The newcomer meets their leader, a sort of wolfman who tries to teach the rest the way of humanity as Sayer of the Law. But some of the humanoids are already backsliding, and tensions rise when Braddock mercy-kills a crippled runaway. By retaliation or established plan, Moreau begins a new and sinister experiment, to turn a human subject into a literal beast. But when Moreau’s schemes start to go awry, can anyone escape the island, human or not?

The Island of Dr. Moreau was a 1977 film from AIP, also responsible for 1976’s The Food of the Gods and Empire Of The Ants the same year, with a reported budget of $6 million. The movie was widely regarded as a remake of the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls. As such, it notably retained a subplot where the Sayer of the Law witnesses Moreau murdering Montgomery. An additional story arc with a cat-woman character first featured in the 1932 adaptation makes her a specifically romantic interest, unlike the 1996 version, but left out a love triangle with the protagonist’s fiancée from the earlier film. The feature had a high-profile cast for a studio known for B-movies, led by screen legend Burt Lancaster as Moreau, with Michael York of Logan’s Run as Braddock and Nigel Davenport as Montgomery. Barbara Carrera appeared as the cat-woman Maria, while TV/ character actor Richard Basehart played the Sayer of the Law. Various scripts reportedly featured several darker alternate endings, including a scene where Maria reverts to a cat that remained in a Marvel comic based on the film. The movie has remained generally available for streaming and on disc, though it has dropped in and out of free streaming.

For my experiences, I have already recounted how I first encountered the movie on early ‘90s TV (see also Flash Gordon, Battle Beyond The Stars, etc). What stood out most was how dark it was, and I didn’t find it much less so after actually reading the book. Where the trail really picks up again was when I looked it up on free streaming somewhere around 2013. At that time, I was still impressed by it, though I recognized that the ending sidestepped the darkest parts of the book. Fast forward to when I started Space 1979, and this one popped up early and often. I held off on reviewing it mostly because of uncertain availability, but also because it didn’t exactly fit in with the knockoffs and runnerups I had set out to cover. It was technically a remake, but it’s still a solid film with a creative take on its sources plus a decent budget to boot. Once I had this feature in mind, I double-checked and found it available for free viewing, so I watched it, and quickly realized that this was a much weirder movie than I remembered.

Turning to the movie itself, the foremost thing to be said is that it is very much a product of the 1970s. As such, it is not only violent but sometimes surprisingly risqué, though nothing here is exceptional for “70s PG”. At its high points, the movie becomes flat-out surreal, egregiously a fight between a humanoid and a tiger, all the more disconcerting as they clearly had no way to do the scene without an actual animal. As a further upside, the effects are reasonably modern, provided by a crew that included Tom Burman, who went on to Howard the Duck among other films. This is an area where criticism tends to focus, and there are certainly problems, but I have never been satisfied that it is simply a matter of quality or budget. If anything, the underlying problem is that they try too hard and at times approach the material too literally. I see this especially in play with a pig/ boar creature, no worse technically than others but uncharacteristically awkward and grotesque. Incidentally, the roster specifically includes a hyena-man, whom I never picked out except by a very jarring laugh.

The most obvious flaws of the film, in my assessment, come from what is carried over from Island of Lost Souls. This is most blatant with the romantic arc between Braddock and Maria, which is certainly the chief reason the ending feels watered down compared to the plot. On consideration, the posited “happy” ending is more like solid “cringe”, especially since we don’t get very solid information on how Maria’s intelligence compares with humans. More fundamental problems rise from the central story point of Moreau breaking the Law by murdering his assistant, which simply doesn’t feel thought through. The obvious Biblical theme is really based on flawed scholarship that only cropped up in relatively recent times; “thou shalt not murder” was more a rule against vigilantism than anything else. (Yes, I really have a seminary degree.) In the context of the story, there’s no reason to doubt that Moreau could do anything short of carving up the Boar Man for spare ribs and lay down whatever interpretation of the “Law” would let him get away with it. It would make sense for him to lay down an absolute line at harming himself or other humans, which would work just fine for the purposes of the plot. Showing creatures of uncertain intelligence in turmoil because their literal god doesn’t follow a moral abstraction, however, is just muddled. It is worth further note that by comparison, the bestialisation of Braddock absolutely works, despite rather limited development.

With that, it’s time for the “one scene”, and this time, it’s a scene directly from the book. After Moreau’s demise, Braddock’s quite understandable decision is to run for it with Maria. To cover their tracks, he confronts the rebellious humanoids and declares that Moreau is not really dead, but watching them in spirit form. Meanwhile, Maria hoists the doctor’s carcass over their heads. The sight is enough to leave the humanoids genuinely intimidated, at least long enough for the pair to run for it. Then, in perhaps the most masterful shot of the movie, one of the beast-men literally pokes Moreau with a stick. Needless to say, the metaphysical conundrum of the book doesn’t last much longer, and the rebels are soon back in pursuit.

In conclusion, all that needs to be said is that this is undoubtedly the best Wells adaptation of the 1970s, even if it is almost by default, but also the one that does the most to date itself. What works, works as a ‘70s movie. Where the movie struggles, it is either from channeling its own time to a fault or trying and failing to update older material. In the end, what we have is a middle-of-the-road movie, and a fitting one to end the lineup with. It may not live up to the high mark of George Pal’s films, but it’s certainly far ahead of the likes of Empire of the Ants. In short, it’s a movie worth watching, and worth coming back to. For me, that’s tribute enough for a movie that helped introduce me to Wells.

Image credit Cyber Comics And Toys.