The Island of Dr. Moreau

Along with Seconds and the Manchurian Candidate, The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of Frankenheimer’s three masterpieces. In between he made so many forgettable (and forgotten) films that we have to wonder what was up with that, really. You’ll notice a similar eyeball motif during the opening credits to that he used in Seconds. He also uses his stars in a similar way. While Rock Hudson’s gayness provided a subtle subtext to the horrifying conformist social pressures on Rock Hudson’s character in Seconds, The Island of Dr. Moreau is all about Marlon Brando. In case you’ve forgotten, Marlon actually owned an island somewhere in the South Pacific, where he produced a brood of unhappy children, who began murdering each other sometime in the eighties.

When Marlon makes his first screen appearance, wearing voluminous, tentlike robes, face covered with white powder, and carried on a divan, it is impossible not to gasp at the monstrousness which he has so scrupulously manifest. Not since Bette Davis has an aging star been so willing to reveal, and revel in, the horrors of the flesh.

It doesn’t end there. Again, s in reflections of a Golden Eye, we’ll be allowed the most unflattering visions of what has become of Marlon’s ass. It’s sad that his half animal/half human children kill him off with so much film time remaining, but perhaps it’s for the best.

There are rumors that a battle of the monstrous egos of Marlon and Val Kilmer was essential to the making of this masterpiece. They certainly seem to be competing over who can be more fey and more outrageous. We also get to watch Val doing Marlon imitations, although it doesn’t seem to be the lisping aristocratic Marlon of this film he is mocking, but an earlier Marlon.

Val plays the good doctor’s assistant, a masochistic bottom who sees Marlon’s snarling bestial progeny as delectable rough trade. When the revolution comes, he’s ecstatic. Let it come down, he thinks, and it does come tumbling down, the whole deformed creation built on slavery and genetic manipulations. And not a moment too soon.