Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau

The 1996 adaptation of one of my favourite H.G. Wells story, starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, was not well received to put it politely, and its production even less rosey. Well, 18 years later, a documentary goes behind the scenes to unravel how a young indie filmmaker got his shot at Hollywood big time, and what was a dream project became every filmmaker and studio's worst nightmare.

A sort of surreal affair, 'Lost Soul' mixes brand new interviews (the big draw being the notoriously elusive Stanley), archive footage and photos/concept art to tell of how this young British talent tried to fulfill a lifelong dream to adapt and update Wells' tale of science gone awry, and damn is it engrossing. There are no holds barred and spades are called spades as the cast (and many different crew, from ADs to managers to even extras) recall just how much of a hell things were, even in pre-production, as well as the pain that was Brando, replacement director Frankenheimer, and especially Kilmer. Stanley himself, with his deep voice and unusual appearance, a sort of hybrid of Indiana Jones and a voodoo shaman, is fascinating to watch as tells his misadventure with a slight hint of bitterness but also a sort of sage wisdom about it.

Of course, director David Gregory is smart enough to not let this turn into just one big slog of talking heads. He regularly breaks it up with an assortment of visual treats, including the magnificently disturbing concept art and storyboards for Stanley's original vision, archive footage of the shoot and the grotesque makeup effects of the beast people, even new material recorded at the now overgrown location. The whole thing is underscored by a sinister soundtrack that adds to the nightmarish feel as you journey on and more and more goes wrong, even on occasion referencing witchcraft and unusual phenomena.

In terms of complaints, I don't really have many, save for maybe the lack of remastering of some archive footage, the soundtrack can sometimes go a little over the tip, and the film does taper off towards the end and doesn't dwell on the film's reception and legacy as much as I would've liked. However, it is firmly Stanley's story, and a great watch for fans of film and filmmakers.

The making of the 1996 version of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" was such a disaster that articles, books and documentaries have been made about it, like this 2014 documentary "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau." Stanley championed the film, wrote the screenplay and was set to direct, but was fired after a few days of shooting after conflicts with Val Kilmer, who wasn't in the best of moods due to being served divorce papers while on set.

Actually that wasn't the main reason Stanley was fired. He was fine for small indie productions, but he was out of his league with a blockbuster like this. In his defense, the movie didn't start as a blockbuster, but simply a few notches more swanky than Stanley's previous two Indie flicks. Veteran filmmaker John Frankenheimer had to be brought in to save the production from being an utter loss. He got the job done, but his tyrannical approach didn't help matters.

The situation was so bad that Fairuza Balk (the cat-lady, Aissa) literally tried to escape the remote set in Cairns, Australia, but she was caught at the airport in the nick of time. Add to this constant rewrites and Brando's well-known eccentricities, not helped by the recent suicide of his daughter, Cheyenne, and you have a formula for cinematic chaos!

The fact that a semi-coherent, somewhat entertaining movie was made from such a debacle is remarkable. But this documentary is far more interesting and amusing. It's on par with similar docs, like "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" (1991). Some notables of the cast & crew unfortunately weren't interviewed (Kilmer, Ron Pearlman and David Thewlis), but more than enough were to accurately and entertainingly paint the picture of what went down.

The film runs 1 hour, 37 minutes.

GRADE: A

Behind the scenes chronicle of how clash of vision, bad creative decisions, lack of interest and really bad weather plagued the disastrous production of the infamous 1996 remake of "The Island of Dr. Moreau".

This film is great because it not just talks about the film, but also the career of Richard Stanley and how it went off the rails. Following genre cult classics like "Hardware" and "Dust Devil", Stanley could have been the biggest thing in horror. However, because of his experience here, he has done relatively little in the last twenty years.

I love that they have Tim Sullivan commenting on the "identity crisis" of New Line. Sullivan is not credited, so how much he was on set I do not know. But having talked to him myself in the past, he is extremely knowledgeable. From the vantage of a production assistant, he saw a lot of great movies get made before making his own.

Fairuza Balk is nice to have here. Her career went downhill after the 1990s, though not necessarily because of this film. It would be nice to see her make a comeback. David Hudson, the Buffalo Man, offers a nice point of view from the natives.

And, of course, we find that Val Kilmer is a total diva. Fortunately, his career has taken a complete dive and he is now seen largely as a joke. Unfortunately, if he was wise, he invested his earnings and never has to work again.

As the title indicates, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (I'll just shorten that to Lost Soul for the rest of this) is the story behind the making of 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau. Much of this film focuses on Richard Stanley's involvement with the film and how the production descended into chaos. Stanley was the driving force behind getting the project off the ground, only to be replaced as director before he could finish the film.

The Island of Dr. Moreau was a colossal flop - both financially and critically. While there are aspects of the film I enjoy (and I admit I enjoy a lot of it for the wrong reasons), there's no denying the movie is pretty much a complete train wreck. One of the more interesting aspects of Lost Soul is the recounting of events that led to the disaster. It was a perfect storm - a studio with no faith in a director; a director in over his head; a constantly growing budget; isolated locations; monsoon like weather; actors in open rebellion;- anything that could go wrong did.

Equally amazing to me is how many of the people involved in the film agreed to be interviewed for Lost Soul. From Stanley to studio head Bob Shaye to several of the actors involved to production and technical staff - you get to hear the stories of the doomed production from all sides. It's fascinating stuff.

7/10.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

**** (out of 4)

If you watch enough movies, eventually you're going to see something that takes you by complete surprise. You can hear about how bad or crazy a movie is but there are certain examples that just stick in your mind because once you've seen the movie in question you realize that you really have seen something that's so bad that you have to sit there for days if not weeks wondering how it went so wrong. That happened to me in 1996 when I walked out of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Being a major Marlon Brando fan, it was a thrill getting to see him on the big screen but what was on that screen went down in infamy and here's a documentary explaining the craziness.

Director David Gregory is one of the best people out there when it comes to making DVD/Blu-ray shorts so throwing him into the feature world is something great for movie fans. This documentary is so perfectly done that it plays just like a real drama, a tragedy and then finally a hilarious comedy. We start off hearing from Richard Stanley who talks about his original ideas for the film and we see that he clearly has a great vision for the story. Then, we see that there's something off when he begins to talk about calling on witch doctor's to "help" the film. From here we learn just about every bit of the production details from how the film was originally meant to be made for $8 million but then Brando came on board, which had the budget go higher so then they needed a star so Val Kilmer was brought on and soon the original director was gone and replaced by maverick John Frankenheimer.

LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is without question one of the best documentaries that you're ever going to see when it comes to explaining the behind-the-scenes of a troubled production. However, to be fair, this here wasn't just a troubled production because you're going to learn that the entire thing seemed to be cursed and you can't help but wonder why the entire film wasn't dropped early in the production but then you learn that perhaps someone just wanted to see how crazy it could get. Things turn even worse when you hear that even Brando and Kilmer wanted the production to fail and some of the stories are just downright crazy. There are so many wild and crazy stories told about the production of this movie by the time it's over you can easily see why the actual movie turned out so bad.

There are way too many highlights in this film so picking out one or two to put the spotlight on is rather hard. Again, being a die-hard Brando fan, finding out what was going on with the white face paint and the ice bucket on his head were hilarious. Hearing about how the fired Stanley managed to get back onto the set and work as an extra was just astounding. What's the best is the fact that so many people came back and were willing to talk about the troubled production and be honest about it. Of course, Brando and Kilmer weren't available but Fairuza Balk is on hand as his New Line's Robert Shaye and of course Stanley plays a big part here. There's also some of the original producers to discuss the problems and the honesty of everyone involved is what makes the drama of the film work so well.

Of course, as the craziness continues and just gets weirder, the film pretty much turns into a comedy because you have to laugh at everything that was going on. Gregory has once again created a wonderful little gem and one hopes that his talents will see for more feature-length documentaries because he's one of the best out there and LOST SOUL is so great that it actually makes me want to go back and what that train-wreck of a film that was THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.