The classic Hollywood films analyzed in the previous session dramatized the downfalls of the good doctors Frankenstein and Jekyll, who recklessly underestimated the risks associated with their genetic experiments. There was, however, another category of Hollywood science fiction-horror scientist who was the opposite of those men. Their counterparts, the bad scientists of the genre, were intrinsically evil men such as those depicted in Island of Lost Souls, The Invisible Man and The Devil-Doll. The scientists depicted in these films knew the potential risks of their genetic research, yet did not care, as long as the results of their experiments advanced their purposes. Island of Lost Souls
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| American Film Institute |
| Charles Laughton was the evil Dr. Moreau in the 1932 Paramount film Island of Lost Souls. |
During the 1930s, the world was experiencing an economic depression, while at the same time witnessing the rise of dictatorships. Although Adolf Hitler did not come to power in Germany until early 1933, the year after the release of Island of Lost Souls, Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, had been in power since the mid-1920s as had Russia's communist dictator, Joseph Stalin. In retrospect, the bad scientist of the movies can be seen as an embodiment of the increasingly more powerful and feared dictators of the era as much as the unchecked genetic researcher. Such was the case of the quintessentially evil Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton), the protagonist of the 1932 Paramount film Island of Lost Souls. Based on the H. G. Wells' 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the movie focuses on the strange interlude of Edward Parker (called Edward Prendick in the novel), an Englishman adrift in the South Pacific. Wells' novel begins with an introduction, purportedly supplied by Edward's nephew, giving a few brief facts about an unaccounted for period of time after his uncle's ship, the S.S. Lady Vain, foundered. The narrator claims that he found the manuscript, written by Pendrick, after the man's death, and advises the reader that he cannot confirm the strange tale described within the following pages.
The film does not include any written prologue or dramatization of the shipwreck that starts Parker's journey. Instead it opens with the feverish Parker's (Richard Arlen) rescue by the crew of a passing steamship. Thinking he is now safe, Parker asks Montgomery (Arthur Hoerl), an apparent physician, to send a telegram to his fiancée Ruth, telling her he is all right and will soon meet her in the port of Apia.
The muffled sounds of caged wild animals make Parker uneasy, but his first tangible inkling that something strange is happening occurs when he views a pig-faced, hairy man attack Davies (Stanley Fields), the ship's captain. The attack is followed by Davies' seemingly irrational rebuke of Montgomery and his vow never again to take cargo to Moreau's uncharted island. When Moreau's (Charles Laughton) smaller ship approaches to ferry Montgomery and the animals to the island, Davies throws Parker off onto Moreau's boat, washing his hands of all of them.
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| Additional "Dr. Moreau" films | |
| Terror Is a Man (1959)
Dir: Gergado de Leo
Cast: Francis Lederer and Gret Thyssen The Twilight People (1972)
Dir: Eddie Romero
Cast: John Ashley, Pat Woodell The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
Dir: Don Taylor
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Michael York The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)
Dir: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Marlon Brando, Val Kilmer | |
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Initially, Moreau seems quite sane to Parker and the audience. Like the character in the novel, he is erudite and possesses a certain charm. Yet, he is an outcast from society, something he readily admits to Parker while he expertly wields a bullwhip to keep the island's strange-looking natives at bay and proudly shows his guest his compound. As Moreau and Parker pass through the compound's gate, the audience sees a strangely modern and civilized house, with a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired design, replete with geometric stones, an open courtyard and large plants interweaving the structure. Parker's introduction to his new situation is a classic example of the early stages of a horror film. Strange noises, seemingly irrational fears and things that do not seem possible confront him. The hostility and fear of the civilized world is established by Captain Davies' contempt and insistence that Dr. Moreau's island is "notorious" throughout the South Seas. Parker, taking the place of the audience, becomes suspicious that there is something unnatural about Moreau and his island, but he cannot imagine its extent.
Moreau relates to Parker that he spent years working in "bio-anthropological research," stripping down plants to their most primitive genetic state, with the purpose of quickening the evolutionary process to make them what they would be, centuries into the future. He laughingly admits that after his success with plants he became intrigued with the possibilities of animals, and was chased out of England for his experiments on a dog.
Whereas the good scientists, Frankenstein and Jekyll, chose to remain within society, although emotionally and intellectually isolated from it, Moreau has been forced into the physical isolation he now enjoys. What Parker does not know, or even suspect at first, is that on the island, free from the restraints of society, Moreau has been indulging in the most sinister of genetic quests, creating humans from lower life forms through surgery and transfusions.
The Island of Dr. Moreau, like other novels by Wells, was more social satire than horror, with its juxtaposition of man and beast, civilization and the jungle. The film, however, takes a more simplistic view. The tender-hearted Parker is angry and shocked when he thinks that Moreau is vivisecting men to turn them into beasts, then repulsed and finally saddened when he learns the truth, that Moreau has been attempting to turn beasts into men.
As the secrets of the "house of pain," the laboratory in which animals undergo Moreau's torturous experiments unfold, the strange half-men/half-beasts become less frightening and more pathetic. Parker sees Moreau invoke the principles of "The Law" with his bullwhip, as the beast-men recite such tenants as, "Are we not men?" and "We will spill no blood." With whippings and strict enforcement of The Law, Moreau has gone beyond scientific and medical experimentation. He is not just evil, he is also a tyrannical god who relishes the power he feels.
When the beast-men revolt and brutally kill Moreau, Parker is finally able to escape (with the help of Montgomery and Ruth, who loyally sought him out), but he realizes that the genetically altered beast-men can neither survive on the island without Moreau nor live in a civilized society. Even knowing this, however, he cannot leave behind the beautiful Lota, Moreau's most human, and only female, creation. To put an end to Moreau's evil genetic experiment (and allay the censor's fears that the partially human creature might fulfill Moreau's intention of having her mate with a human) she is conveniently killed by one of the beast-men.
The Invisible Man
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| American Film Institute |
| Film poster for the 1933 Universal film, The Invisible Man, directed by James Whale. |
Universal's 1933 James Whale-directed adaptation of another novel by H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, also presents a case of a man's ego pushing his experimentation further and further to the point of what appears to be success: invisibility. Like all such experiments, though, there is a price to pay. His condition is irreversible and, moreover, it is driving him insane. Related through dialogue in the film is the background of a brilliant scientist, Griffin (Claude Rains), who has discovered how to neutralize the color of blood, thus making himself invisible. Again, Wells' 1897 novel is more satiric than the film, which takes Griffin's predicament very seriously and adds the motif of his increasingly obvious insanity and evil actions.
In both the novel and the film, Griffin cannot reverse the molecular alteration of his body. Director Whale cleverly decided that the audience should never see the flesh or hair of Griffin, who disguises his now inconvenient state by wrapping himself in heavy clothes, bandages and dark glasses. Rains, whose charismatic voice coupled with entertaining special effects made the character more real, is only seen when Griffin dies, thus reversing the effects of his experiment, just as death turned the evil Hyde back into the good Dr. Jekyll.
Like Moreau, Griffin did not seek a great, albeit misguided, advance for mankind. He sought the power that his scientific discovery would grant him, and ego made him disregard the counsel of his friends and fiancée. Although Griffin's real motives are somewhat murky in the film, Wells's novel relates that Griffin hopes to use his invisibility to gain both power and money. The Invisible Man differs from the other films discussed in this and the good scientist session in that the film opens with the main character already in crisis. Having been unable to find a suitable antidote to his amazing reversal, Griffin is desperate. He has found that invisibility has terrible limitations; while his body is invisible, the blanket of invisibility cannot be transferred to inanimate objects. This predicament causes fear among those who observe the results of simple movements, like moving an object from place to place.
Hiding in an unassuming English village, Griffin's continued experiments and bizarre, bandaged appearance, terrifies his landlords. The self-proclaimed scientific genius is now reduced to murder, but is eventually captured when police track the impressions that his invisible feet make in the snow. As Griffin lays dying in the hospital, he regains his sanity and confesses to Flora that he should never have tampered with the essence of life.
The Devil-Doll
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| American Film Institute |
| Lionel Barrymore played Parisian businessman Paul Lavond in the 1936 M-G-M film The Devil Doll. |
M-G-M's 1936 film The Devil-Doll, directed by Tod Browning, very loosely based on the Abraham Merritt novel Burn, Witch, Burn! displays another variation on the theme of the bad scientist, coupled with a large dose of Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. In The Devil-Doll, Parisian businessman Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore) is imprisoned on Devil's Island for a crime he did not commit. When he and his elderly cellmate, scientist Marcel (Henry B. Walthall) escape, Paul plans to mete out his revenge on the three men who brought false evidence against him. In this case, the scientist Marcel is not himself evil or seeking an evil end, but the results of his discoveries are implemented by someone else for ill purposes. Like Moreau, Marcel began his genetic experimentation on lesser beings, horses and dogs, but yearned to advance to the human species. When he and Paul escape from prison, Marcel and his scientist-wife Malita (Rafaela Ottiano) complete their first successful human experiment: they shrink a servant girl, whose actions are then controlled by transferred, hypnotic thought processes.
After Marcel dies, the gentle Malita agrees to go to Paris with Paul to help in his plot of revenge, even though she is only interested in science. The miniature people are perfect specimens in every way, save their miniature stature and their inability to act independently. Again the scientist, or in this case, Paul as the ersatz scientist, becomes both the creator and ruler of his tiny creatures.
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| American Film Institute |
| Maureen O'Sullivan played the role of Lorraine in the 1936 film The Devil Doll. |
A major difference between The Devil-Doll and other "creature" films such as Frankenstein and Island of Lost Souls is that there is no audience rapport or sympathy for the tiny creatures. After Paul, disguised as his alter ego, toyshop owner Mme. Mandelip, drugs the victims who will be turned into the dolls, they cease to exist on a human level, with no personalities of their own. There are no humanizing close-ups that make the dolls appear to fill the screen; they always appear as miniatures. Another difference between The Devil-Doll and other films in the genre is that the Paul, a stand-in for the bad scientist, never becomes insane with power. Although his murderous revenge is evil, in his mind he is merely getting justice for himself and his long-suffering daughter Lorraine (Maureen O'Sullivan). His love of Lorraine makes him realize that his deeds are evil and will ultimately cost her future happiness. Paul then sets fire to the toyshop, with himself inside, so that they will always think that the dolls were a creation of Mme. Mandelip. Thus, like the good scientist Dr. Jekyll, Paul recognizes the evil he has wrought and, through self-sacrifice, prevents it from happening again.
