Earlier this month, Val Kilmer passed away from complications of pneumonia. He had battled throat cancer in the 2010s resulting in a tracheotomy resulting in the difficulty to speak.
Kilmer was considered difficult to work with and one of his most complicated movie productions was The Island of Dr. Moreau, released in 1996. It was the third adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ novel about a mad scientist who makes human-animal hybrids. I’ve never seen the 1932 adaptation which changed the title to Island of Lost Souls and starred Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau with Bela Lugosi as the Sayer of the Law.
However, I did see the 1977 adaptation from American International Pictures that cast Burt Lancaster in the titular role as well as Michael York and Barbara Carrera. That movie looked just like someone would expect from a 1970s movie from AIP. However, Lancaster with his Panama Jack style fashion and shaggy beard excelled in the mad scientist role It was schlock but all good actors know how to have fun and handle a schlock role.
The biggest problem with the 1996 adaptation is they took it too seriously but instead it comes off looking horrible and disgusting in every way possible. The filmmakers were more interested in the make-up and special effects by legendary wizard Stan Winston that they forgot to add substance to the style. It’s not like John Frankenheimer could be blamed. He was brought in to fix what was already a problematic production even before the first week of filming had been completed.
Before they sunk hundreds of millions in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a gamble that worked and later led them to be acquired by Warner Bros., New Line Cinema was still considered an independent movie studio. They were trying to break free from the stigmata of making Nightmare on Elm Street movies and other low-budget sci-fi/horror movies.
But sometimes you just got to take chances. With Marlon Brando in the titular role and Val Kilmer riding high from break-out big name roles in Tombstone and Batman Forever, what could go wrong? A lot. The problems were covered in the documentary Lost Souls: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, the project was doomed from the start. It’s only because certain pre-production issues are common in movie making that executives at New Line probably figured it was just par for the course.
Bruce Willis had originally been approached to play the movie’s lead Edward Douglas. However, Willis and his then-wife Demi Moore had started divorce proceedings. However, the couple would legally remain married until 2000. They didn’t even announce their separation until the summer of 1998. Stanley, who only had one previous movie as director, had originally wanted Jurgen Prochnow for the role of Moreau before New Line secured Brando, thus paving the way for Willis to be considered for Douglas and James Woods for Dr. Montgomery, Moreau’s assistant.
With Willis out, Kilmer was brought on to play Douglas. Unfortunately, Kilmer was having trouble on the home front as well as he learned through news reports his wife, Joanne Whalley, was divorcing him and demanding his role be reduced by about 40 percent. So, Stanley allowed him to play Montgomery. And Rob Morrow, riding high after Northern Exposure and Quiz Show, was hired.
Yet as reported in Lost Souls documentary, many people involved in the production noticed that Stanley was inexperienced in handling directing duties on such a production. Kilmer had also reportedly become belligerent and standoffish to the cast and crew. Morrow ended up calling executives at New Line pleading to be let out of his contract, which was granted, only only two days of filming.
After that, New Line fired Stanley but offered to pay him his contracted salary if he walked away peacefully. Stanley still is credited as a screenwriter. But he did not go quietly. He reportedly shredded all his notes and even got some of the crew members who were still loyal to him to dress him as a bulldog/man hybrid as he stayed on the production as an extra. Many cast and crew members only found this out after principal photography had wrapped. Reportedly, Frankenheimer had no idea.
But the hiring of Frankenheimer angered Faizura Balk who pay the cat/woman hybrid Aissa. She reportedly left the production after a heated agrument with an executive at New Line and had a production assistant drive her in a rented limousine from Cairns, Australia where filming was scheduled to Sydney which was over 2,500 kilometers. Only after her agent told her if she left, she would become blacklisted all over Hollywood, did she reluctantly return.
The House That Freddy Built was going through it’s own living nightmare. Not only did a major hurricane hit the Queensland area of Australia delaying production and destroying sets, but the movie almost lost its big star. On April 16, 1996, Brando’s daughter, Cheyenne, would commit suicide causing him to leave the set indefinitely to mourn his daughter’s death. It was unknown at the time if Brando would even return.
The delays from weather and personnel matters drove the budget up to $40 million. That would be almost twice as much in today’s dollar. This would be one of New Line’s most costliest movies. Just FYI, the 1998 Lost in Space adaptation would cost $80 million. As reported in the Lost Souls documentary, many of the actors hired to be the animal/human hybrids splurged with their per diems as they spent their times in hotels or movie trailers waiting around in make-up to film scenes only to be told filming wouldn’t happen that day either.
This might explain why the movie is sloppy and disjointed. Reportedly, what little Stanley was able to film during the three days he was the director had to be discarded as it was unusable. Frankenheimer functions more as a hired gun brought in to direct what he can as fast as he can. The director’s career had waned in the 1980s and by the 1990s, he was able to turn to TV to direct TV movies Against the Wall, The Burning Season and Andersonville, all of which were met with critical praise.
So, they had a filmmaker used to handling big-budget projects and to shoot them fast. However, Frankenheimer and Kilmer reportedly butted heads. He told Kilmer bluntly, “Your problem is you confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent.” After Kilmer had filmed all his scenes, Frankenheimer said to the crew, “Now get that bastard off my set.” He later quipped: “Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer.”
Kilmer later recalled in his memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry: “Frankenheimer went on to blame me publicly for ruining the movie. I always thought it an odd thing to try to do, blame me for his failure to make an entertaining film, because my character dies halfway through, and the last half of the film sucks as bad as the first.” For what it’s worth, Kilmer is right. The marketing touts Brando and Kilmer as the leads but they’re mostly supporting characters. Brando is only in about a third of the movie and his character only appears in five or six scenes before his character is killed off.
The main issue is the actor, David Thewlis, who they got to finally play Douglas, seems to have been brought in for budgetary reasons. Therefore, he’s poorly miscast in the role. Now, Thewlis is known as Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies as well as other works, was virtually unknown to American audiences. And since he was allowed to rewrite his character, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie. He mostly just reacts. And while he doesn’t scream and holler like it would be expected, his refrained actions when seeing violence is almost like he got seriously stoned before filming. He mostly meanders through all his scenes more like he’s observing the action with no real threat.
Kilmer does have some good scenes but the movie sets it up as if Montgomery is going to be a major character but that’s not the case. When Kilmer begins to turn crazy and act like Brando, there’s a madness that seems missing from the rest of the movie. But the script rewrites are evident on screen. Ron Hutchison was brought in to rewrite a script penned by Stanley, Michael Herr and Walon Green. But I think it was more to shorten the shooting script to help offset the production delays.
At 96 minutes with credits, this movie wastes no time into having the hybrids turn against Moreau after Lo-Mai (Mark Dacascos) a leopard/man creature is killed for disobeying the law by walking on all fours and eating a rabbit. Lo-Mai is killed by Azazello (Temuera Morrison), a dog/man hybrid who is Moreau’s “son.” Azazello shoots Lo-Mai because he thought that’s what Moreau wanted.
Lo-Mai’s body is cremated and his friend, Hyena-Swine (Daniel Rigney), discovers a device implanted inside all hybrids that causes pain when Moreau uses a remote control to keep them in line. He then leads others in a revolt. And apparently, Moreau and Montgomery have a huge arsenal of firearms. A lot doesn’t make sense.
I also feel the original script was more detailed on Moreau’s main plans. He has forbidden the consumption of meat, even though Brando at the time was the topic of jokes for his outrageous weight. The movie hints that Azazello is struggling with his instincts to consume meat, but nothing is done with this. But the whole :”animals can’t hide from their instincts and humans are more vicious” motif gets lost in a jumbled movie.
There’s a suggestion that Douglas and Aissa are going to be a couple but she is killed by Azazello. (I wouldn’t put it pass this being done because of Balk’s behavior.) But when you have a movie where an actor like Brando wears an ice bucket for no reason and plays a piano with his miniature version of himself, Majai (Nelson de la Rosa), you know there’s not going to be a sequel so it’s best to take the money and run.
Everything is wrong in this movie. The tone and violence of the movie suggests it was originally intended to be rated R until New Line demanded it cut to a PG-13 so younger audiences could see it. Yet there’s the rub. It’s too violent and unsettling in its design for younger audiences and I’m not sure many young audiences would care for the examination on human nature versus animal nature.
Just like the Planet of the Apes remake in 2001, it appears people just thought if they throw actors in heavy animal make-up and do action scenes, people will just go in huge numbers to see it. However, that isn’t the case. The movie was a box-office disaster with a worldwide gross of just under $50 million and negative critical reviews.
When Brando died in 2004, Roger Ebert called it possibly his worst movie. I’m almost certain if the same problems plagued a movie production now almost 30 years later, people would agree if David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, had the movie written off for a tax credit. The problems on the set would bring Kilmer’s behavior to the public’s attentions. I remember hearing some radio deejays debating why he keeps getting hired for movies.
Probably the best legacy of the movie is what happened in the immediate years following it. While Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was already being filmed, Mike Myers would bring in actor Verne Troyer as Mini-Me in the two sequels. The character is intended as a parody of Majai including the piano-playing scene in The Spy Who Shagged Me.
But South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone beat them by a year with the creation of Dr. Alphonse Mephesto on their show. He has a resemblance to Brando even in his voice. Mephesto is a scientist involved in genetic experiments and even has a creepy small humanoid named Kevin as his adopted son.
Pretty much Dr. Moreau was the moment when Kilmer’s career peaked and started to go into a decline. I’m pretty sure he wished he had never agreed to do this movie.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 