The Island of Lost Souls has such a great characterization of Dr. Moreau by Charles Laughton that Laughton was probably extremely lucky his career did not take the turn of Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi. He might have wound up playing all kinds of mad scientists instead of the rich and varied collection of people he did portray. As it was, he returned only once to the horror genre arguably and that was in The Strange Door 18 years later, co-starring with Boris Karloff.
As the exiled and disgraced Dr. Moreau, he's discovered a way to speed up the evolutionary process if you accept that all animal life is merely a stepping stone towards mankind. That it involves a particularly brutal form of surgery on them without anesthetic is of no concern to him. He's created his own Devil's Eden in which he is Almighty God.
A quarrel with a drunken sea captain strands Richard Arlen on his island which does not have too many visitors except for cargo deliveries of supplies and more animals for experimentation. Laughton decides to make use of Arlen to see if his most perfect creation, Lota the Panther Woman, played by Kathleen Burke has any sexual drives or will he need further experiments.
Arlen's fiancé Leila Hyams is also looking for him and she arrives on the island setting up a not to be forgotten climax as Laughton's creations discover he's not God after all.
Island of Lost Souls, based on an H.G. Wells novel, is entertainment, but it also makes one think about the limits of science and what happens when scientific advances outrace similar advances in mankind's sense of ethics.
Anyway, I'm sure Dr. Moreau will not be PETA's man of the year.
As the exiled and disgraced Dr. Moreau, he's discovered a way to speed up the evolutionary process if you accept that all animal life is merely a stepping stone towards mankind. That it involves a particularly brutal form of surgery on them without anesthetic is of no concern to him. He's created his own Devil's Eden in which he is Almighty God.
A quarrel with a drunken sea captain strands Richard Arlen on his island which does not have too many visitors except for cargo deliveries of supplies and more animals for experimentation. Laughton decides to make use of Arlen to see if his most perfect creation, Lota the Panther Woman, played by Kathleen Burke has any sexual drives or will he need further experiments.
Arlen's fiancé Leila Hyams is also looking for him and she arrives on the island setting up a not to be forgotten climax as Laughton's creations discover he's not God after all.
Island of Lost Souls, based on an H.G. Wells novel, is entertainment, but it also makes one think about the limits of science and what happens when scientific advances outrace similar advances in mankind's sense of ethics.
Anyway, I'm sure Dr. Moreau will not be PETA's man of the year.