Island of Lost Souls is a 1932 American pre-Code science fiction horror film directed by Erle C. Kenton. Produced and distributed by Paramount Productions, it is based on H. G. Wells' 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, and stars Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, and Kathleen Burke. Island of Lost Souls is about Edward Parker (Arlen), a sailor who finds himself stranded on an island that is occupied by the scientist Dr. Moreau (Laughton). Parker agrees to stay until the next boat arrives; Moreau introduces him to Lota (Burke), who unknown to Parker, is part-panther. It is revealed all of the island's inhabitants are the results of Moreau's experiments to create humans from animals. Moreau tries to persuade Lota to have sex with Parker so he can continue his experiments.
The film is Paramount's follow-up to the successful horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Several writers, including Joseph Moncure March, Cyril Hume, Garrett Fort, and Philip Wylie, worked on scripts for the film. While Paramount had invited stage actor Charles Laughton to Hollywood, they did not have the film set up for him, leading him to work on other projects in 1932. For the role of Lota the Panther Woman, a contest was run across the United States to cast an unknown actor for the film. From thousands of contenders, the final group was Lona Andre, Gail Patrick, Verna Hillie, and the winner Kathleen Burke. Island of Lost Souls began production on October 1, 1932. Some scenes were filmed on location on Catalina Island. During production, Bela Lugosi joined the cast, having declared bankruptcy during the same month. Production ended in early November.
Island of Lost Souls was released in December 1932. Since then, several edited forms have been released with several edits to remove dialogue and scenes involving Dr. Moreau. The film was banned in several countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, India, and New Zealand. Theatrical, television, and home video releases have often been truncated until the 2011 release by the Criterion Collection, which was described by the company's president as one of the most difficult restorations they had done. Contemporaneous critical reception was mixed, noting the horrific nature of the film. Retrospective reviews have been positive and have often complimented Laughton's performance; some reviews praised the cinematography, while others noted the film's disturbing themes.
Plot Shipwrecked traveler Edward Parker is rescued by a freighter delivering animals to an isolated South Seas island owned by Dr. Moreau. Parker fights with the freighter's drunken captain who mistreats M'ling, a passenger with some bestial features, and the captain tosses Parker overboard into Mr. Montgomery's boat, which is bound for Moreau's island. When Parker arrives at the island, Moreau, who has M'ling as his butler, welcomes him and introduces him to Lota, a beautiful young woman who Moreau claims is of Polynesian origin.
When she and Parker hear screams coming from another room, which Lota calls "the House of Pain", Parker investigates. He sees Moreau and Montgomery operating on a human-like creature without anesthetic. Convinced Moreau is engaged in brutal vivisection, Parker tries to leave but encounters savage-looking humanoids resembling beasts emerging from the jungle. Moreau appears, cracks his whip and orders them, following their wolf-themed Sayer of the Law, to recite a series of rules ("the Law"), e.g., not eating meat or spilling blood, and the creatures disperse.
At the main house, Moreau tries to assuage Parker by explaining his scientific work—years before in London, he had begun experiments to accelerate the evolution of plants. He then progressed to animals, trying to transform them into humans through plastic surgery, blood transfusions, gland extracts and ray baths. When a dog hybrid escaped from his laboratory, it horrified people and he was forced to leave England.
Moreau tells Parker that Lota is the sole female on the island but hides the fact she was derived from a panther. Later, Moreau privately expresses his excitement to Montgomery that Lota is showing human emotions in her attraction to Parker. So he can continue observing this process, Moreau destroys the only available boat, ensuring Parker cannot leave, and blaming this on his beast-men. Lota falls in love with Parker and they eventually kiss. After Lota hugs him, Parker examines her fingernails, which are reverting to animalistic claws.
Parker storms into Moreau's to confront him for hiding the truth about Lota. Moreau explains Lota is his most-nearly human creation, and he wanted to see if she was capable of reproducing with a man. Enraged by the deceit, Parker punches Moreau and demands passage away from the island. Moreau observes Lota weeping and showing human emotions; his hopes are raised and he screams he will "burn out" the remaining animal in her in the House of Pain.
Meanwhile, the American consul at Apia, Samoa learns about Parker's location from the cowed freighter captain, after the captain fails to tell Parker's fiancée Ruth Thomas (whom Montgomery radioed from the freighter and whom the captain rudely propositions) why Parker is not on the ship, and she complains to the consul. Thomas persuades Captain Donahue to take her to Moreau's island. She is reunited with Parker and Moreau persuades them to stay the night. Moreau later tells Montgomery that Parker may not be needed to provide experimentation with fertility.
The ape-themed Ouran, one of Moreau's creations, tries to break into Ruth's room but is driven away by her screams. Montgomery confronts Moreau and implies Moreau arranged Ouran's attempted break-in. Donahue tries to reach the ship and fetch his crew. Moreau, seeing him depart, dispatches Ouran to strangle him; Ouran fights and kills Donahue.
Learning of Moreau's mortality and manipulations, the other beast-men no longer feel bound by the Law; as the Sayer declaims that Moreau made them into things, neither man nor beast, they set their huts ablaze, presumably kill M'ling (Moreau's loyal dog-man), who fights them, and defy Moreau, who tries and fails to regain control. The beast-men drag Moreau into his House of Pain and brutally hack him to death on the operating table with his own surgical knives. Parker and Ruth escape with help from the disaffected Montgomery. Parker tries to rescue Lota but she decides to buy the group some time when she notices Ouran ambushing them, leading to both of their deaths; in her dying moments, she tells Parker to flee to the sea. The others escape by boat as the island goes up in flames, presumably destroying Moreau's work and eradicating the beast-men.
Cast Cast sourced from the AFI Catalog of Feature Films.
Some sources state that actors Buster Crabbe, Alan Ladd and Randolph Scott were among the beast-men extras, but no proof of this has been found.
Production Development
In 1931, Hollywood studios released three horror films that were hits: Universal's Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931); and Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Paramount's film's Mr. Hyde resembles a monstrous ape who has implied sexual relations with a sex worker Ivy; the studio wanted to make a follow-up with more horrific and sexual themes. On June 1, 1931, Paramount paid $15,000 () for the rights to H. G. Wells' novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and sent a copy of the novel to the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America (MPPDA). Along with the novel, Paramount had access to an unproduced play by Frank Vreeland that was based on Wells' story and titled His Creatures.
Several writers attempted to work on the film's screenplay; these included Joseph Moncure March, who wrote the novel-length poem The Wild Party and the screenplay for Hell's Angels (1930); Cyril Hume, the screenwriter of Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and later Forbidden Planet (1956); Garrett Fort, whose credits included work on Dracula and Frankenstein; and Philip Wylie, whose 1930 novel Gladiator was one of the main inspirations for the Superman comics. Fort and Wylie developed an original character, the Panther Woman—a creature Dr. Moreau creates in his House of Pain and tries to mate with a human. In one of Wylie's and Fort's early adaptations, Moreau beats the half-naked Panther Woman because instead of having sex with a younger male, the Panther Woman violently slashes him. Their adaptation had a far-more-gruesome ending that involved Moreau taking the novel's character Prendick to see a chained, faceless creature; Moreau, who is planning to kill Prendick, slices off his face and sews it onto the creature. The final, highly revised script is dated September 30, 1932, and gives credit only to Wylie and Waldemar Young. Young had written Lon Chaney silent melodramas such as London After Midnight (1927). Paramount sent their script to the MPPDA on September 22, 1932, noting the film was set to start shooting on September 26. Filming was delayed as the writers continued working on the script.
Pre-production
To cast the Panther Woman, Paramount publicist Arthur Mayer developed a contest that involved giving the winner a trip to Hollywood, $200 () a week for five weeks, a home at the Ambassador Hotel, and a role in the film. Contestants were required to be between the ages of 17 and 30 years old, to be in good health, between and tall, and not have worked, or be related to anyone who had worked, at Paramount. In his memoir Merely Colossal (1953), Mayer stated newspapers that were cooperating with Paramount on the project received floods of letters for the role. The contest attracted around 60,000 applicants. There were four finalists; Lona Andre, Gail Patrick, Kathleen Burke, and Verna Hillie. According to Hillie, who was living in Detroit, Paramount had published the content in several major city newspapers. Hillie was performing on radio at the time, and her mother submitted her for the contest. When Paramount contacted Hillie, she appeared as one of the 12 finalists in different theaters in Detroit on three succeeding Saturday nights. Each week a few of the finalists were eliminated from the contest. Audiences would privately vote for the performer they liked best, and Hillie won her spot in Detroit. As production was set to start, the four finalists of the Panther Woman contest arrived in Hollywood. According to historian Gregory Mank, early publicity photographs make the winners look "less like vamps, as they do like classmates at a convent school". The judges of the contest's final were Cecil B. DeMille, Rouben Mamoulian, Ernst Lubitsch, Norman Taurog, Stuart Walker, and Erle C. Kenton. On September 29, two days before production was set to begin, Kathleen Burke was summoned to the casting office and told she had won the contest. Hillie, Andre, and Patrick also received Paramount contracts.