Island of Lost Souls (1932)

The Island of Lost Souls is that rarity, a horror film from the 1930s that still seems scary. While it may seem a bit creaky by contemporary standards, the film has retained its raw power to unnerve, thanks largely to Charles Laughton, who brings a vivid, sweaty amorality to his performance that's truly disturbing; lots of mad scientists in the movies have played God, but few made it seem more morally repugnant than Laughton. Make-up man Wally Westmore's creations genuinely resemble a grotesque middle ground between humans and animals; if make-up technique has improved considerably since this film was made, the crudity of the effects actually works in this context, giving Moreau's creations a rough, unpolished quality that suits the story perfectly. And while the film is extremely modest in its onscreen violence, the offscreen mutilations are quite shocking in context; the hideously pained overheard screams of Moreau's "manimals" (and later Moreau himself) are as chillingly effective as a hundred Tom Savini-designed limb-loppings. In its day, The Island of Lost Souls was considered a film that went too far (it was banned in England until the late 1960s), and its rough audacity gives it a power that hasn't dulled all these years later; it's inarguably superior to its latter-day remakes, both titled The Island of Dr. Moreau, after the H.G. Wells novel on which the films were based. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide