ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1930)

Cast

Plot

Laughton is magnificently repellent as the fiendish Doc, on whose island a sailor is marooned after escaping a watery death, whose painful vivisectional graftings have resulted in a pitiful community of hideously mutated man-beasts. Satanically bearded, the epitome of imperialist arrogance in his immaculate white ducks, the whip-toting Moreau rules his 'natives', one of whom he plans to mate with a human, through rituals of fear and pain. In the end the 'natives' rebel and drag the screaming Laughton away to his own 'House of Pain' and the film's subversive spirit surfaces with a real vengeance. A very scary film, adapted from HG Wells's "Island of Dr Moreau", way ahead of its time and banned in Britain for years.