Iguana

I get the impression that this movie is based on a book: Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa's novel "La Iguana", released on 1982. Here in Brazil it was released on 1989, with the title "O Iguana". Read this book when I was in school, at the suggestion of a teacher. A very good and interesting book.

I haven't watched every Monte Hellman film ever made, but I've now seen this, Cockfighter, Two Lane Blacktop, Ride in the Whirlwind, The Shooting, and of the movies he was part director of, Avalanche Express and The Terror. The subject matter is usually some pretty tortured stuff, The Shooting is a mad forced march into the oblivion, in a claustrophobic universe, what is called by some an existential Western, Ride in the Whirlwind is a bitter Western noir, two peaceable cowboys end up sleeping in just the wrong cabin of a night. Cockfighter and Two Lane Blacktop are almost fetishistic in their nihilism.

Iguana is the most tortured of them all perhaps. It's a movie about a harpooner, Oberlus, half of whose face is blistered and deformed. His shipmates take a disliking to him, deciding that he's some sort of Jonah, and end up tearing his flesh. Oberlus in his deep torment escapes to a deserted island of which he then proclaims himself king and declares war on the world. The soul of it is the Phantom of the Opera, which Hellman thought this movie would be like after reading a summary of the script. It wasn't so much what the original novel was like I think, but that's the mark of an auteur, to take the script and make it their own.

It feels like a spiritual return to the origins of his film-making with Roger Corman, indeed this movie could be given the title of Hellman's first movie, Beast from Haunted Cave. Oberlus enslaves washed up sailors and even a young lady. There is some graphic content in this movie and Oberlus, well let's just say he doesn't have any hang-ups.

This is a perfect example from Hellman of Roger Corman's philosophy of film-making, he liked to give the audience something to look at, but he wasn't happy unless he was making it on two levels, giving people who liked to think about the film something to think about. You never feel demeaned watching any type of movie that comes out of that philosophy, that's the true greatness of the Corman technique.

The ending is disturbing and you really can't believe Hellman ended it like that, he's well named indeed. There's also the liberal theme that if you treat people like animals they become animals. Oberlus is shunned because of his physical ugliness, which then becomes spiritual ugliness, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when his shipmates refer to him as a voodoo devil.

No, it's not some movie about a giant lizard that eats people... though that's what the title makes me think of. This is a pretty decent low-budget movie about a toughened sailor with a facial deformity that makes him look kind of lizard-like. His shipmates don't like him much and he jumps ship one night... but they find him again, beat and brand him. After a lifetime of such abuse he decides that from now on he will live the rest of his life taking what he wants, doing what he wants and forcing others to do his will. He takes over a small deserted island and enslaves the few people who wash up on its shores... cutting off their fingers (or heads) when they get out of line. Very interesting movie... the main character is a terrible person... but at times he also becomes the hero. We see that he has become this evil man because of the way he was treated by others all his life. Lovely (but sad) ending.

"Iguana" is really beautifully photographed, but as entertainment it is a miserable experience. The editing is extremely choppy, however the fatal problem is a total lack of believability. The deformed protagonist controls five or six people who washed up on his island kingdom. Obviously the self proclaimed king never sleeps, or his captives didn't want to wake him with a rock to the head? This screenplay is really so far fetched that I lost interest almost immediately. The dialog is stilted and tedious, and director Monte Hellman drops the ball at almost every opportunity. Michael Madsen is totally wasted, as is 98 minutes of your life. This is one to be avoided, and has no redeeming qualities. It's truly painful to watch such nonsense .......................... - MERK

I have immense respect for Hellman. The art-house establishment deigned to stoop down and pick Two-Lane Blacktop from the grindhouse cracks and curious bystanders have ventured into his early films to watch a young Jack Nicholson, but he's remained largely forgotten with long dry spells of not getting work or getting in paycheck movies. But here he is back in 1988, assembling a cast of marginal stars at one time or another (Everett McGill, Fabio Testi, Michael Madsen), by way of a story about a disfigured harpooner haunted by ridicule and ostracism who finds himself stranded on a deserted island and declares himself there sovereign king and ruler of a bunch of hapless sailors he keeps as slaves, Hellman creates a stark allegory on the darkest most base instincts of human nature: the need to oppress and avenge wrongs real and imaginary, to reassert one's individuality through strength if by no other means, to bridge one's alienation and lovelessness by using that very alienation and lack of love as a battering ram against those who denied them to him. The movie is heavily flawed, the narrative in the first half that switches between the deserted island and some unspecified Spanish colony is disjointed, and the movie, try as it might to mask the fact, has a low budget look, but Hellman does great job with his material. At times gorgeous to look at, with interesting interplays between the characters that keep the plot from veering too far into selfconscious allegory, the movie plays like an exotic adventure undercut with philosophic undertones that Herman Melville might have written, and indeed I think there's a similar story about a halfmad hermit-king who lived for years in the Galapagos related in his travelogue Los Encantadas.