Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau

As the title indicates, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (I'll just shorten that to Lost Soul for the rest of this) is the story behind the making of 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau. Much of this film focuses on Richard Stanley's involvement with the film and how the production descended into chaos. Stanley was the driving force behind getting the project off the ground, only to be replaced as director before he could finish the film.

The Island of Dr. Moreau was a colossal flop - both financially and critically. While there are aspects of the film I enjoy (and I admit I enjoy a lot of it for the wrong reasons), there's no denying the movie is pretty much a complete train wreck. One of the more interesting aspects of Lost Soul is the recounting of events that led to the disaster. It was a perfect storm - a studio with no faith in a director; a director in over his head; a constantly growing budget; isolated locations; monsoon like weather; actors in open rebellion;- anything that could go wrong did.

Equally amazing to me is how many of the people involved in the film agreed to be interviewed for Lost Soul. From Stanley to studio head Bob Shaye to several of the actors involved to production and technical staff - you get to hear the stories of the doomed production from all sides. It's fascinating stuff.

7/10.

Like Hearts of Darkness and Lost in La Mancha, Lost Soul is an excellent documentary in which the cast and crew tell the story of a troubled production.

The Island of Dr. Moreau is a serviceable, much-maligned movie about a mad scientist who combines humans and animals to make freakish humanoids. The production was infamously difficult, though the gritty details were widely inaccessible to the public.

Told through the recollection of some--but not all--of the various cast and crew involved in this movie, Lost Souls delivers the intricate story of this notorious film. Those curious about the origins of Brando's choice to wear an ice bucket on his head, or the casting and director changes during filming, are in for a treat. This doc will definitely have you grinning ear-to-ear at the nuttiness of it all.

Director David Gregory has a long history of behind-the-scenes documentary shorts, Lost Soul is more than just a making-of doc that would accompany The Island Of Dr. Moreau disc. Fans of cult director/writer Richard Stanley get a good insight into what makes this fascinating film maker tick.

For followers of the novel and film itself Lost Souls also covers the earlier film attempts of H. G. Wells and looks at the books core themes and origin. Gregory offers a captivating documentary with its mix of archival materials and surviving-collaborator testimonies. It wonderfully chronicles how a conflict of vision, creative decisions, lack of interest and awful weather plagued the disastrous production and destroyed friendships with entertaining stories of behind-the- scenes drama including drugs, alcohol and egos. Sadly David Thewlis or Ron Perlman do not participate and it would have been interesting to hear their views.

If you enjoyed Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) Lost In La Mancha (2002) basically other "failed film" documentaries - this is a must see.

As fascinating as this documentary is, one is left feeling that it barely skims the surface of the madness that prevailed during the production of The Island of Doctor Moreau. Yes, there are great anecdotes about Brando being crazy or mischievous or, as one more acute observer puts it, displaying utter contempt for his own profession. You get to hear how vile Val Kilmer was. And there's John Frankenheimer stomping around like a parody of an egomaniacal old-school director. And yet you just know that there are worse stories to be told, and that there was seemingly no end to the cluelessness of almost everyone involved in this benighted shoot. So while Lost Soul is one of the better documentaries about a disastrous film shoot, I was left wanting more and wishing they'd dug a bit deeper and provided a more thorough account of the shenanigans, the treachery, the foolishness and the folly of the nightmarish six-month jungle shoot. Even so, Lost Soul is infinitely more entertaining than the movie it documents.

Having been a fan of Jurassic Park and Batman Forever as a kid, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) looked, from the TV advertisements, like the next big thing. Look at those creatures! On an island! Starring Val Kilmer and some woman (I assumed) named Marlon Brando! In fact, the film was widely panned and derided when it came out. When I saw it with my younger sister, it was more violent than I expected, a bit of a mess, but I definitely appreciated what it was trying to do. My sister totally disliked it; maybe she had better sense in this case.

Lost Soul (a title paying nice homage to the original film, The Island of Lost Souls) is an engaging documentary dedicated to studying how the film went so far off track, and it is more insane than I realized. There's some good brief discussion of the novel and earlier film attempts. Then, to the meat of the picture. I'm not even sure if I would have liked Richard Stanley's original vision; the sketches are exceedingly trippy and the thought of the protagonist getting his genitals bit off during bestiality is so far out there. It's still fascinating to see what went wrong.

A lot of it is bizarre- the fact that Stanley went to a witch doctor to make sure he stayed on the film, and the fact that he credited it with working, says it all. You can see the injustice in Stanley finally being fired because it was raining, according to this documentary (I heard it was because of Kilmer), but then, there's definite evidence he had broken down, going by this anecdote that he had climbed a tree and wouldn't come down. It's really striking how many people came onto the project, or stayed on, despite not wanting to be there. The gong show goes on- Kilmer and Brando locking themselves in their trailer and refusing to come out until the other does. One person remarks it would be a huge achievement to finally have a film with a beginning, a middle and an end- they succeeded. I think I would have enjoyed this doc even more if I was in total agreement that The Island of Dr. Moreau sucked- but certainly, the making of it was a trainwreck, too fascinating to look away from.