EPISODE 110 — The Island of Dr. Moreau

[Juggermax 75]

While there have been a bunch of great parodies of this movie my favorite is the 2nd episode of the 5th season of The Venture Bros. Definitely worth a watch after seeing the movie

 

[Cameron H. 23786]

Y'know...if I ever find myself in a situation where a mutant, hyena-swine monster is glaring at me over the partially masticated corpse of my crazy-ass kidnapper, and then, this very same hyena-swine monster roars at me, "Now I am the Law! None shall escape! That is the Law!" do you want to know what I'm definitely not going to waste time doing? Hauling my kidnapper's corpulent ass over to the river and sit quietly as his monster animal children somberly eulogize him. Fuck that guy! This isn't the time for staid theological musings!

 

If there ever was a time where discretion could unequivocally be considered the better part of valor, I would say it would have to be right after the giant pig monster with emotional issues has just brutally murdered and feasted upon the man he considered to be both his father and his God, developed a taste for human flesh, and explicitly stated his intention of being the author of my gruesome and painful death. Screw introspection; run motherfucker!!!

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

I know this is an extreme example, but this movie is one reason why I never bought into Brando being the "Best Actor of a Generation." He's such a fucking prima donna, making outrageous demands on his fellow castmates and the production, not memorizing his lines, showing up late or never, and just generally being a prick, that any contributions he makes on screen cannot make of for the difficulties he causes behind the scenes. Wouldn't his movies have been better if he, you know, was a halfway decent human once in a while? You know, ran lines with the other actors? Didn't delay production because he's too fucking fat or too lazy to do his job?

[JacobJohnson 2]

I know this is an extreme example, but this movie is one reason why I never bought into Brando being the "Best Actor of a Generation." He's such a fucking prima donna, making outrageous demands on his fellow castmates and the production, not memorizing his lines, showing up late or never, and just generally being a prick, that any contributions he makes on screen cannot make of for the difficulties he causes behind the scenes. Wouldn't his movies have been better if he, you know, was a halfway decent human once in a while? You know, ran lines with the other actors? Didn't delay production because he's too fucking fat or too lazy to do his job?

 

Your memory goes when you get older, you can't remember lines. He was like 50 years old in the Godfather,dude. His generation was people born in the 20s. He is an old man in these movies, he doesn't care. That holds true in most walks of life. As an actor he isn't protecting his legacy, he needs money for something. Notice how little work he did in this film? It is just a pay day

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

 

Your memory goes when you get older, you can't remember lines. He was like 50 years old in the Godfather,dude. His generation was people born in the 20s. He is an old man in these movies, he doesn't care. That holds true in most walks of life. As an actor he isn't protecting his legacy, he needs money for something. Notice how little work he did in this film? It is just a pay day

 

I dunno about him being the greatest actor of his generation. He was certainly very talented though. I bet constantly being told he was so great went to his head. It's also worth noting that one of his daughters committed suicide (she was schizophrenic) just before he was to begin filming on this. He could have been having a legit mental breakdown. Or, at the very least, be forgiven for not really having his heart in acting in this shitty, shit movie.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Rod Steiger tells this story about the legendary "coulda been a contender scene" from 'On the Waterfront.' They filmed all of Brando's coverage first, with Steiger dutifully saying his lines off screen and acting opposite Brando. When it came time to film Steiger's parts, Brando goes off to be a fucking movie star, leaving Steiger to act the most important scene in the movie alone. I don't give a shit how good of an actor you are or how famous you are, your colleague and coworker is doing a scene with you, making art AND commerce, in a film that employs hundreds of people. Couldn't you stick around and return the favor to someone who JUST did the same thing for you? At least to make everyone else's job easier?

 

Fuck that guy.

[Smigg 1488]

Hmmmm.... Post-It notes weren't released to the marketplace until 1977.... So either Caan is a liar or Marlon was doing some early field testing for 3M.

 

Or, he just stuck bits of paper on him and Caan just said post it notes.

[souprman 10477]

 

Or, he just stuck bits of paper on him and Caan just said post it notes.

Look, there's no need to be reasonable about this.

[Conal Cochran 21]

You know this movie is going to be shoddy when the very first voiceover says "our plane crashed in the vast south Pacific Ocean" ... as the onscreen title says "Java Sea".

[Napoi75 14]

In the scene where the little guy is naked, pay close attention to his body. He has a tail. More importantly, his tail is a dick. He has a dick tail.

[PapeleradeReciklaje 3]

maybe this is something silly but, why doctor Moreau has got to hide the remote in a safe? I mean, the whole purpose of a necklace is to have it around all the time (as seen in every other movie), isn't it?

 

(sorry for my english, spanish listener here)

[RyanSz 3140]

My thoughts on the reasoning for Dr. Moreau and the people that made this movie.

 

[Chasequarius 24]

I think my dream cast (alive or dead) for this movie would be Philip Seymour Hoffman as Moreau (doing a version of Lancaster Dodd from "The Master"), Tom Hardy as Montgomery, Jake Gyllenhaal as Edward Douglas, and Zoe Saldana as Aissa (Panther Woman). And it would be directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Heck, Ron Perlman's already in it, so he wouldn't even have to create a character for him!

[Kickpuncher 5012]

Having seen this when it came out (and having little memory of it, but that also means no memory of it being terrible, just weird), I was shocked at how fucking horrible this movie is. I was so glad that they really dug into what made it bad, because it wasn't just the usual HDTGM-worthy stuff, and I loved the description that it was like a bunch of scenes just thrown together. Like, there's no pacing, no narrative cohesion, no depth or logic to the characters, and so many unclear (or totally unexplained) things. I was thinking it should have been longer to fill in some gaps, but as they pointed out, there was stuff that had no reason to be there that they could have cut to compensate. So, has anyone seen the director's cut? Does it improve on any of this stuff?

 

Also, watching the movie made me realize that the book was the inspiration for this:

 

[Dedre_NvR 30]

It took me 3 days to finish this movie. I could only do about 30 minutes at a time, because it was...just...so...bad! Hands down the worst HDTGM yet (which also makes it one of the best). I'm very interested to hear Zouk's take on this movie, any chance he can get some comments in on the mini-sode?

 

Also, your question about which movie made you realise movies could be bad really made me think! Mine was watching Ghost Ship in cinema. Now I love watching bad movies, but that movie really left me disappointed, because I wasn't expecting it to be bad,

[McSmashington 521]

Boy, am I glad I skipped watching this movie.

 

Loved the episode, especially the depth of the behind the scenes stuff, but this movie sounded painful.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Boy, am I glad I skipped watching this movie.

 

Loved the episode, especially the depth of the behind the scenes stuff, but this movie sounded painful.

 

I think it was worth watching. I really want to see Lost Soul (the documentary Paul references a few times) now. I really just watched it for old Brando, but everything about it is so bananas, I had to keep watching after he was out of the picture.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I think my dream cast (alive or dead) for this movie would be Philip Seymour Hoffman as Moreau (doing a version of Lancaster Dodd from "The Master"), Tom Hardy as Montgomery, Jake Gyllenhaal as Edward Douglas, and Zoe Saldana as Aissa (Panther Woman). And it would be directed by Guillermo Del Toro. Heck, Ron Perlman's already in it, so he wouldn't even have to create a character for him!

 

Guillermo would probably knock this adaptation out of the park! We already know he has the best makeup artists and creature actors on call! So of course we have to add Doug Jones in on this too! I think if instead of making it futuristic and he just made it set in Victorian era like they said this was based off of then it would be even better!

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Omission: Thewlis flailing his arms above his head like a fucking weirdo after he ran out of the room with the "pregnant goat?" thing.

 

Also what was up with that scene where the evil dog son (jesus christ what the fuck am I typing here) shoots Lomai in the head with the bolt gun and then says he got the bolt gun from Thewlis and everyone just sort of looks over at him. Am I missing something when did all this happen.

 

Then theres when Kilmer is shot he falls straight back in his chair all comically in the middle of what is already a fucking mindbending scene.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Then theres seeing the documentary and realizing those poor pig women had to sit around for hours straight barechested with an additional four prosthetic breasts plastered on them for hours on end not knowing if they were even going to shoot that day.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Omission: Thewlis flailing his arms above his head like a fucking weirdo after he ran out of the room with the "pregnant goat?" thing.

 

Also what was up with that scene where the evil dog son (jesus christ what the fuck am I typing here) shoots Lomai in the head with the bolt gun and then says he got the bolt gun from Thewlis and everyone just sort of looks over at him. Am I missing something when did all this happen.

 

Then theres when Kilmer is shot he falls straight back in his chair all comically in the middle of what is already a fucking mindbending scene.

 

If I may, I have observations of my own that I think dovetail nicely with what you wrote...

 

Thewlis' acting. Dear God, I know the man can act, but for Christ's sake, make some eye contact! No matter who he was acting with he was always gazing either just off screen or somewhere in the ethereal middle-distance. I couldn't make out it if he was just trying to avoid getting an eyeful of Kilmer's junk or what was going on.

 

You bring up a good point in that none of the humans actually kill Lo-Mai. So later, should he really be surprised when Hyena-Swine betrays and kills him? You killed his or her (Hyena's are matriarchal after all) lover! Hey Hyena monster, I just killed your partner, can I roll with you? Oops...you shot me, who could have predicted this unfortunate turn of events?

 

I found the scene where Kilmer is shot to be deeply unsettling. Not because he dies, but because of the implication that I can have a dog, but should my dog somehow achieve human level of cognizance and despite any previous displays of loyalty he may have shown toward me, he will not hesitate to shoot my ass to be a part of the pack. Fucking dogs...always caving to peer pressure.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Thewlis' acting. Dear God, I know the man can act, but for Christ's sake, make some eye contact! No matter who he was acting with he was always gazing either just off screen or somewhere in the ethereal middle-distance. I couldn't make out it if he was just trying to avoid getting an eyeful of Kilmer's junk or what was going on.

 

YES! I feel like he spent 2/3 of his screen time just giving shit the side eye:

 

[Prof. Horatio Hufnagel 16]

I haven't watched this film in years, so I don't have anything to add except that this was another great episode even with my hazy recollections of this trainwreck.

 

I did want to mention what my first bad movie was, though. I specifically remember seeing Toys in the theater when I was around ten or so and being unimpressed and really confused by it. Almost twenty years later I would re-watch it, get extremely upset at its mediocrity, furiously type "TOYS SUCKS TERRIBLE MOVIE" etc. into the Google rabbit-hole hopeful that I would find a like-minded rant, and instead found a podcast with an entire episode devoted to this travesty of a movie. That plucky little podcast? How Did This Get Made?

 

And so a fan was born. All I can say is "thank you." Now I know I'll never be alone on a Friday commute again.

[denimgremlin 1179]

I haven't watched this film in years, so I don't have anything to add except that this was another great episode even with my hazy recollections of this trainwreck.

 

I did want to mention what my first bad movie was, though. I specifically remember seeing Toys in the theater when I was around ten or so and being unimpressed and really confused by it. Almost twenty years later I would re-watch it, get extremely upset at its mediocrity, furiously type "TOYS SUCKS TERRIBLE MOVIE" etc. into the Google rabbit-hole hopeful that I would find a like-minded rant, and instead found a podcast with an entire episode devoted to this travesty of a movie. That plucky little podcast? How Did This Get Made?

 

And so a fan was born. All I can say is "thank you." Now I know I'll never be alone on a Friday commute again.

 

I love that story!

[TracyComeau 4]

There was a great article in Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. They interviewed Stanley about why he left this movie and how it drove him out of the business. And basically, it was Val Kilmer that drove him so up a wall that he went to the studio and complained after three days how off the wall Kilmer's requests were, and they fired him. Even though I hated this movie, the article (which also covered Stanley's becoming an extra on the set, although he denies any attempts of sabotage) was completely fascinating.