Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.


***This review is my entry in Lynus’ Let’s See You Review This Write-Off. A Write-Off I was very much in favor of, until it came to pass that I was given this movie to review. I had hopes of being given some obscure work of wonder that I might not ordinarily encounter. Even when I saw the title displayed on Lynus’ profile page, I held some brief hope that I might be reviewing the 1977 version with Burt Lancaster and Michael York, which is not altogether good, but is at least somewhat interesting in that it turns the tables on the original story. Unfortunately for me, the link provided went to this version, which I had already seen, conveniently blocked from my memory, and was now forced to view again. This, the work of jankp. I have apparently done some grievous harm to her in the past, and herein we find that revenge will be had even if it need come to us in most peculiar circumstances.***




H.G. Wells is a name that is well-known in literature. This is not, however, a result of his works being particularly masterful. His popularity comes more from the fact that he was doing something rather different, and he knew precisely how to do what he was doing. Given what is rather a simple idea, Wells put together a fairly short story, and managed in that short space to say a great deal. He also managed to give us his impressions/commentary as can be related to the topic, without it seeming hopelessly preachy, or that there were no real purpose to the story apart from delivering this commentary. In short, Wells gave us a story that is unique, brimming with thought, actually scary, and (being written just prior to the turn of the century) can easily be thought of as ‘ahead of its time’.

H.G. Wells is certainly not the first name that would come to mind if I were asked to name some truly great writers. However, if I were asked how one can tell a truly great story, and/or pack a lot of ‘meat’ into a very short space, Wells would probably be mentioned, and this story in particular.

If, on the other hand, someone asked me for some sort of advice on how to take a story and make it into a movie that utterly ruins it, or, more generally, how to make a whole movie which doesn’t seem to say anything, this movie would leap instantly to mind.


The failure of this movie seems to me a direct result of someone looking at something which was done by a master (though I should not say that Wells was a master of literature in general, he was certainly a master at doing what he did), and thinking, quite incorrectly, that it could be done better. It is pretty clear that the attempt was made to improve on the story, and to cover the themes in a way that is (to someone’s mind) ‘better’ or more ‘serious’, 'deep', or perhaps 'modern'. Instead of this movie being what you might think of as an homage to a great work, or something done in honor of such a work, it is the work of someone who came at something he liked (we must assume) with the idea that he could make it better.




The first stages of the story actually follow the original somewhat closely. Our man is one Edward Douglas (David Thewlis - ‘Seven Years in Tibet’, ‘The Big Lebowski’) who is shipwrecked, floating adrift in a life raft, and finds himself in the midst of a life-or-death struggle to survive on that raft. He is soon retrieved from his predicament by a passing ship, and saved by the medical attention given him by a man known only as Montgomery (Val Kilmer).

Here we see that the movie attempts to begin its statement far earlier than the book. In the life raft we see a violent (and ludicrous) struggle, calling our attention to the ‘animalness’ of man. In fact, this scene (to anyone who has read the original work) points to itself shamelessly as being a sort of ‘call to theme’, by way of its divergence from the source material. In the original story, this encounter is very subdued, not in the least bit graphic, and the two men die more by accident than anything else. Also, being that the whole thing is being narrated by our main character, the scene is all but needless in the movie, unless of course, we are trying to throw our theme at our audience.

In any event, we soon reach the island, and, contrary to the book, Douglas is forced, much to his dismay, to disembark with Montgomery and await some future deliverance to civilization. I say contrary to the book, not, obviously, because Douglas lands, but because in the book it is not actually to his dismay. In the book, Montgomery has not alienated Douglas yet, and in fact intrigues him, as does the curious shipment of animals which Montgomery is taking to the island.

Also contrary to the book, Douglas is not refused from the island by Moreau, but rather is encouraged by Montgomery to come to the island.

Once brought to the house of Moreau, Douglas meets Aissa (Fairuza Balk - who has never yet been as good as she was in ‘Return to Oz’, but who has also been in ‘The Craft’, ‘The Waterboy’, and ‘Almost Famous’). The character of Aissa is wholly created for the movie, although she is clearly an expansion of, and bastardization of, the puma in the book. Aissa and, in a much more theoretical way, the puma represent the achievement of some measure of finality for Dr. Moreau’s work. In the book we only have hints that something may come of Moreau’s work with the puma. In the movie, we are shown the ‘perfection’ that is Aissa. This is actually the only move the movie makes which I can, if not agree with, at least accept. As the story is (at least in part) an allegory for the role and use of science in the world, I am not completely at odds with the demonstration that the ‘madness’ does get somewhere, as opposed to Wells’ version which only hints that there is some small hope that it may get somewhere (which is perhaps more meaningful in his time than in ours), especially when we really have only Moreau’s word to give us that hope.

After meeting Aissa, our hero soon finds himself locked in his room by Montgomery, and his apprehension at what strange things he might have seen grows. (Though Douglas is locked in his room in the book, there isn't quite as sinister an aspect to it as here, and it is pretty clear that it is done in the movie the way it is only to make us scared/unsure of Montgomery, an aspect missing from the book as well, and so that Douglas can perform what I believe Maxwell Smart refers to as 'the old slide the paper under the door, push the key through the hole so that it lands on the paper, and get the key by pulling the paper back under the door' trick. A trick which we might excuse were it actually in the 100 year-old source material, but being that it isn't is really stupid)

To speed things along, Douglas soon learns the secret of the island when he and Aissa ‘escape’. He is confronted by Moreau and Montgomery and has things explained to him. Moreau is doing experiments which change animals into human form. Many of these animals, which roam the island, are less than perfect examples of his work. These animals live in a sort of village, and live according to a certain set of laws. Moreau implants each of his ‘creatures’ with an electronic device such that he can deliver them with incredible pain, thus he can control them. The animals see him basically as God and deliverer of the law. When one of these creatures is found to have broken the law (by killing a rabbit), Moreau holds a ‘trial’ to deliver justice. This enables another of the creatures to discover the secret of the implant, remove his own, and all hell breaks loose.


As I said, we have the same simple story, but a wildly different telling of it, and something of a shift in theme. In the book, Moreau (played in the movie by Marlon Brando) is simply what you might view as a ‘scientist gone wrong’, and not an absolute nut or a decidedly evil person. We are, of course, meant to see him as evil (and possibly as a nut), but he is not portrayed as such in terms so harsh and unforgiving. Moreau is supposed to be evil, not because he hurts the animals, but because he simply doesn’t care if he hurts them or not. Moreau, in the book, is not an evil scientist, he is merely science incarnate, moving from experiment to experiment without considering their effects.

Moreau in the movie, on the other hand, works from the standpoint of a man with a ‘cause’. He believes he is on the road to making something ‘better than people’. He believes he has seen the evil in people under his microscope, and he is making a new breed of people who will not have this as part of them. He is making his own race of uberpeople. Moreau in the book was only doing his experiments on the animals from the standpoint of one who is experimenting to learn what can be done. Perhaps he believes he can make these 'lives' somewhat better, but it is mostly a side issue.

Moreau in the movie also builds on, caters to, and we are led to believe began, the idea in his creatures that he is God. He sees himself in these terms, and thinks of the creatures as his children; believing that he should occupy this role. Moreau in the book held no such beliefs, and was only dimly aware that the creatures had such ideas, though he did use the ‘law’ to serve his purposes when necessary. He was only aware of his creations on the island in the cursory way that ‘science’ is aware of old experiments.


The movie also breaks away from the original work in its portrayal of Montgomery. During the first half of the movie it is difficult to pick a winner in the ‘Nut of the Island’ competition. While Moreau may be a lunatic scientist, Montgomery seems to be simply a lunatic for its own sake. Montgomery of the book was more along the order of a man of circumstance, who found his way to the island, and was really none too happy about it. He was also a drunkard, and one might think with good reason, which was the cause of most of his behavior that might seem ‘unworthy’. Montgomery of the movie is simply a nut who seems to like the idea. He is given the fondness for the creatures that he had in the book, but this, like everything else, goes overboard.

Where Montgomery of the book falls into a sort of despair at the death of Moreau, and is killed while venting his frustration with Douglas (whose name, by the way, isn’t Douglas in the book), under uncertain circumstances; Montgomery of the movie simply snaps upon Moreau’s death, becomes utterly deranged, and is rather boringly murdered by the creatures.

The Sayer of the Law is transformed into a much more important character, and allowed to live to the end of the movie so that he can impart some last wisdom to us (read further bash us in the end with the movie’s preaching).

Douglas himself is a greatly different ‘beast’ than in the book. Douglas in the book is a fairly ordinary ‘everyman’. Douglas in the movie is a creature hard to describe. Unless, that is, we speak in terms of glaring generalities on the ‘weakness’ of man. Douglas is a coward of the highest order, snapping into the fetal position at any hint of danger (he does this at least three times during the movie).

This is perhaps the strangest change. Moreau and Douglas of the book were pretty clearly meant to express their individual neutralities, and definitely not their polarities. The point of Moreau (and opinions may differ) is to deliver a commentary opposed to the necessity of a moral evil to incite us. Moreau, if anything, is close to morally neutral, as one might say that science is morally netural. Wells is trying to counter certain ideas about science. Where scientists and those opposed to them argue as to whether or not there is any ‘evil’ in certain aspects of science; the scientists naturally arguing their moral neutrality, Wells allows science the neutrality it argues for, and claims that this can be despised as much as the evil they claim they avoid.

Douglas, on the other hand, is portrayed in the book as quite the average of mankind, if perhaps a bit more insightful. He is not the bravest of the brave by any means, but he is certainly no coward. In making him a mouse, along with throwing in a ‘final battle’ whereby Douglas ‘wins’ by way of outfoxing the hound, the movie overstates the lack of animal in him, and attempts to point to the ‘rightness’ of this sort of ‘man’.

At the end, Douglas narrates, to the accompaniment of a very bizarre, stock footage montage of human violence, his thoughts on ‘man’ and ‘animal’, just as our hero did in the book.

With the many shifts in the story (including the removal of the ‘house of pain’ idea), this ending soliloquy becomes a statement more about this individual man, and comes to us as almost an afterthought. In the book, this closing is the whole point of the story, is about mankind in general, and the idea is not that the particular man is any ‘better’ than anyone else because he ‘sees’ the animal that lives within mankind, but that it is plain for anyone to see, and we oughtn’t look.



John Frankenheimer (who I hate to speak ill of as he passed only a few months ago), either simply didn’t understand the point of the original story, or wanted to change it in order to make a new point, and didn’t understand that point.

There is nothing particularly wrong with Frankenheimer’s work, and some of it from the 50's and 60's is actually quite good. However, he was a director much more suited to things that are fairly ‘easy’, and this is obviously something that goes far beyond him, despite the obvious fact that he believed he went far beyond it.



The book is a concise story with a very definite end in mind, that makes a clear, allegorical statement, is actually pretty scary, and doesn’t think too much of itself.

The movie is a wandering, babbling walk through a nuthouse, that has very little to say (and won't stop saying it), is not really concerned with its own point (moving it all to the fringes in an effort to be really scary), is not in the least bit scary, and thinks so much of itself you can’t possibly take it seriously.


The general themes which were fairly interesting and relevant in 1896, are rather old 100 years later, and perhaps the movie knows this to be the case, and that is why we get what we get. This also seems a mistake to me. To reiterate the statement made 100 years ago can at least be seen as honoring the maker of the statement, and/or of historical significance. To muck around with that statement in order to make a new statement makes it look as though you think this is some new information, and/or that you are the only one who has ‘seen the light’ (which, in fact, really seems to be the case).


Wells made a subtle, relevant statement contained within a story that sparked the imagination. This movie makes a statement that is no longer ‘live’, and does so by way of outrageous hyperbole, and in a way that condescends to its audience, and in a manner so riddled with meaningless splash only for the sake of splash that it dulls the senses.

Even if we were to have as much pity on the movie as possible, and make no comparisons whatever to the source material, it is a hopelessly ugly, self-gratifying spectacle that can’t manage to scare, interest, or even keep its audience.


Not only do I not recommend it, it is easily one of the worst movies I can recall. Why not just read the original story? It takes about the same time.




It is actually humorous to reflect on how this movie illustrates the designs of the original Moreau. Slicing and grafting, tearing apart the work of nature (or whatever work came before) and splicing the pieces together again into some new creation merely because one can. Thereby creating things sad, hopeless, and in some way hollow which illicit emotion from us only in the 'shadow of the true thing' properties they possess.

Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD