The essential plot of this is much like King Kong. In fact, I wonder if Kong as a story was basically ripping off the Moreau story. A bunch of foolhardy explorers come to a remote island where they find some weird indiginous people guarding a secret. That movie the secret was a giant monkey. This movie, the secret is half man half animal mutants that are taking orders from a mad scientist.
I guess a lot of these older movies have a lot in common really. The twisted perversion of science giving way to some sort of abomination or something truly evil is the major theme. This was fear of technology before it was cool, manifesting itself in the artistic mind.
Once our troop in this movie gets to the island, there is absolutely no build towards any reveal, because they are practically greeted at the shore by these hairy mutants. I think they have a dialogue about how it's just the native look, no big deal, but in short it's a thin excuse and once we learn the "truth" later it's kinds like - yeah, I know, obviously.
There's a lot of dialogue and the movie being just over one hour it still felt like it fucking crawled by. Dr. Moreau in this is played by Charles Laughton, and he is given a lot of explanation and talking as we plug along. And suffice to say, this movie was a short trip to yawns-ville, population me.
Bela Lugosi has a small role and should've been in the movie more, and other than that, there's not much to say. 1 star.
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