In the last episode of the novel
The Island of Doctor Moreau
, its protagonist asserted: "I have no hope that the terror of the island will ever leave me."
Although the Englishman HG Wells wrote these words in 1896, the phrase could perfectly have been pronounced a hundred years later by some of the participants in a filming that took place in northwest Australia, that of the adaptation of the book itself, whose premiere it has just turned a quarter of a century.
With a six-week production schedule that ended up being extended to six months, the film's shoot quickly became known as one of the most chaotic in Hollywood history due to its change in director from Richard Stanley to John Frankenheimer right out of the box. or by the conflicting behavior of its volcanic stars, Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. A closer look at the story leaves those details as the harmless tip of the iceberg.
The
2014
documentary
Lost Soul: Richard Stanley's Cursed Journey to the Island of Dr. Moreau
analyzed what happened from the perspective of the fired director, with testimonials from the team and the studio that produced the film, New Line Cinema . One of the reasons why the work generated interest among fans of fantasy - it won the award for Best Documentary at the Sitges Festival that year - was not only the curiosity of knowing first-hand the ins and outs of the filming of
La isla del Dr. Moreau
, but because of the reappearance of Stanley, a promise of the genre in the early nineties for films like
Hardware, programmed to kill
(1990), of whom they had hardly heard from again.
Thanks to the extensive statement he offered in the documentary directed by David Gregory, we learned, for example, that Richard Stanley, of
Wiccan
beliefs
(a religion linked to witchcraft), had resorted to spells to get the job or that his ambitious script included Inter-species fellatio and genital mutilation in the foreground.
Promotional poster for 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' featuring actor Mark Dacascos portrayed as one of the strange creatures in the film.Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
Directing the adaptation of
The Island of Dr. Moreau
was one of Stanley's big dreams. The story of the castaway who arrives, by accident, on the land where a mad scientist has gone into exile to carry out his experiments on vivisection of animals fascinated the filmmaker, who spent four years developing the script and imagining the designs of the creatures or the scenarios. His link by direct descent with the explorer Henry M. Stanley (1841-1904), author of the phrase "Livingstone, I suppose", collaborator of King Leopold II of Belgium in the genocide of the Congo and inspiration of Joseph Conrad for the character of Kurtz In
Heart of Darkness
(1899), it also served to win the approval of Marlon Brando, interpreter of Kurtz in
Apocalypse Now.
(1979).
And that unexpected good relationship between the director, then only 29 years old, and the difficult Brando was enough for the studio to trust, first, in Richard Stanley.
So much so that New Line allocated 40 million dollars to the project (the equivalent of more than 57 million euros today), although this implied ignoring some other signals.
"When my assistant asked us what we wanted to drink, [Stanley] said 'a coffee, please, with three or four sugars', and that's when I realized that something about the guy didn't add up,"
the founder
sardonically recalled in
Lost Soul
from the studio, Robert Shaye, on his first meeting with the director.
Richard Stanley's little taste for attending work meetings, inexperience at the helm of a blockbuster - his most expensive film,
The Demon of the Desert
(1992), had had a five million dollar budget - and other erratic features in his This behavior (such as calling a producer at dawn to request a hotel change for mysterious reasons) led executive Tim Zinnemann to propose that a million and a half dollars be added to the contingency budget, that is, in case the director had to be changed. Just three days after filming began off the coast of Cairns, Australia, the million and a half piggy bank was opened.
Director Richard Stanley during the presentation of the film 'Color out of space' at the Sitges Film Festival in 2019.David Zorrakino / Europa Press / Europa Press via Getty Images
Problems mutate
In 1995, daughter Marlon Brando committed suicide, leaving her participation in the project hanging by a thread. With her, the protected status that Richard Stanley believed he had secured. In fact, the other star, Val Kilmer, had been staunchly opposed to the filmmaker from minute one. With
Batman Forever
just released, Kilmer was at his commercial peak and directing him was an arduous task. He had asked for a change of character, which was granted, and, as different members of the team agreed in the documentary
Lost Soul
, he was confronting Stanley in every creative aspect: from his own and other people's lines of dialogue to camera shots.
Also, from the set in the jungle of Cairns, Australia, strange news kept coming: the director, supposedly, had finished one of the days perched on a tree so as not to speak to anyone or panicked when a hurricane swept the set of filming, the tension with Kilmer was the trigger for the studio to switch to John Frankenheimer without a week having elapsed. Rumors that Stanley planned to burn the set in retaliation also led New Line Cinema to ask him to leave the island, but the former employee disappeared into the woods without a trace.
Thus, the veteran Frankenheimer, responsible for classics such as
The Messenger of Fear
(1962), joined the film with his trusted assistant, James Sbardellati, who observed with bewilderment how Stanley and the producers had planned part of the shooting at the rainiest point. from Australia, only to have a mountain in the background in the exterior shots that the humidity never allowed to see. The character of the new director failed to appease a rebellious Val Kilmer, who, according to several witnesses, had come to put out a cigarette in the face of one of the workers. “Even if I directed a movie called
The Life of Val Kilmer
, I wouldn't work with that sucker again!” Frankenheimer is said to have yelled.
Val Kilmer in a scene from 'The Island of Dr. Moreau.' New Line Cinema / Getty Images
The German actor Marco Hofschneider had also seen his screen presence diminished because Val Kilmer did not like to share a shot with him.
And the final landing of Marlon Brando, far from fixing things, was his sentence.
Frankenheimer had a terrible opinion of Richard Stanley's script and had demanded a rewrite, but the interpreter of
The Godfather
He also came to Australia with his own ideas. Hofschneider played M'Ling, Dr. Moreau's butler, but Brando had become fond of the Dominican actor Nelson de la Rosa, a 71-centimeter-tall dwarf, so he made the radical decision to replace the Teutonic interpreter and that, instead, De la Rosa accompanied him continuously on screen, as his right hand. The costume team created miniature replicas of Brando's clothes against the clock for the two to be matched. The result inspired comedian Mike Myers to create Mini Yo, Dr. Maligno's henchman in the
Austin Powers
saga
.
The contributions of Brando (who did not learn his phrases and asked to be recited by a little earpiece, visible in several planes) went further. He claimed that Moreau suffered from an aggressive allergy to the sun and that is why, outdoors, it had to be impregnated in a striking white cream, which, coincidentally, made it easier for a stuntman to take long takes instead. Also, due to the heat, he requested that a cube with ice be added to the character's head. Later, in development of this idea, he asked John Frankenheimer to stop production "six or eight weeks" to rewrite the film together: it occurred to him that Dr. Moreau could be a dolphin, and the cube with ice would have the justification to keep him hydrated . This last demand was not attended. The consensus of the interviewees in
Lost Soul
is that Brando did not take the film seriously and sought to sabotage it, although in the documentary
Val
(2021), Val Kilmer defends that his co-star had a creative vision that Frankenheimer failed to appreciate.
Director John Frankenheimer on the set of 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' in 1996. Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
The chaos continued during the half year of production. The dwarf Nelson de la Rosa, powerful under the protection of Marlon Brando, came to attack Marco Hofschneider and his sexual comments to the women on the set became frequent. The extra Neil Young - nothing to do with the Canadian musician - who in the film played a human boar, said: “The night shoots ended with a huge consumption of alcohol. Lots of people slept with the wrong people. Many drugs were used. With time, the thing was degenerating more and more ”.
In fact, in the film's documentary, there are fragments of semi-porn videos shot by the actors, clad in the elaborate monster prostheses that craftsman Stan Winston
(Jurassic Park)
had put together for the film.
When more extras were needed, a commune of hippies living in the woods was recruited and in which, since his dismissal, ex-director Richard Stanley had been, who took the opportunity to infiltrate the set disguised as a dog man.
The
Sesame Street
Satan
"I would like to give a true account of what the production of the film was like, but I'm afraid I won't go back to work if I do." With those words, actor David Thewlis, the real protagonist of
The Island of Dr. Moreau
, expressed his decision to keep quiet about the filming of the film and not participate in the documentary
Lost Soul
, where he is not even mentioned. Thewlis, popular for his role as Professor Lupine in the
Harry Potter
films
, did not appear on the poster or in promotional events and that, in the end, made him the least affected by the storm of criticism that followed the premiere. Rated by critic Brandon Judell as "
Sesame Street
of Satan ”, the final result raised 49.6 million dollars worldwide, which meant losses for New Line Cinema, which had invested more than the initial 40 million for the promotion and contingencies.
Marlon Brando, meanwhile, won the Razzie and Stinkers awards for worst actor of the year.
Marlon Brando with one of his creatures in 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' .Mondadori Portfolio / Mondadori via Getty Images
John Frankenheimer offered little comment: he considered it all a bad experience.
Richard Stanley retired to shoot shorts and documentaries in Montsegur, France, until his public reappearance with
Lost Soul
.
Thanks to her, he was able to direct again: in 2019, he released his first fiction feature film in 27 years,
Color Out of Space
, to rave reviews.
, starring Nicolas Cage. His success led the SpecterVision label to hire him for a trilogy based on works by HP Lovecraft. Shortly after, the director's ex-wife, the writer and screenwriter Scarlett Amaris, published a harsh text detailing the violent and psychological abuse to which the filmmaker allegedly subjected him (which even included the dissemination of intimate images of the couple): now the producer has canceled the agreement. In addition to filing a complaint, Amaris has reported that Richard Stanley has, apart from, an additional open case for mistreating another woman.
Since these events were known, on platforms such as the film social network Letterboxd the role of Richard Stanley's victim in the filming has been questioned, and even in the file of the documentary
Lost Soul you
can now see comments from the
Wiccan
community
critical of him director from the perspective of witchcraft. "[Dark magic] can make abusers seem powerful and otherworldly," reflects one of the messages. While everything indicates that his eventful career is now over, the supposedly disastrous film from which he was fired, 25 years later, does not seem to be forgotten.
The island of Dr. Moreau
it continues to attract viewers, perhaps, for one of the reasons that writer and critic Zach Vasquez gave in the defense that he published this year in
The Guardian
: "It is too strange and too memorable to be dismissed as garbage."
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