Legendary movie I only saw once, back in the day when it was released. I remember watching it with mouth wide open, aghast at what I was seeing. It's widely regarded as one of the worst films in history, and in many ways it is, if you consider the quality of the cast, director and budget.But revisiting it 20 years later after seeing the interesting documentary "Lost Souls" about this car crash of a movie, I didn't find it quite so bad. It's poor, no doubt about it, but it's not tedious and mind numbing in a Battlefield Earth kind of way and nowhere near real dross like Batman & Robin or The Spirit. It's entertaining for many reasons, chief among them being Marlon Brando's blatant trolling of the entire production, insisting on wearing white make up and using buckets instead of hats to keep his head cool. His performance is worth the admission alone.The rest is worth watching for the implosion of Val Kilmer's career as an A-List actor. Fresh from the success of films like The Doors, Batman Forever and Heat he was apparently extremely arrogant during the making of this film, and he just oozes apathy in every scene he's in. If he truly was as insufferable as he's been accused of in "Lost Souls" then karma certainly paid him a visit here, as his career never recovered from this wreck. Fairuza Balk is decent and tries her best with weak material, Ron Perlman is solid as always, but David Thewlis is miscast, his North England accent and bad teeth detracting from his performance. But those scenes with Brando and the worlds smallest man as his freaky sidekick are pure gold.The make up effects are decent, and the location is gorgeous. Everything else is terrible. But it's certainly entertaining, even if it for all the wrong reasons.

This movie is very very dumb, The writing is awful and makes no sense, the reasoning/motivation for every action makes no sense, the lines are awful. It's obvious Brando just did stuff and no one could say anything because "hes Brando" so the film suffers from his decisions (such as wearing a bucket of ice on his head for no reason).I will say this; The acting itself is well done. The actors/actresses do an amazing job with the terrible script, plot, motivations, and direction of the movie. Fairuza Balk does an amazing job and actually took me away from the terrible movie briefly with her great acting. I gave this 2/10 instead of a 1 because of the great acting by Fairuza Balk and David Thewlis.It's a shame because I think all the actors and actresses really wanted to work on the project because it was with Brando and it was the first major film for some of them. Unfortunately Brando's arrogance, terrible writing, terrible plot, bad directing all sink the movie.A few ways I think I would improve the film is this; use less camera shots, stick with just the shot of them in the car pulling up to the compound instead of showing the whole place in 5 different shots. I think for this movie, less shots would have helped keep the mystery and the creepy of the island. Besides that the writing needed a huge overhaul and the actors (not Brando) needed more of a say.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)** (out of 4)Edward Douglas (David Thewlis) is found floating at sea in a raft and is saved when a boat being led by a man named Montgomery (Val Kilmer) comes to the rescue. The two men end up back on an island where all sorts of strange creatures are. These creatures, it turns out, are the work of Dr. Moreau (Marlon Brando) who is trying to creature the perfect mix of human and animal.When I originally saw this film in 1996 I was shocked at how bad it was and I couldn't help but wonder how it turned out so bad. Then we got a brilliant documentary by David Gregory, which explains what happened during the production so I decided to re-visit the movie and I was surprised to see that time has actually been rather kind to the picture. There's no question that it's still a complete mess, which is no wonder considering what happened during the production but at the same time there's quite a bit of good things to be had here.For starters, the special effects are actually wonderful and this is especially true for the make-up effects. The animal people's make-up is terrific and you actually feel as if you're looking at a real mix between humans and animals. Of course, these effects are a major step up from the stuff we had seen in earlier version. Another major plus is that the story manages to do a good job in the creatures "problems" with who they are. There are many scenes where they want to know if they're human or some sort of animal and I found these scenes to be rather intelligent.The performances are also something that took a beating when the film was originally released but outside of Kilmer phoning in his performance, what we get here is actually pretty good. Thewlis makes for a good leading man and Fairuza Balk is good in her role of the panther woman. The various actors who appear as the creatures do a very good job at well and especially how hard it is to "act" with all that make-up on. Then, there's Marlon Brando. I hated his performance the first time I saw it but I must admit that it worked for me on this viewing. I thought he did a rather good job playing the "father" to these and I actually liked the way he tried to parent these creatures.Of course, that doesn't cover some of the really bad stuff here including the entire sequence with the ice bucket on his head. Other decisions the actor made like the white make-up was also incredibly silly and just doesn't fit in the film. Another problem with the movie is the entire relationship between Douglas and the panther woman just doesn't work. There's also obvious issues with the production that shines through including a rather action-packed and silly ending. I'd also argue that it just seems like the original film wanted to be something more intelligent but that was scraped.THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU still isn't a good movie but at the same time it's certainly not as bad as it was viewed in 1996. I'm one of the people who really crushed this film when it was released but this latest viewing had me seeing it a tad bit better. Still, you can't help but call this a disappointment since the materials were there for something much better.

Balk smolders. So what? Brando emotes. Interesting. Kilmer embarrasses himself. Perlman growls. Thewlis tries. Worth watching just to see how bad a movie with a great cast and a great director can be. Gratuitous violence, but tame by today's standards. Doesn't help. The 1977 version had Barbara Carrera, so we forgive that. The original (Island of Lost Souls), even in black and white, with a low budget, is far better. This cast makes the ailing, hammy Bela Lugosi look like Oscar material. Brando, for all his talent, doesn't touch Laughton. Frankenheimer makes a couple of points. Men and animals aren't that far apart. The law is determined by the point of a gun. And artistic pretension doesn't make a bad movie better. Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.