Attack of the Final Girls is a podcast about the horror genre, so listener discretion is advised. Please check the show notes for specific content warnings for this episode, and of course, beware of spoilers. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Attack of the Final Girls. I'm Teresa and I'm Juliette and we're here to talk about a movie that just happened to us.
I've never seen this movie before. This is my very first time. And I feel like my brain is a little smooshy afterwards. Like a cat's been making biscuits on my head. But it was necessary. We did this movie to sort of celebrate the work of the late Val Kilmer who passed away earlier this month.
and you know huge wild body of work going all the way from like gritty crime stuff to funny stuff to the batman and not the batman but batman and you know everything in between and so we were like well let's do a horror movie that val kilmer did and i was like i've never seen island of dr moreau and that's like a body horror ish movie and juliette was like oh boy here we go here we go my partner was like oh Oh, I will never leave you. Yeah.
And you know what? It never left the people who made the movie. It's true. It had a lasting impression. This movie came out on my birthday in 1996. Oh, happy birthday. So I saw it for my birthday in 1996 in the theater. 14? 13. 13, oh my god. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. My mom like has forgotten.
That we saw this. I can't remember. I. assume that she actually watched it with us but i know i drugged my poor friend shannon to go see this so sorry for the trauma uh if you're listening to this sorry shannon yeah i have been trying to figure out what in the hell made me want to see this movie like obviously i saw like a trailer for it on tv or something like that like what was it that i was like i need to see this and the only thing i could land on
aside from the fact that 1996 was a really good year for movies, is that this was about the time i was like turning 13 starting to see a lot of movies on my own or like with friends but my friends all wanted to see like romantic comedy I also got drunk to see Jerry Maguire in the theater by my friends. Also a horror movie, a different way. Yeah, yeah. Different kind of horror movie.
and actually there's a whole i won't bore you with the story of me seeing twister but that was a sort of an accidental result of my friends wanting to see like romantic comedies in the theater so i'm guessing at this point although i was definitely like watching the x-files i wouldn't have maybe called myself a horror fan that i was probably like
starting to, like, seek out movies that were a little different than, like, the majority of my friends were into and, like, trying to, like, really assert my own tastes. Do you think it was also because the beasts kind of look like the cats from Cats? And you're like, Jalicoca? No, I hated cats. Okay, fair. I did not like cats. Phantom of the Opera girly all the way. Maybe you were like all the cats will die. Maybe. I think it's more that it probably looked like X-File.
You know, I was probably like, this is weird. And the poster's like green, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that would be my guess. scream was not out yet but the craft was already out so i was probably also just like ferrugia balk yay and also like i loved val kilmer's batman yeah like I'm the exact right age for his Batman movie. You know, like, Batman Returns.
I remember when it came out, but I was, like, maybe just a titch too young to see it in the theater. Like, I saw it afterward. But, like, Val Kilmer Batman was kind of, like, my Batman. Yeah. So I think it was, like, Val Kilmer, Faruja Balk, looks like X-Files. Let's go. Were you team Val Kilmer as a hottie? I don't remember. Okay. Yeah. What about now? Like, if you look back on his work then, now, are you like, yeah, Val Kilmer can get it.
um depends on the movie but yeah sure why not i mean batman val kilmer he was pretty hot yeah yeah and like top gun val kilmer like hot but also a total dickhead so oh yeah yeah yeah i mean top gun not maverick like Maverick was great but anyways um So I, although I've never seen this movie, I know of the story. I know the H.J. Wells story.
I went through a whole H.G. Wells phase. My dad was obsessed with H.G. Wells. Like, I think I told you in another episode, we had the record of War of the Worlds, but it was like to metal music.
So it was really cool. My dad was obsessed with Wells. So I went through like a whole HG Wells phase and Island of Dr. Moreau was one of those. And I would say that like, resolution wise this movie stays like fairly on board with the overarching story not some of the finer details but like man goes to island where dude who went crazy is is now like splicing the genome and now in the story it's vivisection so it's like more of a surgical thing but also that story was written in 1896
So like gene splicing and shit was like not a thing, not even a thing that they could possibly think about. So it was vivisection that they were using, but it's like, dude goes to island, crazy dude is there, you know, splicing humans with animals. Dude leaves the island and is like, questions humanity you know like and and animals so as to that it kind of stays fairly faithful
Totally. The bones are there. Yeah, the bones are there. And honestly, one of the notes I... took during the movie is that not only are the bones there, but the couple of ways that they modernized the sort of spirit of Dr. Moreau's experimentation, the sort of mad science of it all. Again, like, the ideas are good. The execution? Questionable, but like...
The gene splicing thing and using chips to control the sort of creature people with electroshocks, like to modernize it in that way. I thought, great idea. Great concept. Yeah.
questionable execution but great ideas yeah the idea is very solid and 96 was also a very interesting time like i'm thinking titanic you know i'm thinking of like instances where science was progressing and everybody was stoked about it like twister was kind of a product of that too like people became obsessed with weather science people were obsessed with shipwrecks because of titanic like
those things were happening and island of dr murrow like firmly sandwiches itself in between like cool horrific like cautionary tale and also advances in science that we're able like i mean face off is another example of that
face off is cool because it was like not we weren't there yet but it was like dealing with some edge science of like swapping faces and shit so this was a cool time 96 was a very cool time in terms of science i'm sorry in 2025 that we're not at the exciting science time anymore. I mean I'm just glad in 2025 that we can say the word science without being arrested. So you know there's that.
i i don't mean i'm laughing because i'm crying on the end um but yeah this movie it was hitting that sweet spot of science fiction but also like burgeoning real science i mean nobody as far as we're aware has an island where they're actually splicing humans and animals but like
Like, there's lots of islands in the world, so, like... I mean, they are, like, trying to create Jurassic Park right now. That's true. Which just begs the question, like, do you know cinema? We did Resurrect Dire Wolves, like, two weeks ago, so... Yeah, yeah, woolly mice. Guys. Like, Michael Crichton.
wrote the whole thing out for us. Michael Crane's like, can we learn our lessons? I've made so much money off of this and yet y'all haven't learned. There are like seven movies. None of them end well. There's one coming out this year. And it's probably not going to end well. No, I don't think so.
So the other interesting part of this is that although I had never seen it before now, The underlying and outlying circumstances around the production and release of this movie are so legendary that even if you've never seen it, you've probably heard about some. batshit Val Kilmer or Marlon Brando, etc.
stories. Mostly I would say that the root of the wildness that happened on this set is specifically because of Marlon Brando and everybody else just kind of went like parallel rowdy to Marlon Brando. Yeah, so this movie has gotten a lot of renewed attention because in 2014 there was a documentary called Lost Soul, The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau.
It was kind of a fan favorite on sort of the horror festival circuit for a while. And I think it's one that especially has become a fan favorite during like pandemic streaming time where people were like, really leaning into sort of like documentaries and docu-series about like weird stuff that goes wild in the real world because i'm just sitting here in my living room being sad so i feel like people have been paying a lot more attention to this movie it's one of those movies that i feel like
was nearly a forgotten film for a while, you know, or just like something that just sort of got lost in the, um, shuffle of history and now like people know this movie and talk about this movie a lot between that documentary val kilmer's autobiography and the documentary that he made about his life there's been a lot of conversation about this movie and richard stanley's return to film too to feature film with color of space also brought a lot of people
to the documentary and then to this movie again yeah this definitely is a movie that got rediscovered after a certain period of time i mean i was six when it came out so this is like way too I mean, my parents were irresponsible, but they definitely weren't irresponsible about, like, showing me currently.
you know, coming out movies that were older. With the exception of Titanic, my mom did buy me the Titanic VHS tape, but she didn't know. Because she hadn't seen the movie before she bought it for me. She was like, nudity.
it's probably just people falling off the boat or she literally didn't even read it which also could be a possibility i feel like perhaps my desire to see this movie was a direct response to titanic was like me just being so sick of like every person i know talking about titanic and i was like i'm gonna go see dr moreau what of it because that feels like a thing i mean i do that now so that definitely feels like a thing i did as a 13 year old i'm gonna be really contrary about this
There's some apocryphal stories. There's some real stories. The other thing is that when Val Kilmer released his autobiographical documentary. Yeah. Autobiopic. Maybe. I don't know what to call it. Most of the, if not all, I'm not sure, I haven't watched it because I know it's going to make me cry and I refuse to watch stuff that I know will make me cry. But he actually videotaped most of it himself. Like he was actually in production of this basically his entire life.
And he actually had clips that he recorded from behind the scenes of this movie in that movie. Right. So I don't know how unhinged that particular movie gets. And I definitely want to watch a documentary around the making of this film. but like one of the funniest stories and one that I think has been proven untrue since then, but doesn't make it a, not a good, you know, story.
is that Richard Stanley, who researched this movie for four years and spent a considerable amount of money and effort on this movie before they even started filming, started this movie, got fired four days in, and then the story is that he went completely like off the grid and did like a walkabout in australia and then a farmer found him in this old rusty bathtub that he had on his land
and all that he could say is val kilmer val kilmer val kilmer tried to kill me and i don't think that the story is true i think they've come back later and been like oh yeah that didn't happen but like what a story and also in 1996 when we didn't have the internet to tell us like hey this is probably not true hey this is a fake rumor that somebody made up
I could absolutely see that people being like, oh shit, like this is wild. No. the true story related to this is that when Richard Stanley left the set went on his walkabout he eventually encountered a bunch of the former his former production crew for the film like production department people who were all camping because most people on set had to camp because they were in this kind of remote area On an actual island. On an actual island. He connected with them.
they were no longer production staff but were extras in the movie and they snuck him in as an extra they put him in like dog makeup and he was one of like the dog men and he was actually like on set during a lot of those big like crowd scenes as an extra in the movie that he was fired from and apparently to and this part uh both stanley and val kilmer have confirmed he would sometimes yell shit at Val Kilmer and Val would be like,
like he knew it was stanley but it was in such a big crowd scene he didn't know where he was so he was like fucking with him the whole time oh that's great yeah because val kilmer also fucked with everybody else on this yeah So, like, let me give a summary of this movie really quick and talk about our main cast of characters because we haven't done it yet.
I'll just read the IMDB summary. After being rescued and brought to an island, a man discovers that its inhabitants are experimental animals being turned into strange-looking humans, all of it the work of a visionary doctor. And your main cast of characters are David Thewlis, who you might have seen him in the Harry Potter movies. He played Dr. Lupin. That's probably one of his most famous roles, but he's a British actor who's done all kinds of stuff.
and he was in this he's like the lead actor and then merlin brando who plays dr moreau val kilmer who plays montgomery dr moreau's like assistant slash antagonist slash rival yeah faruza ball co-played isa dr morrow's daughter And then some of the other people who are in this movie as like beast humans are Tamara Morrison, who you'll know as Jango Fett and Boba Fett and all of the clones.
book of boba fett is yeah is tamara morrison nelson de la rosa who he's only in a couple of movies but you'll know him from his very small stature he was only two foot three inches tall ron perlman wild that they would put him in this movie Mark Dacascos yeah right Mark Dacascos who's been in like a whole bunch of movies as like kung fu
dude look him up you'll i know you'll know him from at least one action movie he was in the new mortal combat the newest mortal combat movie that's basically like your big cast of characters there This movie cost $40 million. It barely made $10 million opening weekend. I don't know how it, even though it had Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer in it and their salaries were probably wild.
$40 million feels like a money laundering scheme. Or, and this is probably the true bit of it, is that it was so expensive because the production of it was absolutely nuts. And it took so much longer than it was supposed to. Yes, they wasted, they notoriously wasted a ton of time and money for a variety of reasons. It's really funny because I have said before on this podcast, I love the trauma making of documentaries.
Almost more than I love trauma movies themselves. I love the making of documentaries. The babies. Yes. That you can watch on the trauma streaming service. Or if you're old school like me, as extras on the trauma DVDs.
But, like, when you watch the Lost Souls documentary and you watch the Troma documentaries, these two things are very similar. Like, just the complete waste of, like, time and money and just, like... fucking about yes just like questionable behavior so one of the things that happened early on in the production of this movie is that marlon brando's daughter died by suicide obviously that is a big traumatic thing he went off to his private island
it's worth noting that even prior to this very traumatic loss, Marlon Brando was a bit of a recluse at this point.
yeah uh had been a bit off the grid that was kind of one of the big selling points of this movie is that it was a return to cinema for merlin brando the way he got involved is feels very appropriate to the plot of this movie and analogous to the plot of this movie but he um retreated off to his private island and like did not communicate with anybody and they didn't know if he was coming back or when
he and Val Kilmer would notoriously have these like weird like tantrums where one of them would decide to not come out of their trailer and so then the other one would say well I'm not coming out until he comes out and so the whole production would just be stalled.
for an entire day and that's money when you think about it like you had all of these extras all of these characters who had to be made up in like very complex and expensive makeup you've got crew to pay you've got you know professionals who might be doing any number of things that are being paid like a day rate for animal wrangling or effects or you know weapons wrangling or whatever
so i can see how this movie got very very expensive because it sounds like there were just whole ass days where nothing got accomplished but everyone was there like ready to work and just like one or two people just stalled out the whole thing so wild so marlon brando he's a name even if you are not a movie watcher or a movie or in general marlon brando is sort of like he would be on the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood actors that everybody knows and is also legendary in both his
his acting capabilities and also his shittiness for many reasons such as He was a womanizer. He had many, many relationships and had children and seemed to not really give a shit about mental health or boundaries or any of those things. flail wildly between relationships. He also, although he did not label himself as being gay, he had notorious gay relationships with so many big dudes in Hollywood.
Richard Pryor is one of his more famous ones, Jack Nicholson. And he was never like, I'm gay or I'm bisexual. He was just like, I thought I was doing them a favor. So it's kind of like an ego stroking thing. Like ladies love me, men love me. I have sex with all of them sort of thing.
yeah but he also would throw epic tantrums he would retire from acting altogether like prior to him being in the godfather as the godfather he was just out like off the out of pocket like nobody was talking about him he wasn't working in movies he wasn't talking to anybody he had bought his own private island he had built a resort on his own private island and he communicated only via radio amateur radio
and he would have these wild relationships and then like they all ended in quote-unquote friendships but like who knows and he'd have these kids and then just like not care about these kids and then he'd have like he had these very strong relationships with men?
but like those type of relationships he never never went that extra step and was like okay let's you know be in this relationship it was more just like flings like he couldn't commit He seemed like a dude who just emotionally was not exactly stable, and he was famous and absolutely an artist, but it was to his detriment that he never had any guidance.
And this movie is sort of, all of the stories I've heard about this movie is like a culmination of that. Absolutely. Of him being like, well, I'm Marlon fucking Brando. I can do whatever I want. I can say whatever I want. I can show up whenever I want. I can treat everybody here however I want.
and the production and the studio and the director had zero ability to cage him in yeah or maybe willingness like there is something i want to talk about a little bit later but they couldn't cage him in they could not corral this man yeah He is definitely also, I think he's of an era of Hollywood where
the leading man was everything. And I think that, you know, we hear about a lot of those leading men from Hollywood, his peers being gay or being involved in, you know, gay relationships, but being like, like weirdly like closeted but not it's like almost this concept you hear sometimes culturally more associated with black men uh they're not exclusively like this concept of just like being on the down low oh yeah this is a thing that happens and like we're all aware of it but it's just like
not to like throw it back to ancient greek but it's almost like a more like ancient greek view of like homosexual relationships where it's almost like a more masculine thing, but we don't talk about it.
you know that you are somebody who has sex with men but you're still like hyper masculine and you also have sex with women like it's a very very weird thing and i haven't done enough reading on that particular issue and like classic hollywood to to say kind of much beyond that but just that brando was very much of that elk and there are many other names that you know have sort of emerged
from that sort of era and lifestyle in Hollywood. It's a really, really interesting thing to see how these different actors, as they have age, have either completely denied these things, have just embraced them, have... said like brando like whatever i you know uh it's just really a fascinating fact
It's also interesting, too, if we brought that into 2025, like how people would label themselves or decide not to label themselves. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like Wayne Brady has recently become, has been like, hey, I'm non-binary, actually. and like it was kind of like a big deal for somebody who is very traditionally portrayed like he portrays himself mostly I'm sure because of like the fact that he was on whose line for a million years and now he's on a thousand.
television shows and game shows and all that he has kind of become famous for specifically doing game shows now yeah but he presents as a traditional black man yeah you know but he's like hey actually i'm non-binary just so you know and he's in midlife now and so it's really fascinating to see that
also billy d williams who's come out now as being bisexual and he's just like it's not a big deal though because like it was a thing and well even george takei before all of them you know kind of saying like oh by the way this is me you know and now being very out and proud and very open about like
you know i am a gay man i am a married gay man you know this is who i am yeah and so many of the actors to kind of bring it back to this movie so many of the actors specifically wanted to work on this movie because of marlon brando like david thules came back and said later i wanted to work on this movie because it was in australia or it was close to australia
I was working with Marlon Brando. Val Kilmer signed on because he wanted to work with Marlon Brando. Actually, Bruce Willis was supposed to work on this movie until Demi Moore filed for divorce. I don't know who filed for divorce in that case, but until their divorce started happening, he had to drop out.
So Val Kilmer started and then actually like while in production of this movie, Val Kilmer also found out that he was being divorced, which is kind of funny and ironic a little bit. But all these actors were like, oh, we're so horny to work for Marlon Brando or work with Marlon Brando.
I can only imagine that they were so disappointed. I know David Thewlis was because he never went to see it. He never has seen the movie since then because he was just so disappointed and like wrung out afterwards. And there's stories that during, obviously, like the story that you told about Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando having their trailer off where they're not going to come out first.
Val Kilmer has said, in interviews and in his documentary since then that he actually had a really good relationship with marlon brando and like that was his mentor and like they had a good relationship and they stayed close friends and stuff i'm like well it was also 2021 so you know over 20 years you know 20 something years of hindsight can probably make it feel a little bit different or for you to reflect on that in a more positive
life also because in 2021 val kilmer was still very much battling throat cancer yes and it was like not looking good at that point he was recovering to a certain degree but they were like oh shit and that's why he made Val in the first place is because he's like I might die like this might be the end that can change kind of how you reflect on certain challenging things
when you are like this is the end of my life and i don't want to hold any of that shit now yeah so i do wonder how much of that like is hindsight and also like sort of a reflection yeah well i mean you can you can look at that same reflection in the whole like tom cruise val kilmer dynamic because at any given time in history they were either the best of friends or the worst of enemies or the biggest of rivals you know, and obviously during Maverick,
tom cruise was very intentional about like wanting to include val kilmer and like really saying like no this is somebody i respect this is my friend you know and even after he died he said yeah you know we had our ups and downs, but, like, I consider him a friend and a peer and a, you know, and somebody that I admire, so. Yeah, it's interesting how hindsight and history and a lifetime of work and looking back can sort of change our perspectives on relationships.
Yeah, and, like, how old was he then? This is 96, so he would have been 37. So being 37, I'm not 37 yet, but being 37 versus being like, you know, in your 60s is very, that's very different. And also I think too, In 96, we were still living amongst the wild marlon brando marlon brando passed away in 2004 so perhaps it's a little bit too of space from the man yeah i'll also say being 37 in hollywood as an actor is a precarious place to be right you know i think that
We've talked about this before. Things are changing a little bit, but your late 30s are a very weird period as an actor. Regardless of gender, it can get more gendered, quite frankly.
But, you know, you're no longer the young, fresh baby face. You're no longer the heartthrob, are you, leading man, elder statesman status. You're kind of in that in-between state. So I can also see where, you know... for some people who are trying to figure out what's next in their career and I'm not forgiving this or excusing this but that could be a period where you are very unsure of yourself in terms of Acting in your place in Hollywood, too.
Not to excuse bad behavior, but. True. And after this movie, he kind of, fell into this period where he was not making blockbusters anymore. Because, recall, before this, he had done Willow, where he really got his start as Mad Mardigan. Then he did the Doors movie, where people were like, holy shit, this guy is Jim Morrison. True Romance, Tombstone, Batman Forever, Heat. Then, Island of Dr. Moreau. And then, basically... Until...
I'm still going. Maybe Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005. Yeah. Maybe you could say that. Alexander, which was an Oliver Stone movie. But Oliver Stone movies and Alexander... It's not for everybody. It's not like... No, but I need more like... prominence like you know in terms of especially from his era of hollywood if it's like Oh, you're being cast in an Oliver Stone film that's about a Roman hero. That's, like, peak, like, leading man fodder right there. Yeah. That's good ego stroking, at least.
yeah he was definitely on that like tailwind yeah you know big blockbuster like it's uber successful can't do anything wrong movies at that point so that is like kind of a period at the end of his like big shit sentence And perhaps after that, he had a lot of time to think and reflect and look back on a person that he considered to be a mentor, Marlon Brando.
and just be sort of like, change the way that he felt about that or or look back and say like hey, maybe I was a shithead because 100% this movie feels like a fever dream of just Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer getting to do whatever they wanted on camera and having that filmed and make it into the movie.
Yeah. Like, Marlon Brando waffs in like he's the Pope, which, R.I.P., Like, is it pope francis or pope benedict i can't remember francis is the one that just died benedict was the one his predecessor yeah so this is actually a val kilmer and a pope tribute episode yeah look at us marlon brando floats in like the friggin pope He's like wearing all white.
he's got like this medallion that like gives you know wild vatican you know trappings the car looks like the popemobile it absolutely he's like sitting outside of it instead of in it yeah also
He's covered in sunscreen, and there are many lines in this movie where I'm sure that this was probably just him ad-libbing, and they were just like, keep that shit in, just keep it in. Yeah, he did a lot of that. Because Dr. Moreau is supposed to be insane like he is supposed to have lost it he's a mad scientist he is a mad scientist he's supposed to have been wild but
He is no Herbert West. You know, he's no reanimator. In reanimator, Herbert West is like, crazy with purpose crazy with like drive and like oh should i have to clean up this whole mess that i've made in this
marlon brando is talking about how he can't handle the sun he's so hot there's a part that we talked about while we were watching the movie where he's got a freaking ice bucket on his head fruza bulk puts ice in it like and he's like oh the sun the sun's doing all these things to all of humanity and I'm just like this feels straight up like he just was saying stuff and they were just like keep rolling i guess like we gotta have something for this movie it's only an hour and 29 minutes long
It's weird. It's like it gives and I know it's dangerous to sort of like meld like a real person and the character they're playing and all that. But like this movie to me is like marlon brando's norma desmond moment yeah where you're just like what like do you like the lines between you and the character and what you're doing are blurring in ways that are intriguing and uncomfortable
Like, I don't know what's happening here. I mean, that would not surprise me. Like, we don't have any information, at least not any good information, about what Merlin Brando's mind was like at this time. Because he did write an autobiography, but like... you know, who knows? Who knows how much of that is real, how much of it got ghostwritten, whatever. Yeah.
we don't have a good like solid and he wasn't talking to people at this time either so it's not like he did a press tour he wasn't giving interviews he wasn't like let me tell you where my mind was at so it could have potentially been like he's like Yeah, I'm definitely gonna read this into this role. Yeah. Who knows? We have no idea. Just absolutely fascinating to me.
Some of his dialogue is wild. His wardrobe choices seem like he was probably just wearing what he normally wears. Very light, flowy gown, robe type items, which are appropriate for an island, so that makes sense. And then Val Kilmer kind of, like, was feeding off of this, like, unhinged behavior. Val Kilmer's wearing whatever he wants. He's giving whatever dialogue he wants. David Dulles is like...
We are so far off script. I am scared. I am scared for my life right now. So he's just, he's like having to just completely make everything up off the top of his head, his actions, his words. He's like, I'm just trying to hold it all together. And it sort of devolves. I told Juliette, this kind of feels like If you've ever seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
The whole, like, I'm going to go and report on this thing, but I'm going to throw so many drugs and all of the booze at it. That's what it feels like. It feels like somebody dropped all of the extras and all of the stars off on this island, and they were like, there's not enough water for all of you.
But there's so much booze and drugs. Yeah. And they threw a copy of The Island of Dr. Moreau at him like a grenade. And they were like, okay, bye. Make the movie. And they just had to figure it out themselves. There are parts, like the part where... David Dulles is interrogating Val Kilmer's character and trying to get him to tell him where the serum is so that he can give it to Ayesa. Like their exchange of him slapping him and Val Kilmer just reciting, you know, Bible quotes and stuff.
It feels totally ad-libbed. Yeah. Like, nobody told them to do that. That's just something, like, Dave Thewlis is literally like, let me off this goddamn island!
I need to leave. I am so sick to death of this shit. And Val Kilmer's like, bible at him you know and he's like wearing the you know the lords of arabia type thing that he's wearing and he's got all of the the sunscreen on and shit because he's like emulating at this point moreau has died has been murdered and so he's like emulating him it's in it's just nuts yeah it's nuts yeah i'm glad that i finally watched it and now i can kind of see like oh yeah what people say is true
there are moments in this movie that are legitimately terrifying like i think the first time we go into the birthing lab yeah and you see those like specimen tubes and then you see the the lady animal giving birth on the table truly terrifying absolutely yeah there are also like some moments that like have Again, like, there are so many good bones in this movie. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, the whole concept. And you see this.
throughout different interpretations of the island of dr moreau you know you see this manifest differently in different movies and books and things like that that have used this story but this whole idea of like These creatures are so other. They're not animals. They're not human. And so what? law or morality should they follow? Or should they follow anything? Are they beholden to anyone? And is it fair for them to be subjugated under the laws of humans?
is it fair to treat them just like animals with no agency like all of that is present in this movie it's just like you get these like moments of of brilliance you know where you're like oh but then it just never it never gets there you really want it to and it never really does yeah it feels like planet of the apes where they do have time and planet of the apes set aside to like wax poetic about like
what it means to be a human what it means to be an animal yeah and that kind of stuff but planet of the apes just does it a thousand times better yeah the new and the old ones like it just it's um it's a very frustrating sort of like we get to the end but it doesn't feel like a satisfying resolution the thing with like whoever it's going to be like in this case david thulis's character
his whole thing is like when he goes back he can't really like reintegrate with humans because he sees that they are so close to being animals and their animal behavior after he's seen the de-evolution of all of the things that have happened on the island. But while we get there, it doesn't feel like we got there, if that makes sense. Totally, yeah. Like, it makes sense that he would think that, but also...
it doesn't quite make sense. Yeah, and the end is definitely, they definitely did the thing, John Waters talks about this, where you know a movie's in trouble when, like, something should have happened but they use voiceover instead yeah they tell us instead of show us yeah exactly um and the end is definitely that like oh by the way here's the moral message i think and it's done in this very kind of ham-fisted voiceover with like very um ham-fisted stock footage like news footage yeah
I think that most of the allure around this movie, if you've never seen it, has to do with all of that outside shit. And you probably will do yourself a favor if you just watch Lost Souls. And because you're probably just going to see like... The coolest bits of the wild?
instead of having to sit through although the movie's not very long but then you'd have to sit through like all of the bits where it drags you know where we kind of get dragged through things where it's like well we have to get this person from point a to point b so we need to have this scene or whatever and also the very cringy moments where unfortunately
marlon brando was kind of left to his own devices around his treatment of nelson de la rosa which i think is really gross yeah um nelson de la rosa who is a person with a genetic condition that caused him to only grow to be two feet three inches tall and he is one of dr murrow's sons in this movie but marlon brando like legendarily treated him like a doll baby yeah where he would like make him sit on his lap and like hug him a whole bunch and like just really creepy so
all of these people were like so desperate to work with marlon brando and then they came to this total dumpster fire of a movie and then he proceeded to treat everybody very oddly and What a weird, gross legacy, you know?
yeah it's interesting now it's like this movie is so irrevocably tied to its making like now that this documentary has been out it's like i don't know how you separate this movie from like everything we know about it and it's it's sort of like this film has been transformed by like retroactively transformed by like all of the details of its making at this
yeah it's like when i first watched it like you definitely knew that like something was amiss about this movie like there's something very off kilter about it and perhaps if i had been a little older or a little like better versed at that time and like more like
independent cinema and like behind the scenes like film production stuff maybe i would have been able to articulate what that was i just knew that there was something like a little squirrely about this movie let's say but like knowing what i know now it's i don't know it's like i can't think about this movie as a movie outside of its making
Yeah, it's almost like an alternate timeline. Yeah. Like we got a movie that got translated from another alternate timeline and just plopped into ours. And then we're like, what? what is this yeah and like moreover it's hard to even so this was the third film adaptation of island of dr moreau there was island of lost souls and then there was a 70s island of dr moreau and then this one and it's hard to even like look at this one like in like sort of a
continuity of like reception of a work because like it's not even like about that it's not even about like how did this uh you know how did this receive and transform like i talked about that like the tiniest bit earlier but like it's hard to even look at this In terms of like the story of the island of Dr. Moreau, because the story here is the making of the movie.
yeah exactly if you want and i just have to plug this like if you want like the next iteration of the story of the island of dr moreau go read sylvia garcia moreno's book daughter of dr moreau like that is like the sort of like next work to my mind that's like advancing the story or like receiving that story and transforming it uh it sets the story in yucatan mexico and deals a lot with like colonization and the hacienda system
and it's great and it really like gets at like all of these things from the wells story and you know puts them in a different time and place like this movie is more a story about cinema than it is a story about the island of dr burrow yeah at this point at least yeah like probably that's why i say probably better time better spent to watch the documentary yeah since that's really the draw, is the wildness of it. Next time, we're going back to Jollo. Yay!
Beyond, which is a Fulci movie. We haven't done Fulci in a while. It's the second in a trilogy, wildly enough. It doesn't feel like much of a trilogy. But it's also a Jalo movie. It's a Fulci film. So, you know. It's also set in the U.S., which is not... I mean, he did have movies. He had New York Ripper and this one.
But not a common setting for him. Yeah. He mostly did like, you know, Europe somewhere or some like big city. Or in the case of a zombie, just like an island. Right. You know, like. And this time was like.
in louisiana he's in new orleans yeah and uh i i actually watched this one semi-recently sort of accidentally i forgot that it was on the schedule and i was like oh yay i like fulci i was like event hungover like not drink hungover but like i did too many things in one weekend so i took the following day off and i basically just watched a lot of movies on shutter like i was trying to catch up and i ended up watching this one and the one before it in the trilogy i forget what it's called but
I ended up watching it and I was like, oh, I love this. And then I was like, oh shit, it's on the schedule. That's okay. I don't mind watching it again because it's great. It's a lot of fun. And I love Catriona McDowell. I love watching her in movies, and this is one of my favorites of hers.
Yeah. I'm always up for a Fulci film. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're like, I don't know where this is going. Fulci probably didn't know where it was going, but it's going somewhere. Yeah. And we're going to wind up where we wind up. We're going to wind up in the beyond. Thanks for listening to Attack of the Final Cut. Find us online and attack the final at patreon.com slash attack of the final We are Attack of the Final Girls on Instagram.
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