"What is the Law?"
Edward Parker is is cast adrift at sea after the ship he's on sinks. He's rescued by a passing cargo ship, the Covena, bound for an unnamed South Pacific island. Aboard, he meets and befriends Montgomery, a former medical student. En route, Edward gets on the bad side of the cantankerous drunkard Captain Davies, who decides to throw the poor man overboard once at the island, leaving Edward with Montgomery rather than taking him with them when the Covena departs.
Edward learns the island belongs to a reclusive, enigmatic and frankly odd scientist named Dr. Moreau, and it has some very strange, almost animalistic natives. The most normal of them is a woman named Lota, whom Moreau seems very eager for Edward to get to know better - over Edward's objections that he has a fiancee waiting for him in Apia. Nevertheless, Edward takes a liking to Lota, and she to him.
Meanwhile, Edward's fiancee Ruth Thomas accosts Captain Davies when the Covena docks in Apia, and learns what happened to Edward. After learning the location of Dr. Moreau's island, Ruth hires the far friendlier Captain Donahue to take her to rescue her fiance. Back at the island, Edward makes the horrifying discovery that Moreau Moreau has been using vivisection in an attempt to transform animals into human beings... apparently for no other reason than to see if it can be done.
The result are pitiful, half-human creatures called the "beast people." Moreau keeps them in line through fear and by a set of rules called "the Law," which is designed to prevent them from regressing mentally. Lota is the most human of them all, and, to Edward's horror, Moreau is anxious to see how human she is... by having her and Edward mate, whether he wants to or not! He definitely doesn't. He likes Lota, just not in that way! At first it seems as if Moreau is thwarted but then Ruth arrives with Donahue. Upon seeing these two new arrivals, Moreau tells Montgomery he may not need Edward after all...
The first screen adaptation of H.G. Wells' seminal science fiction novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. A top-billed Charles Laughton utterly steals the movie away from his supporting cast as the sadistic, whip-wielding Moreau, a scientist with a god complex, obsessed with surgically evolving animals into human beings and then ruling over them on his island. As Edward, Richard Arlen is a bit dull, the typical square-jawed hero, but he gets the job done. The movie also contains memorable performances from Bela Lugosi as the "Sayer of the Law," the impassioned leader of the animal-people, Kathleen Burke as the seductive but naive Lota, and Paul Hurst as the fearless Captain Donahue.
Banned in Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, India, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and Tasmania and cut to remove all objectionable content in the countries it was release in, it remained unavailable for several years except for a 1990's VHS release as part of the Universal Monsters horror collection - which restored all of the censored dialog and scenes - until finally it was awarded a Criterion DVD release.Read full review
