It’s a year before King Kong, and Island of Lost Souls already has the tension of civilized vs savage, human vs animal, and moral vs immoral. And it’s already hard to figure out what falls into which category.
Island of Lost Souls doesn’t function at all like King Kong. Rather than the latter’s nonstop action and special effects thrills, Island is the dark, brooding, moody development of an idea. We get the theme from a very early shot in the movie. The shipwreck survivor wakes up and, in a close-up of his hairy, unshaven face, stares directly into the camera with his hand clutched beside him. This scene gives us the rest of the film in a single shot, the eerie yet challenging feeling created by Edward’s looking directly at us, and the ambiguity of animal in human in his face. This feral quality is the tension – and thrill – of the movie.
Like in Kong, the animal has many civilized, human traits in Island. The tribe of beings on Dr. Moreau’s island started as biological animals but have had their human qualities heightened. In addition, their law prohibits bloodshed; “Are we not men?” they intone. Dog/human M’ling goes so far as to sacrifice himself for the doctor, and cat/Lota feels human love for Edward and sacrifices herself for him as well. Like in the case of Kong, these two character’s love and dedication are more than we see from the main human characters. Moreau’s subjects look much like animals and respond to animal impulses to some extent, but their behavior has major elements of civilization and humanity.
Appearances notwithstanding, the most savage in both Kong and Island are the human characters in charge. Like the sociopathic Carl Denham in Kong, Moreau cares little for humanity or morality. He routinely tortures animals in the name of improving them by making them more human, and he smugly manipulates all who come under his influence including his aide, Montgomery, Parker, and later Ruth and Donahue. When Lota's animal-like nails reveal her origin, the thwarted Moreau matter-of-factly decides to take her back to the House of Pain to remove them. Like Denham, Moreau believes his goals are so important that he doesn't have to be worried by mere mortal concerns. "Mr. Parker, do you know what it means to feel like God?" he asks. It's clear that these two leaders are biologically human but more like animals on the level of morality.
Island, like Kong, provides us with a center to identify with, a heterosexual couple with conventional ideas of humanity. But the films undercut their normative standards by implicating the couples in the tragedy surrounding them. It's unclear that Ann Darrrow ever saw Kong for the smitten knight he was; we don't see her sympathize or respond to Kong at all aside from screams. Likewise, the early shot of Edward as an animal suggests that, just as animals have humanity in them, so do people have animal in them. And since the audience identifies with Edward as a moral center, Island also implies we have some animal in us....in the same way we kill Kong with our planes and weapons where the allosaurus and other dinosaurs have failed.
Despite all these similarities, there's ultimately a justice in Island that doesn't happen in Kong. The good guy dies in Kong and Denham gets off free, blaming Ann for terrible turn of events. It's a sad ending that produces neither wisdom nor catharsis. In Island, though, Moreau breaks one of his own laws when he orders Ouran to kill Captain Donahue, and the animal creations then realize that their laws are artificial constructs rather than real laws. In a turn of dramatic justice, the sinner is punished as the tribe sets upon Moreau and the innocent escape. Island's investigation of morality ultimately rewards the oppressed, punishes the oppressor, and lets the innocent off. Except for the suggestion that there may ultimately be some culpability in even the innocent.
People think of Island of Lost Souls as an early horry film, but film is interested in more than genre. Seen with the hit that followed this film, King Kong, Island is participating in a contemporary interest in specifying what is meant by the word human and civilized. And the movie raises important questions about research, particularly research on living creatures, and about the assumptions of superiority that science can assume.
