Plutonian Pictures: The Hollywood Halloween Show

The Island of Lost Souls (1932). Directed by Erie C. Kenton. With Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Bela Lugosi, and Kathleen Burke

Oct. 30 – Nestled in TriBeCa is a Micro Cinema where Salon type of screening evenings occur.  Artist and Projectionist Greg Singer designs programs sometimes with collaborators for Plutonian Pictures.  He interpreted Halloween weekend with an imaginative, fearful notion – that of man, the hunt, and beast, whether from Mother Nature or a mad scientist.

Before the feature film The Island of Lost Souls (1932), short films on 16mm and 8mm framed this malleable idea about which creature, man or animal, was stronger.  Silent footage of alligator hunting natives was structured as a narrative with intertitles that while playful, demonstrated how large payoffs for handbag materials forced poor folks into a threatening profession.  In the short program, a Tarzan clip also silent film allowed for the triumph of elephants upon ivory seeking man.  Another memorable silent short had a “primitive” female leader protecting her atomic oil from profiteering cowboys.  The elaborate pulley system that has a dangling victim contains humor all its own.  No one ever gets simply pushed into the pit.  A slow defraying of the rope must dramatize the moment.

An intermission to refuel on snacks and beverages divides the evening.  People streamed back into the black canopied theater for the main dish, The Island of Lost Souls (1932).  One year before the original King Kong with Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, screenwriters Waldemar Young and Philip Wylie adapted sci-fi stalwart H.G. Wells‘s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896).

A dashing Richard Arlen as Edward Parker is adrift on the high seas until rescued by a cargo ship Apia.  Whatever boat mishap caused Parker’s vulnerability is never explained and acts as a red herring to where the plot eventually moves.  Prideful Parker foolishly assaults Captain Davies causing him to miss his intended port rendezvous with his fiancee, demur Ruth Thomas.  Where he literally gets dropped is a vessel headed to an unnamed island.  Only the latitude and longitude are ascribed to the land mass.  The crew overtly show something more physically unappealing than natural deformities and genetic mutations.  Dr. Moreau’s “men” are not from the hand of God.

Parker seems willing to keep these sinister signs away from his conscience so as not to jeopardize his return home.  Sinking his own ship, Dr Moreau (Charles Laughton) traps Parker as a potential breeding specimen for his greatest feat, Lota.  The Panther Woman referred to as Lota (Kathleen Burke) had to be a brunette with large eyes in an animal print leotard bikini to differentiate from Parker’s blond haired, restrained, and standard featured fiancee.  Dr. Moreau is worshiped as leader and deity (one hairy beast is definitive actor Bela Lugosi) who delineates four rules to his constituency: never walk on all fours, do not eat meat, do not spill blood, and do not kill.  Stories from years prior and in later decades expose the hubris of such a set-up.  Once the people or followers sense their leader is not indestructible, revolution ensues.  In Dr. Moreau’s quest for scientific accomplishment, he unleashes pandemonium.

Flawed humankind is protected from Dr. Moreau’s laboratory, but male characters presented earlier in the film had been brutish and demeaning.  Human-animal hybrids may have been destroyed, yet cruelty had been initiated by man and perpetuated in normal interactions.

The film is entertaining and rare which is another reason Plutonian Pictures is always a treat on days not associated with Halloween as well.