Production: Cinema 77 / AIP

Director: Don Taylor

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Michael York, Nigel Davenport, Barbara Carrera

Screenwriter: John Herman Shaner, Al Ramrus

Based on The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) by H.G. Wells

98 minutes; Color

In this slow-moving and trite remake of Island of Lost Souls (1932), a young castaway (York) on a remote island learns that Dr Moreau (Lancaster), resident scientist, is carrying out experiments to give animals human characteristics; some of the resulting hybrids live in the jungle and worship Moreau as a god. Unlike the novel and the first film, where the the hybrids were cruelly created by vivisection, these are formed by genetic engineering; thus this version's Wellsian references to the House of Pain become puzzlingly irrelevant. A recent remake is The Island of Dr Moreau (1996), directed by John Frankenheimer.