Rent Isle of the Dead (1945)

Spoilers follow ... - Isle of the Dead review by NP

Greece, 1912. It must be pretty miserable to hear that a spreading plague necessitates strict confinement to your home; when one of your house-guests is Boris Karloff, that misery takes on a new dimension.

‘Isle of the Dead’ is an RKO horror film, one of a series produced by Val Lewton. Whereas Universal had cornered the monster market, with increasingly exploitative meet-ups between Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and The Wolfman, Lewton specialised in less obvious, more psychological dramas. The horror here is more prevalent in what you don’t see. Whereas 1942’s ‘Cat People’ may be the most successful example of this approach, Lewton produced a hugely impressive body of work, among which this production stands tall.

When the shadow of Gen. Nikolas Pherides (Karloff) falls across a scene, there is an instant atmosphere of jeopardy, of cruelty, disease and fear. Pherides has a reputation for cruel efficiency, and he brings this to his authority when dealing with the house-full of potential plague carriers, himself amongst their number.

The stand-out scene for me is when Katherine Emery as Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery) falls into a cataleptic trance, is subsequently buried, and wakes screaming in her casket. We hear her fear and desperate scratching as the camera lingers on her incarcerated wooden tomb, the shadow of blowing branches fallen across it, relentless drip-dripping of the damp stonework upon it. The box splinters and is pushed open as the camera maddeningly pulls away to another scene. Her friend Thea (Ellen Drew) goes in search of the escapee in a perfect studio-set nightmare, her white nightdress blowing in the wind – St. Aubyn has seemingly been driven out of her mind by the experience and parades the house and its surrounding grounds like a vengeful ghost. No-one is safe it seems, especially Pherides, who, for all his sins emerges as a kind of misunderstood anti-hero …

Melodramatic it may be, there’s no denying the intensity brings with it a true spirit of dread.

Lewton Horror. - Isle of the Dead review by Steve

When the RKO bosses informed Val Lewton he would make his next few films with Boris Karloff, he feared he would have to produce Universal style monster movies. But Karloff didn't change Lewton. The producer wove the lisping Englishman seamlessly into the Lewton style. In return a grateful Karloff gave the best performances of his career.  

This isn't exactly Lewton's usual psychological horror. It is as pessimistic as the earlier films but more conventional. Greece is weary with war. Some travellers are quarantined on a tiny island where plague is killing local residents. The visitors, led by a general (Karloff) are trapped there until the wind changes and the hot Sirocco comes to burn away the disease...

Like all Lewton horrors to this point, this is about rationality against the occult. The officer is a scientist. But as the people die, he puts his faith in the ancient customs of his childhood, and the old remedies. He believes in the Vorvoloka, a malevolent spirit that inhabits and controls the body while it sleeps. Maybe this is causing the deaths, not the plague.

The story lacks originality; the horror set piece is the live burial of a catatonic, which is as old as Poe. With WWII at an end, audiences stayed away from its exhausted fatalism. But it is a haunting experience that leaves behind an uneasy impression of the uncanny, and the appeal of superstition to explain what we cannot understand.