Though it evaded me for a spell, good fortune smiled upon me to view director David Gregory's revealing documentary, "Lost Soul: the Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau."
The Severin Films feature includes enthusiasm, ambition and embittered sadness, detailing director Stanley's push for New Line Cinema to finance a third, official screen adaptation of H.G. Wells' Manimal-laden novella. (This came on the heels of Stanley's two low-budget features, "Hardware" and "Dust Devil": the former having scored profit and praise, with the latter gaining favor farther down the line via a fulfilling director's cut.)
Stanley's intended "Moreau" adaptation was to have been futuristic, satirical and (as is only expected of Stanley) psychedelic, while incorporating an evident "Planet of the Apes"/"Lord of the Flies" stratagem. However, the gentle and often aloof director faced many ups and (especially) downs along the creative trail, such as winning over Marlon Brando, who gave substantial support to the remake at the outset, only then to befriend and butt heads with the quarrelsome Val Kilmer, as original, assigned cast members, Bruce Willis and James Woods, departed due to unforeseen circumstances.
The surface premise of "Lost Soul" is that Stanley possessed a succinct vision within his unorthodox methodology, and though John ("The Manchurian Candidate") Frankenheimer's alternate design holds many merits (in particular, Stan Winston's wondrous creature effects: abetted by Bruce Fuller, who's interviewed throughout), those who thought they could do better, did not. (Finishing a film is one thing; achieving avant-garde exaltation is another.)
The presented mishaps (symbolic and identifiable) allow viewers to reflect on similar scenarios from their lives which can--and often will--go wrong, whether in the work place, at home or in monetary investment, where know-it-alls jump the gun and soil precious prospects even before they leave the starting gate.
Thanks to such sensitive participants as Fairuza Balk, Marco Hofschneider, Peter Elliott, Edward R. Pressman and Graham "Grace" Walker, one can't help but feel for Stanley and regard his opposition with cutting vexation. A number of background personnel also grant insight into the volcanic core, though a couple of the film's primary personas (David Thewlis and Ron Perlman) end up within the blink-and-miss-'em margins.
As a result of Stanley's captured reflections, the movie does manage to blunt some of the animosity, presenting interesting links between Wells' Moreau and Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" antagonist, who shaped "Apocalypse Now'"s Colonel Kurtz: a persona Wells believed sprung from Moreau and held this against Conrad. (Of course, Brando was fated to play variants of both fictional icons, which heightens the overlap.) To reinforce these "coincidences", Stanley references his lineage to Henry Morton Stanley, who Conrad claimed was the actual inspiration for "Heart of Darkness'" sullen despot.
Despite its strands of synchronicity, Stanley's "doomed journey" still surfaces as an accursed and heartbreaking one, exhibiting an ultra-talented gent who deserved better than he got. And indeed, if not for Stanley's zeal to bring "Moreau" once more to celluloid, Frankenheimer's version would never have materialized.
With this said, Stanley's unflagging love for Wells' story (which one might presume he'd grow to resent) is uplifting, enough to make one wonder why no one has yet given him the chance to do the remake he's so desired. Though Gregory's documentary doesn't bleed into Stanley's recent return to filmmaking (case in point, Stanley's acclaimed adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "Color Out of Space"), there's no question that the writer/director/artist would have birthed an amazing, unlike-no-other "Moreau".
Even more so, that Stanley overcame the unjust derision tossed his way is a testament to his character and is the thematic pulse that propels Gregory's extensive essay. "Lost Soul" is an empathetic revelation, therefore, of an undaunted eccentric who's found his way out of Hollywood's meeting-muddled muck. That, in itself, makes him anything but a failure and rather an against-the-odds hero. The film's final scene says it all, and if it doesn't stir one's senses, then one is no doubt as callous as Stanley's damning detractors.
