Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's “Island of Dr. Moreau” (2014)

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

A documentary about the making of the abomination known as "The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)". Great stuff about the absolute chaos of production of the movie. From actors with huge egos (Val Kilmer, Marlon Brando) through problematic location and people getting fired, to absolute crazy behavior that is like taken from a mad house movie.If you liked documentaries like "Lost in La Mancha (2002)" and "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)" which tell the story of some crazy movie productions, you're going to love this one. Incidentally, there are quite a few more connections between "Dr. Moreau" and "Apocalypse Now", which are mentioned in this documentary.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014) **** (out of 4) If you watch enough movies, eventually you're going to see something that takes you by complete surprise. You can hear about how bad or crazy a movie is but there are certain examples that just stick in your mind because once you've seen the movie in question you realize that you really have seen something that's so bad that you have to sit there for days if not weeks wondering how it went so wrong. That happened to me in 1996 when I walked out of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. Being a major Marlon Brando fan, it was a thrill getting to see him on the big screen but what was on that screen went down in infamy and here's a documentary explaining the craziness.Director David Gregory is one of the best people out there when it comes to making DVD/Blu-ray shorts so throwing him into the feature world is something great for movie fans. This documentary is so perfectly done that it plays just like a real drama, a tragedy and then finally a hilarious comedy. We start off hearing from Richard Stanley who talks about his original ideas for the film and we see that he clearly has a great vision for the story. Then, we see that there's something off when he begins to talk about calling on witch doctor's to "help" the film. From here we learn just about every bit of the production details from how the film was originally meant to be made for $8 million but then Brando came on board, which had the budget go higher so then they needed a star so Val Kilmer was brought on and soon the original director was gone and replaced by maverick John Frankenheimer.LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU is without question one of the best documentaries that you're ever going to see when it comes to explaining the behind-the-scenes of a troubled production. However, to be fair, this here wasn't just a troubled production because you're going to learn that the entire thing seemed to be cursed and you can't help but wonder why the entire film wasn't dropped early in the production but then you learn that perhaps someone just wanted to see how crazy it could get. Things turn even worse when you hear that even Brando and Kilmer wanted the production to fail and some of the stories are just downright crazy. There are so many wild and crazy stories told about the production of this movie by the time it's over you can easily see why the actual movie turned out so bad.There are way too many highlights in this film so picking out one or two to put the spotlight on is rather hard. Again, being a die-hard Brando fan, finding out what was going on with the white face paint and the ice bucket on his head were hilarious. Hearing about how the fired Stanley managed to get back onto the set and work as an extra was just astounding. What's the best is the fact that so many people came back and were willing to talk about the troubled production and be honest about it. Of course, Brando and Kilmer weren't available but Fairuza Balk is on hand as his New Line's Robert Shaye and of course Stanley plays a big part here. There's also some of the original producers to discuss the problems and the honesty of everyone involved is what makes the drama of the film work so well.Of course, as the craziness continues and just gets weirder, the film pretty much turns into a comedy because you have to laugh at everything that was going on. Gregory has once again created a wonderful little gem and one hopes that his talents will see for more feature-length documentaries because he's one of the best out there and LOST SOUL is so great that it actually makes me want to go back and what that train-wreck of a film that was THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014) *** Well documented behind-the-scenes account of the train-wreck of the fruition to making of the 1996 remake of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU shows how visionary filmmaker Richard Stanley's brainchild becomes a template in all-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong fiasco of a Hollywood movie with the machinations, egos, failures and ineptitude glommed together as a fable of be careful what you wish for in having a dream project dashed to bits and pretty-much-unrecognizable. While each noteworthy figurehead involved is painted as a villain from crazy Marlon Brando, vainglorious Val Kilmer and bullying filmmaker John Frankenheimer, filmmaker David Gregory also shows how the other flip of the coin - professionalism, partners-in-crime and truth in art - also attempted to counterbalance the toxicity and dark comic failure of an epic flop.

Maybe one of the things I'm missing, are sound bits from a few more players (actors), like Ron Pearlman, who also was in the original movie. You were expecting Val Kilmer not to take part in this (although he was asked of course). But those things are not really that important, especially considering how great the movie is built and edited. The mayhem that ensued seems to have been inevitable in some sense, but is still very gripping.There is faults on more than one set of shoulders and maybe the other movie might not have been a better "Island of Dr. Mureau" movie than the one we finally got. But it most definitely would have been crazier (yes it's possible) and might have given a very creative guy some power to fulfill his other visions. A man suffice to say that sort of was not ready for that big a project of course.And this duality and all the gray areas (plus all those great anecdotes, hoping there will be a few more on a future disc release without them having to cut anything out of the movie we had the pleasure watching at Frightfest) in the movie, make it great. Fun and light and over before you know it ...