No one may leave the island, no one may leave the island!
Isle Of The Dead is set on a Greek isle during the First Balkan War in 1912–1913. When General Nikolas "The Watchdog" Pherides (Boris Karloff) and American war correspondent Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer) visit the isle, they find that Pherides' wife's tomb has been desecrated and the body gone. Upon hearing the sweet singing of a female they are led to a household consisting of the Aubin's, St & Mary (Alan Napier & Katherine Emery), Mary's nursemaid Thea (Ellen Drew), archaeologist Albrecht (Jason Robards) & his housekeeper Kyra (Helene Thimig), and salesman Andrew Robbins (Skelton Knaggs). As the talk turns to a mysterious Greek vampire called a vorvolaka being responsible for bad deeds on the isle, a septicaemic plague breaks out. Pherides sends for Dr Drossos (Ernst Dorian) and promptly quarantines all on the isle. But as the group wait and hope for the wind to come and blow the plague away, death and madness starts to take a hold.We open with a scene in Pherides' shadowy tented command point. Dark unflinching eyes stare out at the soldier in front of him, Pherides doesn't utter a word, he merely pushes a pistol forward, holding his gaze. The soldier takes up the pistol and leaves the tent, the outcome we know from Pherides' manner is obvious. The moody marker has been set, this is a Val Lewton {producer} & Mark Robson {director} picture.
Working from a script from Ardel Wray that was inspired by Arnold Böcklin's painting of the same name, this was the fourth of five pictures Robson directed for Lewton, and the first of three pictures that Karloff made with the talented producer. Originally titled "Camilla," the production was not without problems. Karloff suffered a back problem that required surgery and thus delayed the film for a while and a central female character called Catharine was jettisoned from the original script. So not without problems it seems, but it doesn't show because Isle Of The Dead ended up as an atmospheric pot boiler dripping with the sense of unease so synonymous with the Lewton/Robson partnership.
No doubt about it, this is a very talky piece, with the makers choosing fright suggestion and mooted superstition over actual actions for the most part; with Robson deliberately keeping the pace claustrophobic-ally sedate. It all then comes alive with horror relish as a premature burial {the audience are aware of this fact} brings about an upturn in pace. Which simultaneously gives the horror genre one of its best and most unsettling sequences from the 1940s. We then blend seamlessly into the last quarter of the piece where the mystery and horror unfolds amid shocks and hypnotic like fulfilment. 8/10
score 8/10
hitchcockthelegend 26 October 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2147842/35445
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