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For my money this is one of producer Val Lewton's greatest pieces and is, I fear, strangely undervalued. We often hear of great moments in 1942's 'Cat People'; most specifically the swimming pool sequence and an almost heart stopping moment involving a scary walk and a bus or we may further be reminded of great scenes of psychological terror in Lewton's other movies, notably 'I walked With a Zombie'(1943) and 'The Body Snatcher' (1945), but we seldom hear of the sense of impending doom and escalating terror evoked during 'Isle of the Dead' which comes to head when we realise that one of the primary characters has been buried alive and it's her consequent insanity blended perfectly with an eruption of repressed superstition that chills the viewer in the final fifteen or so minutes. Indeed this sequence was only ever equalled once; towards the end of Corman's 1960 'House of Usher' which dealt in part with similar themes. Boris Karloff acquits himself well as the troubled General Pherides, a man who has attempted to detach himself from aspects of his own past and that of his country but for whom spectres of both will arise to haunt him before he inevitably joins the soul of his long departed wife on their lonely island cemetery. Robson's direction, apart from the brilliant scare moments, may seem little more than adequate but successive viewings suggest a gradual and intentional turning of the screw with only one or two really pedestrian scenes required to move the plot and characters forward. By today's standards the movie may seem tame, 'stagey' and slow but if you sit there with the lights off and the volume turned up and prepare yourself for some old time atmospherics and chills rather than shocks and gore, you're in for a real treat.
score 10/10
futes2-1 7 September 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1726129/ |
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29-3-2021 04:51:05