“We’re mutants. There’s something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us…”
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The Island Of Dr. Moreau (1977): 7/10
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The Relic (1997): 7/10
Strange perversions of science we on-tap for today’s twofer. In 1977’s
The Island Of Dr. Moreau (the second big-screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic cautionary fable), Michael York plays a man left drifting at sea in a lifeboat for weeks until he is finally washed up on the titular Island, where the good Doctor (played with glittering eyes and clenched teeth by Burt Lancaster) has been experimenting with the mixture of human and animal DNA, resulting in a series of piteously deformed half-breeds beholden to Moreau’s “laws” (Richard Baseheart is the key mutanimal, keeping the others in check so that they don’t revert back to their inherent, bloodthirsty natures). York finds himself appalled by Moreau’s indignities to his creations, even as he finds himself smitten with his comely daughter (Barbara Carrera). Directed efficiently by Don Taylor (
Damien: Omen II) and with solid makeup effects by, among others, John Chambers and Tom Burman, plus a superb score by Laurence Rosenthal, the 1977 version of
Moreau is an effective, respectable version of the story, even if it can’t match the haunting poetry of the 1932 iteration,
Island Of Lost Souls (with its great performance by Charles Laughton as Moreau). Still, it’s miles beyond the insipid, unintentionally hilarious 1996 version, directed by John Frankenheimer and featuring a memorably daffy turn by Marlon Brando as the mad Doctor (replete with an ice bucket on his head!).
Skipping ahead two decades, we find 1997’s
The Relic, a guilty-pleasure spook show about a giant monster rampaging through the Field Museum Of Natural History in Chicago, ripping off heads left and right for much-needed sustenance, while a brainy, improbably-attractive biologist (Penelope Ann Miller, reaching the end of her brief Leading Lady window in the mid-90’s) and a superstitious police detective (Tom Sizemore) try to figure out what the hell it is and try to stop its reign of decapitations. The last watchable feature from prolific horror/action/sci-fi journeyman Peter Hyams (
Capricorn One,
2010: The Year We Make Contact,
Running Scared),
The Relic is enthusiastic Dumb Fun all the way through, with solid “Kothoga” creature effects by Stan Winston (although the full-body CGI shots of the creature running have aged very poorly) and well-paced bursts of tension and violence. The movie falls prey to the slasher movie law that the monster/killer can warp from one location to another instantaneously in accordance to the needs of the plot (and, considering how LARGE the monster is, one wonders how it can fit down the many narrow corridors it traverses, but whatever), and director Hyams’ cinematography is so RIDICULOUSLY dark, it’s hard to make out much of anything, especially in the second half of the film, where what
isn’t swathed in shadow if often covered with a cloud of anamorphic lens flares. I get the idea of keeping the monster cloaked in shadow for atmosphere, but this is the kind of movie where even dialogue scenes consist of pale faces swimming out of a pool of inky blacks. In addition, John Debney’s ploddingly generic musical score is an earsore, treating every moment with the same numbing sense of faux-import. Comparing these two movies, it’s easy to note just how badly film music devolved in the twenty years that separated them, and, sadly, it’s gotten even worse in the two decades since
The Relic came out…in another two decades’ time, “movie music” is going to consist of directors banging rocks on trash can lids. Still, for all its flaws,
The Relic offers up a good deal of monster-movie fun.
