Until I get to review that monstrosity from my excrement-fueled PowerChair™, at least we've got the 1996 version at which to marvel. This one in particular has become a "bad movie" watermark since its release, which isn't entirely fair. True, the last quarter of the film falls apart as maliciously as any film I've ever witnessed , but there is some definite intrigue and a high watachability factor throughout—trainwreck-based or not. Marlon Brando plays Moreau—a doctor who has decided to continue his human/animal hybrid experiments on a remote island—with complete left-field insanity AND, simultaneously, ice-cold control. Sometimes painted kabuki-ghost-white, often accompanied by a inscrutable, identically-dressed dwarf, and in one scene wearing an ice bucket on his head, Brando still somehow demands your attention as a mad genius coping with obliterated moral boundaries. One captivating and mind-boggling scene has Brando explaining Schönberg and Gershwin on the grand piano to a roomful of animal mutants, who eventually eviscerate him in a hammock. Can't say there were any shots of Brando's dismembered right hand being chewed on in Last Tango in Paris, can ye? And so overall, the acting—David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk, Ron Perlman—is surprisingly on-target and commendable given the circumstances. Val Kilmer, who plays Moreau's assistant Montgomery as a stoner/fringe-grad-student of sorts is either exactly the right amount of "over the top," or urgently nauseating, depending on your taste. And Stan Winston's creature FX are often spot-on amazing (see the lead hyena actor as an example), although some of the background characters just look like fur-piles with bumps of clay stuck to their foreheads. The script plays loose with Wells's original tale, and is clearly the downfall of the film. John Frankenheimer, brought in four days into the filming to replace fired director Richard Stanley, scrapped the original one, and had the shooting script written and re-written as filming went on. This is just a tip of the nuthouse backstory to Moreau '96, which is all the more intriguing for it; other alleged stories include Kilmer being an out-of-control egomaniac on the set and canned director Stanley sneaking back onto the set as an extra (as a mutated bulldog character) throughout. The ending of the film completely topples underneath its own weight, complete with lots of random fire thrown about and supernaturally creatures jumping around on visible cables. Watching David Thewlis's character, who had originally been brought to the island as an unbeknownest-to-him captive, escape the island at the end evokes much from many. The strongest mood yanked from me is akin to smoking a Dunhill after fleeing an abruptly-ended warehouse party where freaks, supermodels, and talking animals alike danced arm-in-arm while on some outstandingly rollercoaster drugs … until the DJ killed the party by spinning a bunch of Tom Cochrane album tracks. Hey, it was fun while it lasted, right?
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