Shutter Island inspired me to recently revisit the Val Lewton / Boris Karloff Bedlam, which (due to the nature of the two-movie-per-disc packaging of the Lewton set) also allowed me to revisit Isle of the Dead, another of the producer’s collaborations with actor Karloff (the other being The Body Snatcher). Bedlam is a bit awkward: the traditionally wonderful, economically suggestive Lewton production design (the insane asylum has an eerie, claustrophobically minimal vibe that recalls the climax of Freaks) is somewhat undone by the overtly preachy tone. Isle of the Dead, which was my first Lewton picture (seen somewhere in the neighborhood of my thirteenth year) holds up more effectively: the designs are, once again, incredibly suggestive with incredibly little, and the titular isle has a creepy diminished quality – we feel as if the entire cast is sitting in one another’s laps – which magnifies the dread of a picture driven by the spread of illness.
Karloff, a commanding, underappreciated actor, has an effortless way with his increasing dementia and paranoia in Isle of the Dead. Many actors play “crazy” to the back aisles, but Karloff, like Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierre Madre and The Caine Mutiny, underlines the tension of a tough guy trying to suppress an increasing loss of control. The picture, set in Greece in 1912 during the First Balkan War, finds Karloff playing a worn down general who rows to a neighboring isle to visit his wife’s corpse (he’s the kind of guy who impulsively decides such things), only to find himself trapped with a number of other people who’re suffering from a plague, which he’s just been seen working his soldiers to the bone to prevent.
Isle of the Dead doesn’t have much in the way of traditional three-act propulsion, and it’s all the better for it: there is little pretense, we are to watch as these characters slowly discover themselves to be dying. The mystery, which director Mark Robson seems to be indifferent to, is whether the inhabitants are dying of plague or from the interference of a mythological Grecian monster that somewhat resembles a vampire. The solution to that mystery leaves more questions than answers, but that’s also appropriate: it leaves you to consider Karloff’s graceful breakdown, a premature burial right up there with Poe (and accomplished with basically a box and the shadow of a tree branch), and Lewton’s shrewd, admirable, lovely economy.
The 13 and 30 year-old Chucks wouldn’t quite see eye to eye on this one, as the former found the picture to have far too much isle and not nearly enough dead.
