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http://www.laweekly.com/arts/fired-...d-of-dr-moreau-vows-an-x-rated-remake-5401317
The 1977 Burt Lancaster version of The Island of Dr. Moreau was the first movie South African director Richard Stanley ever saw, and the furious boy wanted his money back. He loved the H.G. Wells novel about a mad scientist surgically blurring the line between human and beast, and years later, after his first two cult-hit horror films — Hardware (a robot techno-tragedy with Iggy Pop and Lemmy) and Dust Devil (an unearthly Namibian demon flick) — earned him enough creative cachet to get his own version of Moreau green-lit, he went for it with headlong fervor.
Stanley decamped to rural Australia, cast Val Kilmer, Marlon Brando and a 26-inch-tall Dominican celebrity in key roles, and molded a wild menagerie of masks. Like a flesh-eating parasite, the story buried so deep in his brain that Stanley quarantined himself from the cast and crew, refused to show up for meetings and, when he did, had a hard time explaining his ambition. The set was spooked by hurricanes, witchcraft allegations and Kilmer's continual tantrums. The studio was terrified of losing millions. Three days after filming started, Stanley was fired. His replacement, veteran director John Frankenheimer, held his rescue mission in such contempt that chaos reigned. Kilmer and Brando commandeered the schedule. The extras blew their accruing per diems on drugs. Stanley, legally barred from the set, crept back on in a canine costume to bear witness, mourning that he had suffered “a full arc from creator to dog.”
The final 1996 film won six Razzie nominations and is most charitably remembered as that weird mess where Marlon Brando demanded he be slathered in white face paint. Like all film disasters, it's merited a wrenching making-of documentary: David Gregory's Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau, which will screen Feb. 28, March 1 and March 3 at Cinefamily. Hardware, Dust Devil and, yes, The Island of Dr. Moreau will screen two weekends later with Stanley in attendance — except during Moreau, which he refuses to watch. “It's like having somebody sandpaper my brain,” he sighs. Yet two decades later, Stanley finally has some good news: He may soon have a second shot at directing his vision of the jinxed Wells classic — and this time, it'll be X-rated.
The 1977 Burt Lancaster version of The Island of Dr. Moreau was the first movie South African director Richard Stanley ever saw, and the furious boy wanted his money back. He loved the H.G. Wells novel about a mad scientist surgically blurring the line between human and beast, and years later, after his first two cult-hit horror films — Hardware (a robot techno-tragedy with Iggy Pop and Lemmy) and Dust Devil (an unearthly Namibian demon flick) — earned him enough creative cachet to get his own version of Moreau green-lit, he went for it with headlong fervor.
Stanley decamped to rural Australia, cast Val Kilmer, Marlon Brando and a 26-inch-tall Dominican celebrity in key roles, and molded a wild menagerie of masks. Like a flesh-eating parasite, the story buried so deep in his brain that Stanley quarantined himself from the cast and crew, refused to show up for meetings and, when he did, had a hard time explaining his ambition. The set was spooked by hurricanes, witchcraft allegations and Kilmer's continual tantrums. The studio was terrified of losing millions. Three days after filming started, Stanley was fired. His replacement, veteran director John Frankenheimer, held his rescue mission in such contempt that chaos reigned. Kilmer and Brando commandeered the schedule. The extras blew their accruing per diems on drugs. Stanley, legally barred from the set, crept back on in a canine costume to bear witness, mourning that he had suffered “a full arc from creator to dog.”
The final 1996 film won six Razzie nominations and is most charitably remembered as that weird mess where Marlon Brando demanded he be slathered in white face paint. Like all film disasters, it's merited a wrenching making-of documentary: David Gregory's Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau, which will screen Feb. 28, March 1 and March 3 at Cinefamily. Hardware, Dust Devil and, yes, The Island of Dr. Moreau will screen two weekends later with Stanley in attendance — except during Moreau, which he refuses to watch. “It's like having somebody sandpaper my brain,” he sighs. Yet two decades later, Stanley finally has some good news: He may soon have a second shot at directing his vision of the jinxed Wells classic — and this time, it'll be X-rated.
