In a change of pace today, I thought it would be a laugh to take a look at one of the most infamously troubled productions in Hollywood history - the disaster that is The Island of Dr Moreau.
"But Drinker, you suave Scot social media scholar, why didn't you and your immortal liver mention the Conqueror from 1956 in which John Wayne played Genghis Khan and was filmed on a nuclear test site that gave the cast and crew radiation exposure and cancer, I hear you say" Yes Drinker, I'll go away now!
It is called Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau. Fantastic documentary chronicling the entire disastrous project; as well as highlighting just how much crap the studio was giving Stanley that made him end up leaving Hollywood all together. Though at least he returned with the pretty good Color Out of Space. Oh yeah, he did manage to sneak back on set as a dog man extra for a few shots.
The director having a meltdown, shredding everything and running off into the jungle is freaking insane!!! I love how he returned in disguise just for a scene where he gets to destroy the set🤣
Some say that it wasn't a disguise and that the guy devolved into a creature whilst alone in the jungle. Some say that he can be seen caged at a zoo in Bucharest to this very day. 🐺🐺🐺
I’m thinking of the director as the flakey photojournalist (Dennis Hopper) in ‘Apocalypse Now’ who is last see dodging a book thrown by Kurtz (Brando) yelling, “you mutt!”. Some movie parallels here, a mash up in the works?
i can't imagine what it must be like to be in movie hell on the other side of the world, turn on a TV and see your wife announce that she wants a diverse. Talk about a nut shot!!
Imagine being James Woods hearing about the movie's continuously cataclysmic production back in the States and being so effin' relieved and thankful to have dodged a bullet of these proportions.
There's a documentary called "Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau" which is definitely worth checking out. After watching it I feel like if things had gone differently (mainly keeping the budget at $8 million, instead of some dickhead studio executive saying "let's cast Marlon Brando in the movie and increase the budget to $40 million") we could have gotten one of the all time sci-fi horror greats, right up there with Alien, the Terminator, the Thing, and Predator. Fuck, the human/animal hybrids were supposed to have a drug and alcohol fueled orgy (in the movie, not real life, which is a very weird thing to think about) and one of them was going to bite Val Kilmer's dick off.
@@CurtisAlfeld Great I will check that out I've always liked this movie because you can tell it had good intentions and I thought the acting was all round good with a solid story even if it was bizarre in places, although i haven't seen it for awhile (like years) so my opinion could change.
Fun fact there is a early South Park character that is entirely based on and inspired by this movie. It’s the doctor who makes weird animals, I haven’t seen him in a LONG time. The show came out in 1997 and he was a staple in the show for the first 4 seasons.
Not his fault. He had no power as a newbie director. Brando blocked Roman Polansky to direct, which would've made incredible but would prob have seen getting fired early....
But he really didn’t. After Richard Stanley was fired, he stayed in the area of filming but the most he was involved was getting into a costume & being in the background of a few shots. If anyone tanked it, it was Brando or Kilmer. They used their star power to make insane changes to the film & made life miserable for everyone on set. There’s a whole documentary about it & it’s fascinating.
Brando generally had lines fed to him for his later films, he also had them fed to him via an earpiece in Apocalypse now. Even before that, both Robert Duval and Richard Harris have said he had his lines written for him on big bits of cardboard so he could read them, as he hadn't memorised them.
He did that in Superman as well, with his lines strategically placed on signs around the sets where the cameras wouldn't see them. When he put baby Superman in the spaceship and gave his farewell speech, his lines were on the baby's diaper.
I could never understand why I loved this movie despite it being obviously terrible. Now it all makes sense. A wretched bunch of creatures, desperate to escape, yet held in thrall to the whimsical schemes of eccentric egomaniacs… …and i thought it was just good method acting 🍻
I still think it was intentional what went on. The movie is filled with weird and psycho characters bordering on insanity. In a jungle on a weird island.. I still think they got right into character by doing what they did,, back then they took it all in their stride,, the actors put themselves into the minds of these characters,, method acting was very much a thing back then,, back then theyd research the real world, theyd observe real people and learn to understand it before putting themselves into the character they were playing. Nowadays actors have come straight from a school camp. Brie Larson acts like Brie Larson for example,, she has one way of acting and shes unwilling and possibly incapable of learning how to play different characters.
The thought of an actress with a million dollar contract being led back on set by security after she tried to escape and probably in tears due to how messed up this all was is a hilarious and depressing image.
I saw this film as a child, never knew what it was called, could never find it anywhere afterwards, when describing it to people no one knew what I was talking about... I gave up and thought maybe i was confusing the memories with that of a bad fever dream or something... Well now I know what it is! Someone else's bad fever dream.
Brando shows up for the first day of filming, and he acted like the Brando of old. He lost some weight, he actually learned his lines, and was helping the other members of the cast transition from stage acting to film. He was actually invested in Richard Stanley’s vision for the project because he saw similarities between Dr. Moreau and his character Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Unfortunately, his daughter committed suicide that night. A devastated Brando had to go back home. While he was gone, the script was heavily rewritten and part of the cast had been replaced. Worst of all, his character (the titular doctor) has been rewritten from a legitimate villain who knows what he’s doing is evil to an inept and sympathetic eccentric who doesn’t really know what’s happening on his own island. This caused Brando to sink into a deep depression he never really recovered from. When he came back, he was a mess. He had ballooned to almost 500 lbs., he refused to learn his new lines, and was combative with the new director. Somehow, he wasn’t the biggest pain in the ass on set.
@@deesnutz42069 No, It's Brando about 40 years before Moreau. 40 years will age anyone. But my point is Brando let himself go in the most extreme fashion I've ever seen to go from looking like this to what he looked like in his final years. Compare Brando to one of his contemporaries, like Paul Newman. Newman aged but still looked like Paul Newman. Brando aged, and he didn't even look like a human being.
Zachary Lewis I honestly think Brando is such a sad tragic story. Even well into his 50’s he was a gorgeous specimen of a man and his talent as an actor is unsurpassed. On the Waterfront is one of my favorite movies of all time. I think Brando was the original rebel without a cause never happy or comfortable in his own skin maybe that’s what made him such a great actor but not a very nice human being. His daughter’s suicide and son killing the boyfriend and going to jail was just too much for him. This movie aside which is actually pretty comical Brando left us with some incredible performances and I will always love him
HP Lovecraft On many occasions dating back to after Last Tango in Paris, Brando said he hated acting on film but couldn’t go back to the Broadway stage because they couldn’t afford him and his voice was too weak to carry to the back of the theatre (the primary reason he made the switch to acting on film). According to him, the last time he enjoyed his work was when he did Julius Caesar in 1953. No wonder he became a wreck.
There's apparently a story that, as only Brando could do, he insisted, because of not learning the new lines, that they be fed to him using a special radio receiver. However, that radio would also pick up stuff like police transmissions, meaning he'd suddenly interrupt a line and say stuff like "There's been a robbery at Woolworths." If it was from ANYONE ELSE but him, I wouldn't believe it for a second, but he's the same guy that showed up for his last voice recording dressed as a little girl.
“...Today, still wanted by the government he survives as an Australian hermit. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him....maybe you can hire Richard Stanley.”
When I was a teenager, I worked at the Crown Gotham theater in Manhattan. We had 1 screen, 2 balconies, big, old time theater. We ran this movie for a week or two, and it was probably the slowest movie we ever played. Daytime showings would have 1 or 2 people, tops. Night showings had 5 or 6. Quite a few times it played to an empty theater. That was the easiest workweek of my life lol.
"According to David Thewlis, Marlon Brando described making the film as like trying to complete a crossword puzzle while falling down an elevator shaft." ~IMDB
@HORSE馬 I'm pretty sure I don't want a family. I don't like people and I want some peace and quiet when I'm home, not a whole other set of people to maneuver around, all yapping and teasing and moaning and needing shit from me. About morality, there are certain boundries that I wouldn't cross, like most other people. But they don't include a family.
This movie is an actual gem. Sad how all that went on, but it gave it 'character'. before watching this, i thought the psychedelic, irrational, and disorganized aspect of the movie was intentional...it worked for me.
That's what I thought too. I laughed so hard during the film. The juxtaposition of serious philosophical questions and comedy made it something of a surrealist experience. It's a great time.
Its actually one of my favorite films to watch on hallucinogens. Its very strange and i had the sense that they knew exactly what they were doing and thought this shit was deep af!
@marty2090 Absolutely. Believe it or not, but some people are actually smart enough to be able to separate a person from a situation. Laughing at a bafflingly incompetent circumstance is not the same as laughing at the woman herself.
i’ve watched this video 4 times and each time i start smiling at the beginning and evolves into out loud laughter by the end … every time … never change man
By this point Brando had a decade of openly sabotaging every movie he was in. He got paid no matter what and hated acting, yet everyone still wanted to work with him and were shocked when he did the same thing for the 100th time.
First time I've clicked on a video titled "The Most Disastrous Movie Ever Made" and I left not feeling like it was clickbait. The fact the movie even got finished is an actual miracle the Church should officially recognize.
Val Killer told a story about Brando devouring an entire turkey in one sitting then breaking the bones to suck the marrow! 😳🤢🤣 You can't make this stuff up.
Hey Drinker, I must say, your thumbnails on practically all your uploads are such great choices, I love this particular upload of yours for numerous reasons and idk if I could find it each time without your decision and work done on the thumbnail. I just wanted to say something about that bit if work of yours. The video itself is excellent of course but this comment is along enuf, so thanks for your content once again and pls keep it comin!
"Just imagine ... six months stuck in the middle of the Australian jungle with a bunch of people who hate each other, and are actively working to prevent the project from getting finished." Haaaaave you seen the Australian army?
@@Snoop_Dugg the infamous emu war. 3 men with machine guns vs a horde of emus that were savaging crops back then the emus basically won given the cost of the operation and the little returns edit: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BXpu6tbFCsI.html for those interested in learning about the emu war trainwreck
Imagine me being about 10 years old, being drawn to cinema, because my dad thought it will be something like Dr. Dollitle, because "animals and stuff". Sweet childhood
Actually there was a remake of Dr. Dolittle around this time. Not the one starring Rex Harrison, but the one with Robert Downey Jr., for some strange reason. The movie bombed. Some things are best left alone.
Rian Johnson on his own isn't that horrible. As long as he sticks to making original, artistic movies, the damage he does is minimum. The worst he can do is make a super intellectual movie that puts normal people to sleep faster than the most potent drugs. The problem started by with giving him power WAY beyond his means by putting him in charge of something as big as Star Wars.
I haven't read the book, but in the 1970's version of this film, starring Michael York and Burt Lancaster, the premise was that Moreau had found a way to advance the evolution of a being, taking them from an animalist form, to a more human type of animal with the ability to walk upright, the ability to reason, and potentially the potential to understand morality, something that only exists in the mind of man and God. (It was not about hybridizing man and animal, Moreau never harmed a person, his own morality was an important idea in the picture.) While it shows a sort of simplistic understanding of Darwinism, (It was written in 1896, mind you,) it deals with some amazing themes. Well worth a watch, and with the right team, this could still be made into an amazing film.
The actual theme of the book is criticizing colonization. The wild animals symbolize colonized people, and Moreau is the colonizer who wants to "train" them to become "correct" human beings, with body modifications and a mix of punishment and rewards to behave "correctly". The narrator is horrified at what he did to them, because they can't really truly revert back to what they once were. In the book, Moreau actually surgically modifies them without using any anaesthetics, so the narrator hears animals yelling all day, and the yelling slowly becomes more and more human. In the end, the narrator can't live again with humans, because he always suspects people could be Moreau's creatures. He ends up living in the remote countryside with his wife. War of the Worlds is also a critique of colonization.
Make no mistake. H. G. Wells was a visionary and way ahead of the times he was living in. The message for me was that after having witnessed the events on the island the protagonist returning home and sensing himself surrounded by nothing but animals. Same thing with "War of the Worlds" the brilliance of which was a bit distorted by the "new" movie with Cruise. As far as I remember the ending was very different, too. Yes, the fact that these monstrous robots/aliens were wiped out by a simple bacteria was amazing, but what sticks in my mind is the arrival of the protagonist in a pretty much destroyed London, the human race being faced with dusting itself off, re-evaluating its role in the universe and, well, beginning anew.
@@Simbabbadthen that's not much of a critique of colonisation, it's basically saying that colonised ppl are animals and can never be anything else Sure it's criticising the methods on display here, and exposing the hypocrisy of the doctor, as he who upholds the law breaks the same law he uses to opress the animal people and gets his comeuppance, but then the animal hybrids neither had a society the titular white man destroyed nor did they form a new one they just go on a killing spree I'm not saying themes of colonialism aren't present but I wouldn't call it a direct critique, it's more so an anti vivisection thing and manifesting the bizzare racist degeneration fears of Europeans at the time
The funniest thing is, if they have had some dude just film the entire production drama and stitch it together as a documentary, they would have made back the production budget plus extra.
You can tell the movie veers off heavily from the original book when you see actors in makeup, because the whole twist of the original was that the animals walking with two legs were not in fact hybrids, but just animals that were surgically modified to walk on two legs and have enough brainpower to follow instructions and attempt to say few words on command. And the really cruel part was Dr. Moreau insisting on operating them without anesthesia so the pure shock from the torture would make them more docile and obedient.
Gosh, that sounds terrible. Maybe someone makes a new movie closer to the book, if it's well made it would probably be a success in the body horror genre.
I loved this episode so much I got several of my friends to watch it and they loved it as well. I haven’t seen it since it was posted 3 years ago. Ah the nostalgia
I actually loved this film as a kid. I was sheltered. Then I learned what Michael Bay syndrome is. It's like authentic French Champagne to kids and tater salads, but MD 20/20 to the refined drinker.
They said Brando locked himself in his trailer and literally ate several *whole* pizzas daily while they made this film. You could see in "Apocalypse Now" that he was morbidly obese even during the late '70s. It's absolutely amazing that he even lived to age 80.
@@CaptainUnusual "showed up on location in the Philippines weighing in at over 300 pounds" I'm 6'5". 300 pounds is morbidly obese even for me. Brando was 5'9". Coppola used shadows to remarkable effect.
It gets worse. The infamous scene in Last Tango in Paris with the butter? He pretty much sprang that on Maria Schneider without anyone else knowing and the director threw it in.
Poor David Thewlis caught in the middle of this shit storm. His line from the film, 'Have you ever considered you might be completely insane', couldn't be more apt.
Can't blame the guy to no to watch the movie until now. Imagine you stuck behind the drama of 2 actors with biggest egos and also in the middle of Island and the director even left.
06:04 "Shedding the documents" Disappearing to the jungle" & "sneaking into the wrap party to tell off Val Kilmer" is one of the greatest movie stories I have heard. Complete Boss Move achievement unlocked!!!
We sat down this weekend and watched Avengers Endgame. When Captain Marvel came in, I decided to remain silent and my girlfriend curiously asked "so, she can fly through ships?" Then later she commented "who is that, why was she there, I don't like that one". And I just thought about the Drinker.
You could cut Captain Marvel completely out of Endgame with a few rewrites and reshoots, and it would have no impact on the film. She literally did nothing of value or interest, they just had her show up for some reason because she is the "StRoNgEsT aVeNgEr", destroy a few things and then vanish again. This is what shoehorning a character into a film looks like.
@@jonarbuckle778 To be fair: They wanted to give her a much bigger role, but the fan backlash allegedly prompted them not to. And I think that decision was made before they realized that CapM was still a box office success (mostly, because people watched it to "prepare" for Endgame). Fuck Captain Marvel ... or at least this iteration of her.
In the movie Tropic Thunder, the director of the film within the film, Damien Cockburn (played by Steve Coogan) who was in over his head and couldn’t control his actors, was based on Richard Stanley’s experience directing this movie.
I have to admit that whenever I'm feeling blue, I can put on this video and laugh through the whole thing. I saw this movie in the theater as a teenager and we laughed through that whole thing too. Nice one, Drinker!
The number of people who don’t appreciate that the Island of Doctor Moreau was a movie built exactly how Doctor Moreau built his creatures is staggering.
That's pretty much why I left Reddit. Trying to have a reasoned argument there is only gonna end up in you being called a Nazi, a bigot or the worst of all, privileged. And all this in a completely unrelated thread.
i honestly forgot this movie existed. i vaguely remember NOW. but i thought it was generic 90s shit at the time, didn't know that it took this long and this much cash to excrete it.
Watch the documentary, 'Lost in La Mancha', So disasterous that the original 'Don Quixote'was never made. I won't say any spoilers but you wouldn't believe how crazy the situation got
I watched this movie as a kid, loved it at the time because I dig anything sci-fi/horror. It makes so much sense now that while I enjoyed the film I always felt there was something not quite right about it.
@T O That clip is from In The Mouth of Madness. The last good John Carpenter movie (IMO). Seek it out. It's a rare movie that gets Lovecraftian horror right.
I was an extra on Peaky Blinders with Sam Neill. He was a dick. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, he kept wandering off and they’d send a runner to find him. I don’t know if he just didn’t want to be there or if he’s just a miserable dick.
Director John Frankenheimer referring to the famous Will Rogers quote, "I never met a man I didn't like," had this to say: "Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer."
I think during this shoot, Kilmer had a posse of female bodyguards in tow. Did he think he would be asassinated in Australia? His driver said he was the rudest celebrity client he had ever encountered.
To be fair, his wife was divorcing him and he just wanted out and sort that out and the studio wouldn't let him. I can imagine that this would bring out the worst in anyone. I mean, sorry but why didn't they just let him go?
When I was an exchange student my host dad told about when he was the manager of the BMW-Range Rover dealership in Santa Fe he kept bringing his car back with the most random complaints, and he threw a fit every time when they told him there was nothing wrong with it, and he was a generally rude asshole who just loved conflict.
Fans who have met Kilmer say he seems a nice guy and every interview I've seen over his career he seems a laid back normal bloke. The guys wife was divorcing him so he was probably feeling very disillusioned with life and he was forced by contract to stay and film the movie. He clearly was in pain and took it out on people who didn't deserve it but I don't think it's fair to assume his terrible antics were who he really is. People make mistakes no one is perfect. The guy just handled being divorced absolutely terribly like many people do. He was a huge Brando fan and seeing him do stuff as bad as insulting extras and getting his sister to proposition extras for him probably disillusioned Kilmer even more.
Hold on- wait a second! I read a choose-your-own-adventure book version of this story in 5th grade! I had no clue what a book like it was, and had to Google it when I got home because I was confused that the events didn't line up when I read them lol.
You must do the making of Apocalypse Now. Everyone got high and wigged out in the jungle whilst a civil war erupted over the border and all the helicopters flew away to join the army. Martin Sheen had a heart attack on set and Marlon Brando did enough coke to kill the cow they butchered. I love that film.
I've always loved it too. And believe it or not, I think it's underrated. People love to dismiss it as "that weird head movie," but to me it's one of the all-time greats. Colonel Kilgore is a surprisingly charismatic character, with an accent that's one of the most fun to imitate. The tiger scene is quite suspenseful and very well done. The blond guy smearing camo all over his face has a wonderful irony to it. And the very best scene for me is one of the very last: Willard making his way through the throng of worshipping Cambodians after he kills Kurtz, petrified by the primal silence until the radio on the boat crackles to life and brings him back to the modern world. When Francis Ford Coppola dies, that's the very last scene they should show in the Academy Awards tribute montage.
@@SeasideDetective2 yea I liked it too, I watched the whole documentary series of Vietnam War before watching this and they made it pretty good in comparison to real warzone
Thanks Drinker! You've made me want to finish watching that horrible mess of a movie just for the laugh at what went on behind the scenes. Just caught it the other day.
@@kreese-yi2nb I'm trying to remember when water world came out because I think it's existence is the only reason people don't remember island of dr. Moreau more than they do. You know what they say the only thing people remember more than a small disaster is a huge one.
@@JohnDoe-yf9wk Yes. Waterworld arrived a year prior, in 1995, and was also hailed a huge failure even during production. It also costed much more money than The Island I believe. But still... I liked that movie, one of the very few of Costner's. It was over the top, but ultimately kind of coherent and Dennis Hopper seemed to have a time of his life on screen. The Island though... The very act of watching it was a misery for me. I remained mostly unaware of behind the curtain drama at that time but boy... It showed on screen. The only positive thing I took away from it was a soundtrack I won from a local radio station. One of the first original CDs in my collection, I own it to this day.
@@kreese-yi2nb Yeah I figured. Waterworld went way over budget (an almost laughable by today's standards 200 million which I believe is how much men in Black international cost / lost.) That was the only real reason people remember that movie (that and having Dennis Hopper and being helmed by the then ever-popular Kevin Costner) The sland of Dr. Moreau seriously only really garnered attention because it was such an absolute mess and the fact that it brought the constantly reclusive and weird and eccentric Marlon Brando out of hiding for long enough to film. as far as real disasters I think I've heard that as much crap as water world gets it actually wasn't as bad as most people think and it actually was able to make most of its money back. Whereas people were literally broken and damaged by island of Dr. Monroe. I mean I do think it took Val kilmer's career and pretty much smashed it to pieces once people knew what kind of a total asshat he was.
Despite the calamities, the pettiness, the incompetence, and the absolute ego manifest in this production, it still wasn't enough to destroy David Thewlis's acting career. What a legend.
So this is why this was my most hated movie of all time. When I saw this in high school, I had the misfortune of being in a third wheel situation. The couple I went with were also a disaster of similar proportions.
"Alcohol and drug induced orgies to pass the time" Imagine being conceived during the shooting of this film. "It was the worst experience of my life, and the fact that you popped out later to remind me of it did not help either." - angry crew parent.
@@BulletTooth504 bruh you know they did, hell I would. If I'm not getting shit else on this island then I may as well tap some ass while dressed as a wolf human hybrid.
I feel like as long as you weren’t an actor, or an actor handler, having this movie on your resume would be a good thing. Ignore the plot and story, the movie itself, as in, crew work, is competently done. Especially when you consider the atrocious working conditions it was done in. That’s professionalism. Yeah, I was a mechanic, I keep things working. HIRE THAT MAN!
OMG I had no idea that Simpson's Treehouse of Horror was based on a book/movie. Lmao, I should have guessed, with the amount of parodies they do, but DAMN is it good to get the reference after 20 years 😂😂😂
Who would have thought that when Brando said "the horror, the horror" in Apocalypse Now, he was actually retelling the experience of everyone that had worked with him
Just got that film and saw it about a week ago. It fulfilled my holy trinity of Vietnam War films: Platoon by Oliver Stone, Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick and Apocalypse: Now by Francis Ford Coppola.
John Doe it’s his talent. His acting was the very best, but I suppose it got to his head - just look at Kanye West and Elon Musk for other examples of narcissists that are titans of their industry.
So in other words, Brando had a direct connection to two of the most disastrous production processes in motion picture history. Yet one of them will always be remembered as a contender for the title of greatest war film ever, while the other... well...
Brando was pretty much a nightmare in Apocalpyse Now too. He would walk of set believing that's what his character would do and was an overweight playing a supposedly skinny man, which is why they kept him in shadows. His screentime wasn't that long either.
He also made The Godfather a bitch to work on as well. Thankfully, Francis Ford Coppola was able to put his foot down and get Brando to actually cooperate.
There's a lot of weird connections to these two movies. HG Wells and Joseph Conrad (author of Apocalypse Now's source material, Heart of Darkness) were friends until Heart of Darkness was released, in which Wells claimed that elements of the story were copied from the Island of Dr. Moreau. The character of Kurtz is based on Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who is the great-grandfather of this film's original director, Richard Stanley. And, of course, Marlon Brando being a fat sack of shit in both movie adaptations.
This movie, this actual version, is free in RU-vid. I watched it last night and I thought it was damn good. It's got some weird stuff in it, whacked out stuff, but that helped keep it surprising and interesting. And it had some good laughs.