Isle of the Dead **** (1945, Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer) – Classic Movie Review 2673

Boris Karloff stars in director Mark Robson’s wild, haunting 1945 Val Lewton-produced chiller, set in 1912 on a Greek island marooned by war and bedevilled by plague and maybe demon vampires. Martin Scorsese places it on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time. Eleven? Really?

There’s a strong central performance by Karloff as the perplexed Greek General Nikolas Pherides and an eerie premature burial, balancing the conventionally boring romantic stuff between nurse Thea (Ellen Drew) and her love interest, hero Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer).

Also in the cast are Helene Thimig (as Madame Kyra), Katherine Emery ( as Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn), Alan Napier (as St. Aubyn), Jason Robards Sr, Sherry Hall, Ernst Deutsch aka Ernst Dorian (as Dr. Drossos), Erick Hanson and Skelton Knaggs.

Ardel Wray’s screenplay is inspired by the painting Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin, which appears behind the title credits, though the film was titled Camilla during production. Another Lewton production, I Walked With a Zombie, has the same painting hung in the main room of the movie. The central female character of the original script was cut.

Leigh Harline’s sombre score makes use of another work inspired by Böcklin’s painting, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s tone poem, Isle of the Dead.

Production was suspended in July 1944 after two weeks for Karloff to have a back operation. Before the cast could be reassembled in December to finish the film, he and Lewton had already made The Body Snatcher.

It was Lewton’s costliest horror film so far at $246,000 and, taking $383,000, it made only $13,000 profit for RKO.

The film has been released on DVD by Warner Bros paired with Bedlam and as part of The Val Lewton Horror Collection.

Karloff, Robson and Lewton teamed up again in 1946 for Bedlam.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2673

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