Nevermore: Richard Stanley's 'Island of Dr. Moreau'

Welcome back to Nevermore, where I look at some of the most interesting films that were never made. This week I turn your attention to what is one of the most bizarre production stories of all time, the story of Richard Stanley's adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. Now this film technically was eventually made in 1996, only not by Stanley and very different to his original vision, as we shall soon see. Richard Stanley may not be a familiar name with most people, but in the early 90's the South-African born filmmaker was making quite a name for himself with Indie hits such as Hardware and Dust Devil. However, things took a sour turn for Stanley's career when he began production on his passion project, the Moreau adaptation, leading to one of the strangest stories ever told...

Background

Moreau had been Stanley's dream project ever since reading Wells' novel as a child. He spent roughly four years developing the film before his script was greenlit by New Line cinema, but they had some of their own ideas for Stanley's film. First of all they wanted Marlon Brando in the titular role, a far cry from Jurgen Prochnow who Stanley originally envisioned as the doctor. This would be a challenge for Stanley as Brando was infamously difficult to work with, but through a bit of luck (and supposedly help from a warlock named Skip) the two instantly hit it off. Brando took a shine to Stanley due to the directors ancestral connection to famed explorer, Henry Morton Stanley, who was in fact part of the inspiration behind the character of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. Brando of course, portrayed a version of that character in Apocalypse Now. 

With a good relationship established between Brando and Stanley it seemed like the hard part was over, until of course Val Kilmer came along. Kilmer was originally brought in to replace Bruce Willis in the lead role of Douglas, but ultimately ended up being cast as the doctors assistant Montgomery instead due to his refusal to spend too much time on set. This would mark the beginning of a tumultuous onset relationship between Kilmer and, well, everyone. 

Kilmer and Brando would be joined by Rob Morrow as Douglas, as well as The Craft star Fairuza Balk, while Stanley was joined by acclaimed SFX maestro Stan Winston to work on the creature effects. A location was chosen in Cairns, Australia, and it looked as if everything was ready to go, but things would get much worse from there..

Plot Details

H.G. Wells' original novel follows the narrator, Edward Prendick, who washes up on a mysterious island owned by the titular Dr. Moreau. The island is inhabited by strange beast-folk, human-animal hybrid beings created by Moreau through vivisection. Stanley's version would have taken this basic premise and updated it to a modern setting, with Prendick being renamed Douglas as well as being a UN negotiator. Moreau himself would have been something of a 'new-ager' as described by Stanley himself, and you can catch a glimpse at Stanley's vision for the character in the concept art below.

Furthermore Stanley would have focused a lot more on the beast people, giving them more depth and development than prior adaptations and essentially making them the star of the show. It would have been quite a raunchy film too, with a love scene involving the panther woman as well as, what he described as 'sexually-charged dolphin people', brilliant. Overall it seems as though Stanley's version would have been a modern and more liberal take on the source material, with a greater emphasis on the beast folk instead of the humans.

So What Happened?

First of all, a family tragedy meant that Brando was unavailable on set for a while, a major blow for Stanley as Brando was one of his main supporters on the picture. With Brando gone, Stanley was under a lot of pressure from the studio executives with whom he didn't quite got on with. They believed him to be incapable due to the fact that he would often fail to attend studio meetings and his rather quirky personality. On top of all that, Kilmers ego was dominating the production, from typical diva antics to out straight bullying his fellow cast and crew members. Tensions were high on the set, but that was just the beginning.

Kilmer became extremely critical of Stanley and would even go as far as to go off script when delivering his dialogue. This, combined with bad weather conditions meant that after three days of filming most of the footage was unusable. To make matters worse, leading man Rob Morrow was already cracking under the on set tensions and hostile atmosphere, and after a brief phone call with the chairman of New Line, he left the project altogether. All of this happened over the course of three days, and with little footage shot and the studio growing increasingly fed up with Stanley's direction, he was fired from Moreau altogether.

Believe it or not, Stanley's departure from the project was just the beginning. The studio replaced him with old-school filmmaker John Frankenheimer, who made drastic changes to Stanley's script and had tense relations with his crew members. Over the course of the production, there were a number of bizarre events that have made it something of an oddity. First of all Brando had some strange character choices for Moreau, from wearing white face paint, to an ice-bucket on his head, to insisting that he be accompanied by supporting actor Nelson de la Rose in each scene. De la Rosa was of course one of the worlds smallest men at the time, and for some reason Brando took a shine to him onset and kept him in every scene as Moreau's 'mini-me'. 

On top of that, the crew members and beast-folk extras frequently had drug-fuelled gatherings and casual sex with each other, while Stanley himself was smuggled back onto the set in disguise as one of the beast-folk! It turns out that after he was sacked from the project, he spent weeks alone in the jungle before coming into contact with some of the crew members again. It's a long and strange story that is actually outlined in a documentary entitled Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau, so if you want to know more of the bizarre details, I suggest you watch that. 

Chances of it Ever Happening:

Well the film technically was completed by Frankenheimer, but was a far-cry from Stanley's original vision. Critical reception was negative and the film even received six razzie nominations. To this day, leading man David Thewlis refuses to discuss the film or his experience making it. 

It's because of this that Stanley's original vision would never come to fruition, or so we thought...

After the success of Lost Soul, there has seemingly been a renewed sense of interest in Stanley's project. During an interview in the latter part of last year, Stanley confirmed that he is currently in the pre-production stages of a new version of Dr. Moreau! While he could not say too much at the time, he did mention that it will be an all new script and would have all new creature designs, for copyright reasons obviously. As well as that, he also mentioned that he would be aiming for a television series this time in order to get his full vision across. While it's obviously early days I'm glad to hear Stanley could be getting another crack at Dr. Moreau, we may actually get to see those sexually-charged dolphin folk just yet..