Isle of the Dead (1945) review

 Mark Robson's third film as director for Val Lewton (after The Seventh Victim (1943) and The Ghost Ship (1943)) took its inspiration and title from a series of paintings made by Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin between 1880 and 1901, depicting a gloomy, castle-like structure on a forbidding island towards which a small boat bearing what is usually regarded as a coffin, is making its way. One of the paintings can be seen behind the opening title sequence and inspired a marvellous matte painting seen later in the film.

In terms of production, it marked the first time that Lewton and his team worked with Boris Karloff who had returned to his old stomping grounds at Universal after a short break away from Hollywood appearing in the touring production o the Broadway hit Arsenic and Old Lace. But Karloff had been dismayed at the way that horror films were going at Universal and, after making his comeback in the classier-than-usual The Climax (1944) and appearing in House of Frankenstein (1944), he jumped ship and headed for RKO, signing a new contract on 18 May 1944 and the Lewton B-unit seemed his most logical home. For his part, Lewton was initially unimpressed at having a horror star on board, one associated with the very kind of films that he was keen to distance his own work from. But having sat down for a chat with his new star, he was delighted to find that they shared the same ideas about what the genre should be and they hit it off famously. Which, given the problems that the actor was about to inadvertently cause him, was probably just as well.

Karloff, as magnificent as ever (his trio of films with Lewton really brought him back to his best form) plays General Pherides of the Greek army during the Balkan Wars of 1912 who, during a lull in the fighting, is visited by American journalist Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer). He persuades Pherides to allow him to accompany him to a nearby island, the eponymous Isle of the Dead, to pay their respects to the General's long-dead wife. However, they discover that her tomb has been broken into her, her coffin empty and are startled by the sounds of a woman singing. They find that they're not alone on the supposedly deserted island - retired Swiss archaeologist Dr Aubrecht (Jason Robards Sr) has set up home there with his Greek housekeeper Madame Kyra (Helen Thimig), and his guests British diplomat St. Aubyn (Alan Napier) and his sickly wife (Katherine Emery), her young Greek companion Thea (Ellen Drew), and English tinsmith Andrew Robbins (Skelton Knaggs). Aubrecht admits that 15 years earlier, he had encouraged the locals to rob graves for valuable Greek artifacts while Kyra mutters ominously about a vorvolaka, a sort of energy vampire, that she believes is among them in the shape of Thea. Things take a turn for the sinister when Robbins dies in the night and Pherides' medic, Dr Drossos (Ernst Deutsch) reveals that he died of septicaemic plague and quarantines the island, explaining that when the imminent hot, dry sirocco winds arrive, they will drive the infection away. As more bodies mount up, Kyra continues to claim that Thea is a vorvolaka and Mrs St. Aubyn falls into a cataleptic trance and is entombed. But she's really still alive and driven murderously insane on waking in her coffin, her greatest fear. Will there be anyone left alive to escape the Isle of the Dead when the sirocco arrives?

Isle of the Dead is smothered in a doom-laden atmosphere from the very start, a sense of dread that starts with the opening text crawl that cautions of the vorvolaka and never lets up. Beautifully shot by Jack MacKenzie, it's a gloomy and sombre film, poetic and occasionally haunting, doing a sterling job in capturing the claustrophobia and isolation of the island. Ardel Wray provides a talky but compelling script, full of the usual Lewton obsessions about the struggle between science and superstition: "We'll make a wager," says Albrecht at one point. "The doctor can use his science and I'll pray to Hermes. We'll see who dies and who is saved." As it turns out both men succumb to the plague so the film remains open minded about which is the more useful approach to the problem.

As ever, there's a degree of ambiguity about Wray's script. Were kept guessing for some time about whether there really is a vorvolaka abroad on the island though by the end we're pretty sure what the answer is. The late-in-the-day introduction of the mad, knife-wielding Mrs St Aubyn feels a little tacked on and certainly the threat she poses is wrapped up far too quickly and neatly, though her "resurrection" provides one of the film's most memorable moments: a marvelous, slow zoom in on her tomb, a cut away just as we hear a muffled moan from within for a brief interlude with Pherides and David, before suddenly cutting back, the camera zooming back again as a scream and frantic scratching at the coffin lid is heard.

There are plenty nuances to Wray's typically lyrical script. There's a suggestion that Kyra's superstition, a form of madness, is as contagious as the plague, even the world-weary old warhorse Pherides falling for her ravings. Though in practice, no-one but the two of them - and crucially us - ever really believes that Thea is a supernatural creature,. Elsewhere, Wray is suggesting that the horrors of war and its effects on the minds and bodies of its combatants are the real enemies here, more so than the plague and any imaginary supernatural monster. As with all of Wray's work for Lewton, it's a bold and very literate script that reveals more subtleties with every rewatch.

Production of the film was a troubling time for all involved. Shooting began in July 1944, but production was shut down after just two weeks when Karloff's back gave out. He'd injured it while performing rigorous manual labour for the B. C. Electric Railway Company many years earlier, before his acting career had begun, an injury further aggravated by the heavy shoes he'd been required to wear while playing the Frankenstein monster. Surgery was required and although he was up and about and ready to start work again soon enough, Lewton couldn't get the original Isle of the Dead team back together until December 1944 and in the interim, he had Robert Wise direct Karloff in The Body Snatcher which made it into cinemas four months before the reactivated Isle of the Dead.

Occasionally, the disjointed production shows in some odd lapses in the story and particularly in that rushed way they finish off the Mrs St Aubyn rampage. But on the whole, Isle of the Dead is a highly creditable addition to the Lewton stable, too often under-appreciated today (though Martin Scorsese hailed it the "11th scariest horror movie of all time" on The Daily Beast website in 2009), but worth it for a fantastic turn from Karloff, an atmosphere you can cut with a knife and some interesting call-backs to a previous Lewton productions - like I Walked with a Zombie (1943), it's set on a remote island where a clash of cultures plays out and Thea's wandering around the grounds of the huge graveyard in pursuit of an ethereal Mrs St Aubyn echoes the earlier film's famous plantation walk.