Marlon Brando, Mad Scientist

"By the mid-1920s, Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol of Paris had achieved a worldwide reputation for its repertory of short, horrific plays that subjected human characters to the same kind of exaggerated violence that was formerly the province of the little guignol, or Punch-and-Judy show. The difference was that the 'big puppets' bled, or convincingly seemed to. The Grand Guignol was founded in 1897 (a benchmark year for horror, with the publication of Dracula, the exhibition of Philip Burnes-Jones' painting The Vampire, and - incidentally - the coining of the term 'psychoanalysis') by Oscar Méténier, a playwright and former police clerk. Méténier had cofounded an earlier avant-garde venture, Théâtre-Libre, which had produced some of his sensational and sordid playlets. The brief sketches presented life at its most squalid, utilizing the language of the streets and the most unsavory situations and characters possible . . . Since naturalism was deemed to be 'scientific,' Méténier's excursions into the lower and criminal classes were permissable for bourgeois audiences, who could vicariously contemplate base humanity - and their own baser selves - from a fashionable remove." (David J. Skal, The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 55)

The Island of Dr. Moreau (three and a half stars total) Celebrate Columbus Day with a United Nations negotiator (how perfect is that?) whose plane crashes while headed west overseas. Edward Douglas, originally shipwrecked Edward Prendick in the 1896 book by H.G. Wells, expected to meet with foreign diplomats but was introduced to "new men" instead. Christopher Columbus expected to initiate a trade route but ran over the "New World" instead. They both learned the hard way that all disappointment stems from unmet expectations. Just as contemporary school teachers seem to hate Columbus, critics and the Razzies hated this third film adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996; the centennial anniversary of the book). Perhaps their disappointment stems from unmet expectations for stars like Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the $40 million budget or a script that was continually tinkered with until the end of shooting. I had no expectations for the movie, no knowledge of the book and apparently I had nothing better going on because I enjoyed it all, even fifteen years after it was released in theaters. I didn't expect to hear Deep Forest, an electronic world music group I listened to in high school, nor did I expect to hear Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" performed by or for monkey-men. I didn't expect to see Fairuza Balk, an actress that's creeped me out since Disney's Return to Oz (1985). You may remember her as the bad witch from The Craft (1996 was a busy year for her). Back to those top-billed actors mentioned above, I never could've expected to see Marlon Brando in a dress or Val Kilmer doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando in a dress - in the same movie. Now those are some MAD scientists, and they're probably as scary as Columbus was to Native Americans.