Island of Lost Souls, Erle C. Kenton’s notoriously unsettling 1932 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau (and the best adaptation to date), is finally coming to DVD – and Blu-Ray – in October. This classic Charles Laughton/Bela Lugosi film has been M.I.A. from home video for a long while, and it’s long overdue for a rebirth. The Criterion Collection is releasing the film with supplements including:
•New high-definition digital restoration of the uncut theatrical version (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
•Audio commentary by film historian Gregory Mank, author of Bela Lugosi and Boris
Karloff and Hollywood’s Maddest Doctors
•New video conversation among filmmaker John Landis (An American Werewolf in
London), Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London,
Videodrome), and genre expert Bob Burns
•New interviews with horror film historian David J. Skal (The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror); filmmaker Richard Stanley (Hardware, original director of the ill-fated 1996 remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau)
•New interviews with Devo founding members Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh,
whose manifesto is rooted in themes from Island of Lost Souls
•Theatrical trailer
•PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Christine Smallwood
Other Criterion titles for October include Kaneto Shindo’s ghost story Kuroneko (1968), Korda’s The Four Feathers (1939), Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman (1982), Blu-Ray upgrades of Pasolini’s Salò (1975), Kobayashi’s Harakiri (1962), Dazed and Confused (1993), and an Eclipse box set of Aki Kaurismäki’s “Leningrad Cowboys” films (1989-1994). A full list of upcoming Criterion titles can be found here, but you know that.
