Another unofficial version of "The Island of Dr. Moreau", this is sadly a very boring variation of the story, credited to H. G. Wells but not revealing the source. I had just seen the 1972 film "The Twilight People" when I came across this one, made 26 years after the first official version, "Island of Lost Souls", and not officially remade until 1977. I'm sure these two unofficial versions were not on the minds of the producers of that version and the later 1990's film remake, as they are both rather obscure and both made on very low budget. This version only is a shell of the original story, where Francis Lederer plays the mad scientist who does the opposite of what Monroe did and turns a male cat into a man, rather than a female, although the creature, mainly masked, looks closer to an ape-like creature rather than some sort of feline.
A good 90% of the film is talk about scientific research, as well as the issues of Lederer's wife, Greta Thyssen, who is cheating on her husband. For that reason, the film doesn't become anywhere near exciting until the last 15 minutes of the film, but the photography is not very good for seeing what is supposed to take place at twilight. The acting isn't very good, and the pacing is slow and tedious. I thought it was interesting that there is a warning at the beginning that real scenes of horror will be given a warning with the sound of a bell, and all you hear when that happens is what sounds like a phone ringing. And that happens only once. Obviously they were trying to do a William Castle like gimmick, and that doesn't end up being a very good one. Lederer, who had done a couple of horror films around this time, would not go down into legend as a master of the macabre, so Karloff, Lugosi and Price maintained their ranking without new rivals outside Cushing and Lee.
A good 90% of the film is talk about scientific research, as well as the issues of Lederer's wife, Greta Thyssen, who is cheating on her husband. For that reason, the film doesn't become anywhere near exciting until the last 15 minutes of the film, but the photography is not very good for seeing what is supposed to take place at twilight. The acting isn't very good, and the pacing is slow and tedious. I thought it was interesting that there is a warning at the beginning that real scenes of horror will be given a warning with the sound of a bell, and all you hear when that happens is what sounds like a phone ringing. And that happens only once. Obviously they were trying to do a William Castle like gimmick, and that doesn't end up being a very good one. Lederer, who had done a couple of horror films around this time, would not go down into legend as a master of the macabre, so Karloff, Lugosi and Price maintained their ranking without new rivals outside Cushing and Lee.