A statue of Cerberus, the watchdog of Hades in Greek mythology, guards the approach to an island set aside as a graveyard. The time is 1912 during a war between Greece and Turkey, and the mainland has been turned into a charnel house. When the Greek general and an American reporter visit the cemetery island, they become trapped by the outbreak of plague with a strange assortment of locals and travelers. A vampire may be lurking among them, fed by human fear.
Isle of the Dead (1945) was produced by Val Lewton, a literate and intelligent man who worked brilliantly within the tight budgets of time and money allotted to B movies in golden age Hollywood. Lewton is best known for his collaborations with director Jacques Tourneur, but Isle ofthe Dead, directed by Mark Robson (who went on to a varied career including The Harder They Fall and Earthquake), is almost as good as such Tourneur classics as Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie.
In a superbly understated performance, Boris Karloff stars as the general, whose underlying kindness has been encased in an iron shell of cruelty. Wrestling with a God in whom he no longer believes, the general has become a fervent nationalist and materialist, the cast-iron rigidity of his mindset allowing no room for disobedience or divergence. Although at first he mocks a bitter old matron's gossip about a beautiful young woman, whom she accuses of being an unwitting vampire who walks with evil in her sleep, he gradually embraces the idea as an explanation for the calamity overtaking him and his companions.
Like other Lewton productions, sound is used in acute and unsettling ways. Most of Isle of the Dead takes place at night, and when the sun dares shine the rays seem filtered through a gray scrim stretched across the sky. The dark shadows mirror the interior world of many characters, whose imaginations are preoccupied with malignant forces. Isle of the Dead is a tale about the interest compounded by evil and how fear gives rise to more fear.
Focus Film Society presents Isle of the Dead 7:30 p.m., Oct. 25 at Church in the City, 2648 N. Hackett Ave.
