Well Deserved Praise

disgusting, overrated, pointless

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Isle of the Dead is a good classic psychological thriller that involves the vorvolaka (basically a Greek vampire).Karloff plays General Pherides, a man who's sole purpose in his life is to uphold the law and keep everyone protected/safe. He has shunned the old Greek Gods in favor of scientific method. As the story continues the general becomes heavily influenced by Madame Kyra and when things get very strange he finds himself once again believing that maybe the old Gods are real.Yes this film is worth watching if you like psychological thrillers. This is not really a vampire film but worth watching if you enjoy vampires since it surrounds the vorvolaka.7.5/10

Mark Robson directed this Val Lewton production starring Boris Karloff as Gen. Nikolas Pherides. The time is the war of 1912, General Pherides goes to an isolated Greek isle to visit the grave of his wife. His is dismayed to find it disturbed, and discovers that because of the plague, all bodies had to be dug up and burned. In fact, the isle is in quarantine, and now the General(as well as the visiting journalist who was interviewing him) are as well. A superstitious old woman believes that a young woman staying at the Inn with them is responsible. Is she right, or is it something else? Eerie and well acted film has good atmosphere but is awfully slow and lacking in action. Karloff makes the difference though, as he is excellent as usual, and makes up for the faults of pacing and story.

The history of the American horror film in the 1940s can practically be summarized with two words: "Universal" and "Lewton." Throughout that decade, megastudio Universal pleased audiences with a steady stream of films dealing with Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, the Mummy and the Wolfman, culminating with the finest horror comedy ever made, 1948's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein." Meanwhile, over at RKO, producer Val Lewton was taking a wholly different tack, and between the years 1942 and '46, brought to the screen no less than nine wonderful, literate, intelligent and highly atmospheric horror outings. Those films--"Cat People," "I Walked With a Zombie," "The Leopard Man," "The Seventh Victim," "The Ghost Ship," "The Curse of the Cat People" (hardly a sequel!), "The Body Snatcher," "Isle of the Dead" and "Bedlam"--all depended more on mood, striking photography, sound effects and the power of suggestion, rather than monsters, to work their magic, and, needless to say, all hold up wonderfully well today. Perhaps not as popular as some of the others, "Isle of the Dead" has long been a favorite of this viewer. I have seen it more, certainly, than any of the other Lewton pictures, and indeed have been captivated by this little chiller ever since I was 11 (a loooooooong time ago!).In the film, the great Boris Karloff plays Gen. Pherides, a Greek (!) soldier during the First Balkan War in 1912. (Not that it matters for an enjoyment of the film, but this was the war in which Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro bested the Ottoman Empire, leading to the birth of Albania.) Pherides travels to a desolate island off the Greek coast, accompanied by an American reporter, to visit his wife's grave, and is self-quarantined when septicemic plague attacks the small group that has gathered there: a Swiss archaeologist, a British consul ("Batman"'s Alan Napier) and his invalid wife (Katherine Emery), their gypsy servant Thea (pretty Ellen Drew), a British salesman and an "old woman" (played by the attractive, middle-aged Helene Thimig, who was only 56 years old when she essayed this role). Things grow desperate as the island inmates start to die off, one by one, "Ten Little Indians" style, and become positively macabre when the old woman, Madame Kyra, gets it into her head that Thea is no less a legendary figure than the "vorvolaka," a kind of soul-sucking demon. And when the consul's wife, only seemingly dead with catalepsy, is entombed and later reawakens, now a homicidal madwoman, things go from very bad to even worse....Anyway, when my cousin Richie and I first saw this film after day camp decades ago, on TV's 4:30 movie at age 11, we were blown away by it, and no wonder! The film features very fine acting by all, including yet another splendid performance from Karloff (who would also appear in "The Body Snatcher" and "Bedlam"); expert direction from Mark Robson (who had previously helmed "The Seventh Victim" and "The Ghost Ship" and who would go on to direct Karloff in "Bedlam"); a memorable island that seems to be half cemetery (inspired by Swiss artist Arnold Bocklin's 1886 painting "Isle of the Dead"); a sombre and morose score by Leigh Harline; and no less than three absolutely stunning sequences. (Strangely enough, Karloff does not figure in any of these three scenes!) In the first, Thea sits with her seemingly dying mistress, while Madame Kyra taunts her with hissing words from outside a locked door: "I have twisted rose briar before your door. The thorns that pierced His brow will tear your flesh, evil one. I have put salt in the fire and a cross of ashes on the door. Vorvolaka, vorvolaka! Vorvolaka, born of evil, sinful and corrupt, your hands are bloody with violence, your mouth bitter with the taste of sin and corruption. You are guilty and abhorred, vorvolaka...." Trust me, it is one chilling sequence, indeed! In the second, the camera slowly zooms in on the coffin of the consul's wife, until suddenly...one truly horrible scream erupts from within! And in the third, that same woman, now driven insane by her premature burial, flits through the night in her flowing, white burial garments, wraithlike, while the wind whispers, a bird screeches, and Thea searches for her through the gloom. Offhand, I cannot recall a more chillingly atmospheric sequence in any 1940s horror film, unless it is perhaps Jane Randolph's midnight swimming pool experience in "Cat People," or perhaps the remarkable nighttime stroll that Frances Dee and Christine Gordon take through the soughing cane fields in "I Walked With a Zombie." Clocking in at a mere 72 minutes, "Isle of the Dead" is a remarkably compact affair, with nary a wasted word or scene. As a little kid, I appreciated its ghoulish atmosphere, and for years afterward would taunt my buddy Rich with cries of "Vorvolaka!" As an adult, I can still appreciate the film's wonderfully creepy miasma, but have come to the realization that the picture is a genuine work of cinematic art. While "Isle of the Dead"'s original poster hyperbolically proclaimed that it "Will Keep You Screaming," it is no exaggeration to say, I feel, that the film will surely keep you stunned....

Isle Of The Dead is set on a Greek isle during the First Balkan War in 1912–1913. When General Nikolas "The Watchdog" Pherides (Boris Karloff) and American war correspondent Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer) visit the isle, they find that Pherides' wife's tomb has been desecrated and the body gone. Upon hearing the sweet singing of a female they are led to a household consisting of the Aubin's, St & Mary (Alan Napier & Katherine Emery), Mary's nursemaid Thea (Ellen Drew), archaeologist Albrecht (Jason Robards) & his housekeeper Kyra (Helene Thimig), and salesman Andrew Robbins (Skelton Knaggs). As the talk turns to a mysterious Greek vampire called a vorvolaka being responsible for bad deeds on the isle, a septicaemic plague breaks out. Pherides sends for Dr Drossos (Ernst Dorian) and promptly quarantines all on the isle. But as the group wait and hope for the wind to come and blow the plague away, death and madness starts to take a hold.We open with a scene in Pherides' shadowy tented command point. Dark unflinching eyes stare out at the soldier in front of him, Pherides doesn't utter a word, he merely pushes a pistol forward, holding his gaze. The soldier takes up the pistol and leaves the tent, the outcome we know from Pherides' manner is obvious. The moody marker has been set, this is a Val Lewton {producer} & Mark Robson {director} picture.Working from a script from Ardel Wray that was inspired by Arnold Böcklin's painting of the same name, this was the fourth of five pictures Robson directed for Lewton, and the first of three pictures that Karloff made with the talented producer. Originally titled "Camilla," the production was not without problems. Karloff suffered a back problem that required surgery and thus delayed the film for a while and a central female character called Catharine was jettisoned from the original script. So not without problems it seems, but it doesn't show because Isle Of The Dead ended up as an atmospheric pot boiler dripping with the sense of unease so synonymous with the Lewton/Robson partnership.No doubt about it, this is a very talky piece, with the makers choosing fright suggestion and mooted superstition over actual actions for the most part; with Robson deliberately keeping the pace claustrophobic-ally sedate. It all then comes alive with horror relish as a premature burial {the audience are aware of this fact} brings about an upturn in pace. Which simultaneously gives the horror genre one of its best and most unsettling sequences from the 1940s. We then blend seamlessly into the last quarter of the piece where the mystery and horror unfolds amid shocks and hypnotic like fulfilment. 8/10