13 Nights of Shocktober: Isle of the Dead

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 3: Quarantine Night/Val Lewton Night

"No one may leave the island."

Isle of the Dead (1945)

The 1945 horror film Isle of the Dead, from director Mark Robson and auteur producer Val Lewton, makes for a peculiar viewing experience in era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The story concerns a group of people quarantined on a small island after one of them dies suddenly of the plague. Making their situation even more tense, is the growing suspicion that one of them may be a vorvolaka, a mythic vampire-like creature that feeds on the living.

The story takes place in Greece during the war of 1912. Boris Karloff stars as General Pherides, a stern, cold, even tyrannical general referred to as the “Watchdog” of his country. In the opening scene we see him sentence a subordinate to death by suicide for letting his troops lag behind. An American reporter, Davis (Marc Cramer), accompanies Pherides to an island cemetery to visit the tomb of his long dead wife. Mysterious singing leads them to the house of an archeologist, Dr. Aubrecht (Jason Robards, Sr.), and his guests, including the ailing Mrs. St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery) and her young travelling companion, Thea (Ellen Drew). Kyra, the superstitious housekeeper, believes they are the victims not of a plague but of a vorvolaka and that Thea is the mythic, life draining creature. One of the guests dies suddenly that night. Dr. Drossos diagnosis the cause as septicemic plague (the most lethal form of the plague/Black Death) and General Pherides orders a quarantine.

Almost everyone in the group thinks that the General’s quarantine order (which includes forbidding gatherings of more than two people) is an overreaction. They challenge him, claiming they do not have to follow his orders since they are civilians. Dr. Drossos says when the warm south winds come, the fleas carrying the plague will die and they will be safe to leave the island. The archeologist is overly skeptical, saying that the doctor’s claims sound as ridiculous as old superstitions. He even lights a fire to the old gods he says will be as effective as the quarantine. General Pherides believes in the law, science, and medicine but as the plague spreads and people die, including Dr. Drossos, he begins to believe science has failed. The persistent claims from Kyra about a vorvolaka consume his mind until he too targets Thea as the cause of the plague.

From 1945 until the COVID-19 pandemic, Isle of the Dead surely played differently. The film’s sympathy is on the side of the characters who think the General’s quarantine and ban on gatherings are an overreaction and unnecessary. When the General stops Thea from escaping the island, it is meant to show his cruelty. Watching this film now, the most tense and anxious moments came from characters ignoring the General’s orders, which he made according to medical advice. In 1945, Isle of the Dead was a film about how the right situation can lead to a single person seizing control and becoming mad with power. It is still about that, to be sure, but in 2021 it is also about how an event like an epidemic spurs different reactions, including dangerous ones. In both views of the film, General Pherides is an unsympathetic man who loses his mind and goes from trying to protect people to trying to kill the same people. He is also a man that becomes dangerous as he loses confidence in science and medicine and gives into superstition.

Isle of the Dead falls into the second tier of the series of low budget horror films Val Lewton produced for RKO in the 1940’s. The horror classics Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) are firmly in the top tier. Those films partnered Lewton with director Jacques Tourneur, who made use of eerie imagery to emphasize the fear felt by the characters. Director Mark Robson does a fine job at the helm of Isle of the Dead but lacks the stylistic touches and eye for eerie imagery that made the previous Tourneur/Lewton films great. For a film set on an island cemetery there is a disappointing lack of creepy or eerie imagery depriving the film of a richer atmosphere. Despite these flaws Isle of the Dead is still an intriguing, low key horror movie and an interesting one to watch during a pandemic.