The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) - H.G. Wells
Related: H . G. Wells - mad scientist trope - science fiction - 1896
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) - H.G. Wells [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Poor brutes! I began to see the viler aspect of Moreau's cruelty. I had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor victims after they had passed from Moreau's hands. I had shivered only at the days of actual torment in the enclosure. But now that seemed to me the lesser part. Before, they had been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings, and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau—and for what? It was the wantonness of it that stirred me. --The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) - H.G. Wells
Although less suave than Count Zaroff of The Most Dangerous Game (1932)--in spite of his Mephistophelean goatee, Laughton's Moreau looks sweaty and rumpled compared to the impeccable Zaroff--Moreau is his blood brother in the mind. Moreau's equivalent to Zaroff's cool intellectual sadism, again suffusing the film with a perverted eroticism, is his plot to have Arlen mate with Burke--the beautiful woman he has created from a panther but who is already reverting--just to see what the results of cross-breeding will be. --http://eric.b.olsen.tripod.com/souls.html [Dec 2006]
Description
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells, addressing ideas of society and community, human nature and identity, religion, Darwinism, eugenics, and the dangers of unchecked and irresponsible scientific research. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Dr._Moreau [Dec 2006]Review
A shipwreck in the South Seas, a palm-tree paradise where a mad doctor conducts vile experiments, animals that become human and then "beastly" in ways they never were before--it's the stuff of high adventure. It's also a parable about Darwinian theory, a social satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), and a bloody tale of horror. Or, as H. G. Wells himself wrote about this story, "The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exercise in youthful blasphemy. Now and then, though I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace. It grimaced that time, and I did my best to express my vision of the aimless torture in creation." This colorful tale by the author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds lit a firestorm of controversy at the time of its publication in 1896.--Amazon.com
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