I'm not a scientist, but when Dr. Moreau starts experimenting with a female animal, shouldn't he end up with a female half beast/half human? Why are all his creatures males, apart from the panther woman? Are males more evolved females?
Anyway, I don't see how this movie could have become so obscure. Well acted, well directed. Laughton is brilliant. I've seen a similar movie like Freaks (1932) more than once on tv, but this one they keep hidden in the archives.
Maybe he took some time with Lota (Kathleen Burke, who still looked hot up until the day she died). Even with her, she starts to revert back to the beast. This is really evident in the version with Marlon Brando and Fairuza Balk as the Panther Woman (although I think Fairuza is part beast for real).
s to the left of me.
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Here I am, stuck in the middle with you!
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The demasculation of the American male in public schools continues.
A "point?" Your son missed the point, I'm afraid.
For one thing, you've got it backwards. Men have X and Y chromosomes, women have two X, and there's a rare mutation which results in men with two Y chromosomes. (Who typically are more aggressive than normal.) For another... Which of the two chromosomes you have don't mean anything with regard to evolution... Sexual reproduction was an evolutionary advance, but that's about as far as the connection goes.
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Demmit, I still need to finish watching this movie. =)
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We can assume that Moreau is a male chauvinist who regards males as the pinnacle of evolution... it fits his sadistic character. His vivisectionist techniques allow him to create anything, or at least a crude replica.
Finally he realizes that his manimal world will require females, so he creates Lota.
Yes didn't his quote go "I've never created one that could cry before" "She is human! back to the house of pain! yes! this time I will burn all the animal out of her!" something like that. C'mon Universal get this movie out on dvd already! Dammit!
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If I'm Dr Moreau, I think I could see the logic of no females. As hard as it is to keep the creatures from eating meat and committing acts of violence, to deny the need to procreate would have been even tougher. Also, unless there was a surplus of females, competition and violence over them would surely have broken out. Aren't most fights in the natural world over mates?
If anything, that should have been more of an incentive to create more females. With only one, there would have been much more bloodshed over Lota. But, here's something to think about, would any of the other creatures have been a compatible mate with Lota? Could any of them and she have offspring?
s to the left of me.
s to the right.
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you!
Whether Lota could have had offspring with any of the manimals depends on what rules you want to apply. According to genetics as we now know that science, being still chromosomally a panther she could only have had offspring with some kind of large feline – panther, lion, tiger etc. – including their manimal derivatives. But if we want to get into the spirit of the movie and use the pseudo-science it espouses, we might guess that Lota could have had fruitful unions with any of the manimals or ‘real’ men for that matter, such as almost happened with Parker. (Or maybe did happen but you couldn't come right out and say it in 1933.)
Moreau might have had to add another section to the Law.
What is the Law?
Not to...hey wait a minute! Why not? Are we not men?
Son (or Daughter) of Lost Souls - A possible sequel?
"I'm not a scientist, but when Dr. Moreau starts experimenting with a female animal, shouldn't he end up with a female half beast/half human? Why are all his creatures males, apart from the panther woman? Are males more evolved females?"
I think a lot of that had to do with the emerging Hays Code, which hadn't completely taken over at that time. I'm surprised they were able to get away
with Parker and Lota's budding romance. She had to die at the end along with the other manimals because she was (in the eyes of the Catholic League of Decency) an abomination against God. Not to mention the implied bestiality.
Reportedly, the film flopped nonetheless because of the "issues" you mentioned. ;) As for Moreau and his creatures, of course he must be considered the monster himself, as the story is a captivating and well-written, if not terribly original, rendition of the Frankenstein tale.
shareI'm afraid everyone missed the real reason why there are no women creatures -- there was no way the censors of that period would portray women as half animals -- we forget what mores were back in the 1930s. And, the movie was banned for decades in some countries including the UK with just the men. No women has nothing to do with plot or science or anything else.
BTW, still the scariest scene when the creatures take Moreau into the House of Pain and use the knives on him and all you hear is Laughton's screams - dynamite!!!
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Again, male animals mainly fight over the females because there are normally so few of them. If there were an equal number of each gender, there would be less aggression.
Yippee: "For king!"
Yappee: "For country!"
Yahooie: "And, most of all, for 10¢ an hour!"
I agree with Third Age Mage.
Also, I don't recall any mention of other females in the book, so I'm pretty sure the Hayes code had nothing to do with it (was it even in place then?).
He used the creatures as brute labour. Why breed females for that? His lurid obsession with whether they could mate as humans found it's sole expression in his one ultimate project - Lota. If he had lots of females it would dilute the story.
"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."
I assumed he didn't want any unauthorized mating. Sorta like Jurassic Park, but all male instead of all female.
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