A Great Horror Movie


This must be my favourite horror movie (it was banned by the censor for ten years). The acting is so good and so is the music. The eerie atmosphere created has never been surpassed. I have this movie on video and frequently watch it; I should like to get it on DVD.

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I agree. Its my second favorite of the Lewton films, and my favorite of the three he made with Karloff. Great stuff.

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Do you really consider this a horror movie? It's more of a psychological thriller, since there's very little horror on screen, and the emphasis is on whether an evil presence exists, or whether it's just superstition. To be honest, I found it rather dull and studio-bound...just another RKO cheapie.

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Yes, I do consider this a horror movie - people being entombed while still alive reeks of Edgar Alan Poe.

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Like other Val Lewton movies I find this a bit slow to start with, but in the last 20 minutes or so, I'm practically hiding behind the couch.

It's as scary and tense as any slasher/horror movie from Hollywood today.

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I just saw this movie for the first time and thought it wonderful. It held my attention throughout and always find these kind of films much more scary than today's gory films.
And on a completely shallow level, I loved Boris's curly hair.








Yes, sir, I'm going to do nothing like she's never been done before!

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[deleted]

i just noticed they're remaking it. I guess nothing's safe these days!!

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I didn't know that this movie was being remade. Like all remakes it will almost certainly be hideously disappointing. As you say nothing is safe or sacred these days.

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knowing today's big budget horror industry, they'll probably try and CGI-up a Boris Karloff in the film to make it apply to the true fans of the original. and then at the end, bruce willis is a ghost.

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Yeah, Karloff's hair.

I chose Isle of the Dead for my Halloween viewing because I only saw it once a very long time ago. It's not one of my favorites among Lewton's films.

I remembered it was set on a cemetery island in Greece.

The only other thing I remembered was Karloff's Harpo Marx hair.

I liked the film a lot better the second time. I saw it in two- or three-minute segments because I had to pause it and pass out candy to the neighborhood urchins while I was watching it. It gave me more time to think about it and absorb it. It took more than two hours, but I did see the last 25 minutes without interruption.

And then I watched The Thing with Two Heads!

Janet! Donkeys!

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I liked this movie. It may be considered tame for a horror movie but it created suspence and made me jump a few times. I am new to Val Lewton and still have a few more of his films to watch but I love how these films can still be disturbing at points with out being grafic.

"Sometimes I breathe you in."

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This was a decent film. I liked the story and Boris Karloff's performance. The last 20 minutes or so had some creepy imagery...but it wasn't quite as good as some of Val Lewton's other pictures, and it wasn't as consistently creepy as I'd hoped it would be.

It was also sadly predictable. It was obvious from the get-go that Thea and Oliver would become romantically involved....and the moment that Mrs. St. Aubyn reveals that she suffers from cataleptic trances, it was quite apparent that she would be buried alive and come back from the grave as a mad murderess. Sadly, the climax was pretty dull, and the horror was too little, too late.

Overall, I'd say it was one of Boris Karloff's most unique performances, and the basic concept & story were interesting. But in the end it suffers from being a little too dated and studio-bound. As a huge horror film fan, I was mildly disappointed in this movie and definitely wouldn't consider it a classic.

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Yes, it's a wonderful, haunting, dream-like movie with enormous power. The attempts on this thread to define it - or not define it - as 'horror' only serve to prove that it is impossible, and pointless, to try and categorize films - a good movie will always transcend genre, in fact will make the whole concept of 'genre' redundant (it's the same as trying to pigeonhole people). Interestingly (to me anyway) in Gore Vidal's excellent autobiographical memoir Screening History, he not only describes his awakening to the power of movies as a young child at a screening of Karloff's The Mummy, he ends the book at a movie show in an Army hospital, where he was recuperating, in World War 2, and where he had been trying to write what was to become his first novel, Williwaw. Stuck, and unable to complete the work, Vidal describes how the screening of Isle of the Dead for the troops/patients awakened something in his creative subconscious that he is still unable to understand... but whatever it was, the subtle energies in Isle of the Dead spoke to what he, and the Surrealists, called 'the Night Mind', and the rest of his novel flowed freely and smoothly. So yes, surrender to Karloff/Lewton/Robson's wonderful movie, and enjoy the haunting.

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I agree that the "eerie atmosphere created has never been surpassed".

I saw this flick a few years ago and it creeped me out, which I found odd since I saw the Exorcist when I was 6 and it didn't creep me out at all.

Superb flick!


Cheers...

Buzz Cartier
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3496526

"Filthy Rich Filthy Uncle Phil" - Writer / Director / Producer
Reviews (w/ SPOILERS!!!):
http://www.trashcity.org/BLITZ/BLIT2233.HTM
http://www.moviecynics.com/filthy-rich-filthy-uncle-phil-2010-independ ent-film-review/
http://www.buzzcartier.com

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[deleted]

Isle of the Dead is wrongly considered a "lesser Lewton". It draws on similar themes as Cat People. While Cat People may be more stunning visually, Isle has a more fleshed-out plot, which makes the film grow with repeated viewing.

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It was good. There were some scenes toward the end that almost made me jump and scary. It's a very good Lewton film..not my favorite though.

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My first viewing in nearly 30 years - i liked it back then but now i found it rather disappointing despite being atmospheric -in fact i would go as far as to say, that at times, Isle of the Dead is astonishingly bad beyond belief.



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