Today’s movie of the day is Lost Soul: the Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014) directed by David Gregory.

It has Richard Stanley, Fairuza Balk and Hugh Dickson in it. The documentary discusses Richard Stanley’s attempt in the early 90’s of bringing to life “The Island of Dr. Moreau” to the big screen.

Richard Stanley directed such films as “Hardware” (1990) and “Dust Devil” (1992) wanted one of his favorite childhood books to be the next movie to make. He reimagined and wanted bring the Island of Dr Moreau to a more contemporary setting but still stay faithful to the book.

However days into the production Richard Stanley was fired from the movie and was replaced with John Frankenheimer. Reasons as to why Stanley was fired varied from executives from the studio thought he couldn’t handle a big budget movie, to Val Kilmer(who had one of the starting roles in the movie)wanted him replaced.

This movie covers a lot of different view points from various people who were involved in the project including Fairuza Balk who starred in it.

It was a great documentary about the trial and error of the beginning to end of the 1996 movie. The weather barriers, diva movie stars, uninvolved directors etc. I remember really being attached to this movie when it came on cable. I would watched it continuously and be so enthralled in it by the monsters in this. So when I learned about this documentary I had to watch it.

I wasn’t aware of Richard Stanley’s involvement in this movie until I watched the documentary. Now I always will wonder what if he ended up making his movie. I feel like he would of done an interesting post apocalyptic take of the island of Dr. Moreau and been way more successful than the movie that ended up being made.

Fun fact: Even though Richard Stanley was fired and removed from this project he still found a way to be on the set. There was a rumor that he was one of the monster extras!

Until next time!