The stories of messy production schedules are not new in Hollywood. Over the years, many movies have seen an arduous filming process where everything goes South. Such a film was the 1996 sci-fi horror, The Island of Dr. Moreau, inspired by the H.G. Wells novel and starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. From the very start, it was a cursed project that hardly went well for anybody on set.
Interestingly, The Island of Dr. Moreau‘s mess was so monumental, that an entire documentary titled Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau was made to reveal everything that occurred on that cursed project. According to the reports, none of the co-stars had good working ethics with each other or the director. However, Val Kilmer has a different story to narrate as he felt that the blame was wrongfully put on him.
What did Val Kilmer say about The Island of Dr. Moreau‘s disaster?
Originally, The Island of Dr. Moreau was set to be helmed by director Richard Stanley. It was his dream project for a long time before creative differences led the studio to replace him with director John Frankenheimer. The project went on to be messier after both Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando faced personal crises at that time.
According to reports, Val Kilmer did not cooperate with his co-actors and had anger issues after he was served divorce papers on set. But later in an interview with Deadline, the Top Gun actor openly admitted to having a good time with the late The Godfather legend.
Val Kilmer addressed the reports of Marlon Brando‘s problematic behavior on set by stating that the late star was just trying to save an already messed-up project. According to Kilmer, he was made the scapegoat even though he was in a small part of the film, and the film was bad anyway with or without him in it.
Beautiful people and beautiful experience – the film gets a bad rap because Poor [director John] Frankenheimer was desperate for a comeback, and he froze up with Marlon’s gutsy style of improv. Marlon was just trying to save a poorly constructed script. I got blamed for ruining he film, even though I died two-thirds of the way thru.
And the film is just as bad when I’m not in it. I always wondered how he could have made that claim with all the evidence against him, till I realized no one every saw the ending!!!
According to Screen Rant, the actor and the late director could not stand each other as Val Kilmer disagreed with Frankenheimer’s approach to the story. Reportedly, their relationship was so bad that the director said- “Even if I was directing a film called The Life of Val Kilmer, I wouldn’t have that prick in it.”
The 64-year-old actor was disheartened by how some studio executives blamed him without knowing the full story about the off-screen drama. But even after everything, he claimed to have loved the working experience with Marlon Brando. It cannot be denied that most of the cast and crew only joined this film to work alongside Brando but things did not go as they expected.
The 1996 film faced major trouble when the late Oscar-winning actor’s daughter committed suicide and he had to leave midway without any notice. Even after his return, reports state that he raised various troubles on set. The screenwriter Ron Hutchinson stated (via The Guardian) that it was an “awful experience” as Brando had tainted relations with most of his co-actors and he even wanted to “sabotage” the movie.
The Island of Dr. Moreau was bound to fail from its beginning
The movie was initially perceived as a passion project by director Richard Stanley. Nonetheless, he was angered to learn that the studio had also approached filmmaker Roman Polanski behind his back. Later it was resolved after he had a chat with Marlon Brando and the latter agreed to his vision, only for matters to get worse going forward.
Another major disaster occurred when Brando’s daughter committed suicide and he retreated to his private island without any hint about his possible return.
Even though the filming resumed after a series of recasts, it suffered from severe weather problems. On the other hand, Val Kilmer, whose role was already reduced as he demanded, reportedly had anger issues on the set after learning about his divorce. Shockingly, on the third day of the filming, Stanley was fired and John Frankenheimer was brought to work on the film.
Frankenheimer faced more issues as Brando seemingly lost his interest in the film. The latter even refused to learn the script and was provided the lines by his manager on a radio receiver. The late actor even improvised many of his dialogues.
Several reports state that Marlon Brando shared a very bad relationship with both the director as well as Kilmer but the Heat actor is shown to be having a friendly time with the former actor in his autobiographical documentary Val (via Screen Rant). Instead, Val Kilmer repeatedly asserted that the director’s approach affected the film.
The Island of Dr. Moreau can be streamed on Tubi.
