As the first and best of the three official adaptations of H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, Erle C. Kenton’s Island of Lost Souls brings the horror elements of the science-fiction tale to the forefront. The film remains chilling even today, despite having the most primitive of technology.

Pomade-haired shipwreck victim Edward (Richard Arlen) is brought to the title tropical site where the arrogant, power-mad scientist Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton, looking a little like Fat Hitler) rules over his House of Pain, a laboratory where he creates ungodly mutations of half-men/half-beasts. Some resemble wolves, simians, even owls; all cower at the crack of their maker’s whip.

A victim of censorship, Island contains some crazy-ass ideas it has to dance around rather than discuss outright — namely, Moreau wanting to unleash his panther woman, Lota (Kathleen Burke), on his good-looking guest, Edward, to see what would happen if he would put his pee-pee into her hoohah until he had a big tickle. (Has the porn industry not leapt upon this idea yet?)

With expansive sets and excellent make-up effects, Island is a feast for the eyes, even in black and white. It’s also startlingly as relevant, with the particular issue of evolution still ridiculously as hot-button as ever. Perhaps one day, we as a society will be able to acknowledge the possibility of a higher power and let man fuck leopard whores freely and without judgment. One can hope. —Rod Lott

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I’m as surprised as anyone to learn that there are levels of “quality” to the movies Syfy plays, but compared to the kind of stuff Syfy usually presents, Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep is Casablanca. Make no mistake: It’s B-movie trash with a CGI squid that Nintendo would be ashamed to put in a DS game, but it does have a couple of things going for it.
 
First of all, it’s not a horror movie. The title wants you to believe differently, but it’s actually an adventure film with Victoria Pratt and a couple of interns looking for sunken treasure that’s guarded by a mythological sea monster. Oh crap. I hope I didn’t raise anyone’s expectations there. This isn’t even Tomb Raider quality, but I was just so happy not to spend two hours watching CGI tentacles take down drunken teenagers, that the ridiculous treasure-hunting plot felt original.
 
Something else it has going for it are the leads. Maybe I’m just still in love with her from Cleopatra 2525, but I find Victoria Pratt extremely watchable and the best part of any movie she’s in. And yeah, Charlie O’Connell constantly reminds me that he’s not Jerry, but he’s still plenty charming.
 
That’s about it for the good stuff. The rich, Greek villain is a mustache-twirling cartoon, and there are all kinds of ridiculous holes in the plot. It’s just that when you’re expecting a big plate of chum, even Long John Silver’s tastes pretty good. —Michael May

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Ah, the 1980s. It was a simpler time: a time of magic, miracles, demons and gods. A time when a cult horror director could commandeer a $25 million budget to construct an amalgamation of thoughtful British science-fiction and American horror. A time when Steve Railsback was considered a viable leading man. I speak of the infamous flop Lifeforce.

Loosely based on Colin Wilson’s novel The Space Vampires — fairly on-the-nose for a title — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper and Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon cobbled together one of the cinema’s most bizarre achievements. Ostensibly a tale of intergalactic vampires discovered in Halley’s Comet (embodied by Mathilda May, wandering nude through her scenes and helping a few teenagers achieve maturity much faster), Lifeforce switches tones at will, transforming from space opera to vampire flick to chase film, then going absolutely bugfuck to become a zombie apocalypse. At one point, May replicates herself through blood streaming from the faces of nearby victims, and somehow, it just makes sense.

Cannon Films clearly didn’t know what it had signed on for. Lifeforce flopped, with reviews generally negative or worse (although Gene Siskel liked it). But aided through hindsight and extended editions, Lifeforce is a geek classic. Certainly no one involved phoned it in; Hooper’s direction (never better) captures the style and dry wit of the classic Hammer Quatermass films (well worth checking out), the score by Henry Mancini (!) is appropriately quirky and bombastic, and John Dykstra’s (Star Wars) special effects are superb — the desiccated zombie design is wonderful, and the alien spacecraft is a thing of beauty. No CGI here, just craft and skill.

And the cast! Railsback is fittingly hammy as the token American hero, and the rest of the talent is a who’s who of classic British faces, including Patrick Stewart, who may well be a Highlander considering he hasn’t aged a day in almost three decades. Lifeforce ain’t particularly scary, although it has a share of “Boo!” moments. But when you add up its elements — vampires, zombies, mad scientists, astronauts, sex, spaceships, psychics, aliens, Lovecraftian undertones — you have one utterly sui generis film. —Corey Redekop

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You might think 10 years is a long time to wait before ripping off a wildly successful movie like Alien, but Leviathan was released only three years after the even more wildly successful Aliens, so while the concept wasn’t fresh, it was at least fresh on people’s minds.

One of a half-dozen underwater sci-fi thrillers released in 1989, Leviathan takes place in an undersea mining facility where the crew’s been living for three months. Toward the end of their shift, they discover a derelict vessel whose crew was destroyed by an unusual, dare-we-say-“alien” life form. One of the miners accidentally brings it back on board their ship, hidden inside his body until it’s ready to pop out and terrorize the rest of the crew who are stuck there because the company they work for knows more about all this than they’re letting on.
 
Leviathan does have some significant, although superficial-to-the-story differences from Alien, however. H.R. Giger famously designed the creature in Alien; Leviathan’s beast was created by the great Stan Winston, who unfortunately wasn’t doing his best work here. The early stages of the monster look cool, like a killer eel or something, but as it matures, it turns into an asymmetrical version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon-type character from Mad Monster Party.
 
A better difference from Alien is Leviathan’s cast. The movie is watchable mostly for the gorgeous Amanda Pays and her irresistible accent (and underwear), but also because it has Robocop, Col. Trautman, Winston from Ghostbusters, Marv from Home Alone and Callie’s dad from Grey’s Anatomy trying to fight a fish-man. When I think about it that way, it’s actually kind of awesome. —Michael May

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The premise of The Core would have you believe that the inner core of the earth has stopped spinning, causing massive thunderstorms, electromagnetic surges that stop pacemakers and, well, something that causes birds in London to go absolutely mad. And that’s just for starters! College professor Aaron Eckhart believes that within a year, all life around the world will cease to exist.

He convinces enough military bigwigs that the situation is real and deadly, if they don’t do something — namely, drill down to the center of the earth and jump-start the planet. Hey, whaddaya know, Delroy Lindo’s been working on just such a machine in the middle of the desert! So the two get in the ship with astronaut Hilary Swank, pompous scientist Stanley Tucci and a few others, and get down to business.

For a while anyway, The Core plays it straight enough that you just buy into it. It’s not until the mission is well under way that said suspension starts falling apart, probably because the movie is just too darned long. And the mission — its Armageddon half — is actually the least interesting part of the movie. I much more enjoyed the setup — the Deep Impact half — where the disaster scenes carry a little mystery, the Space Shuttle is forced to land in a Los Angeles sewer ditch, and citizens panic as all of Rome’s monuments are blown to model bits.

The acting isn’t all that bad, just the dialogue. Eckhart makes for a likable all-brains hero, although this must be one of the easiest slum jobs for an Academy Award winner, as Swank has to do little more than sit in a chair and rattle off some numbers. The weakest link here, however, is Road Trip freak DJ Qualls as a hacker named Rat. He likes Xena: Warrior Princess and Hot Pockets, and can do anything with computers — and is just plain annoying. He’s this film’s Jar-Jar. —Rod Lott

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