Here’s what Virus has going for it: an all-too-rare lead performance by the undervalued Jamie Lee Curtis as the Sigourney Weaver of a crew of hard-nosed sailors trapped on an extraterrestrial-infested Rusian ship; a nifty-neato geek monster with some fairly cool animatronics and gore; a lesser (but at least not the least) Baldwin brother; and Donald Sutherland in bug-eyed, ham-sandwich mode.

Here’s what Virus doesn’t have: genuine scares, anything approaching originality, and a director who can do more than aim the camera at the right spot. But when I’m presented with a monster comprised of electrical impulses that replicates itself by combining spare human body parts with mutated versions of the spiderbots that menaced Tom Selleck in Runaway, resulting in awesomely goofy Borg/Cenobite hybrids, I’m willing to forgive a lot.

A generic Alien on a boat, there’s little to actually recommend, and nothing aside from the efforts of some talented effects technicians stands out. But for me, Virus is comfort food — an unchallenging, unchanging, unhealthy snack — one of those films that somehow fills a particular hole in my soul. A greasy Hawaiian pizza of a movie.

Bonus marks for allowing Sutherland to perform his last scenes as a manic, organs-exposed Terminator. Even in a career as varied and wide-ranging as his, that must be a first. BTW: I hereby claim the term “sigourney,” meaning any female lead in a genre flick comprised otherwise almost entirely by male character actors wherein all men will almost certainly be deceased by film’s end, as in, “Jamie Lee Curtis pulls sigourney duty.” —Corey Redekop

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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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