Isle of the Dead

Audience Reviews

View More (92)

Audience Member Another Val Lewton horror classic. It's very slow moving but heavy on creepy atmosphere and Boris Karloff shines as a Greek General during the Greek Civil Wars who is desperately trying to keep a small group of people alive on a "haunted island." A slow burn that's light on action but heavy on the creep factor. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 11/06/25 Full Review That boi C interesting setting and plot, boris is always fun to watch, val lewton hasn’t disappointed in my experience. it’s an interesting take on greek folklore and vampires (i should say vorvolokas) and was creepy without directly incorporating supernatural elements. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 09/26/25 Full Review Madoka A Fantastic. Spooky. Funny. Great product! Really good! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 06/23/25 Full Review Matthew B Isle of the Dead is a vampire movie which possibly does not contain a vampire in it. I say ‘possibly' because the story is ambiguous and perhaps a little muddled, leaving room for doubt at the end. The horror movies produced by Val Lewton traded in this uncertainty and ambiguity. Very little was shown on screen; the scripts were underwritten; the running time of the movies was short. These methods kept the budget down on the movies, whilst leaving much to the audience's imagination. We are invited to consider for ourselves what is really going on, and whether events have a rational or a supernatural explanation. Sadly this was the penultimate movie that Lewton made for RKO, and the strain was already showing. Lewton was obliged to resist attempts to go for outright scares in the movie, a sign that the age of suggestive horror movies was drawing to a close. The action follows General Pherides (Boris Karloff). Pherides is a ruthless old soldier and a fanatical patriot. Against the protests of a humane American reporter, Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer), he forces a soldier to commit suicide for the failure of his own men, even though the officer was his friend. While his men clear away bodies to prevent an outbreak of the plague that is following the soldiers, Pherides and Davis decide to visit the Isle of the Dead, which contains the resting place of Pherides' wife. The two men decide to stay there overnight, but this proves to be an unfortunate choice. By morning one of the guests has died from the plague, and the General realises that neither he nor the other guests can be allowed to leave the isle for fear of spreading infection. The remainder of the movie is spent watching as more of the trapped people succumb to plague, and supernatural explanations are offered for its cause. long the way, the script mixes in a whole variety of ideas and influences in an almost unconscious manner. The film takes in the famous Arnold Böcklin picture called Isle of the Dead glimpsed during the opening credits, and the music owes a debt to Rachmaninov's symphonic poem of the same name. Throw in elements from Sheridan le Fanu's Gothic novel, Carmilla, Greek mythology, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Premature Burial, and the film offers us a rich mix of ideas that are left teasingly underdeveloped in a way that is somehow more satisfying than if they had been fully explored. My only wish is that the movie had been made by a more talented director such as Jacques Tourneur, who might have been able to impose a better pace and more coherence on the story than Mark Robson. However, even as it stands, Isle of the Dead is a fascinating late Lewton work. I wrote a longer appreciation of Isle of the Dead on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/isle-of-the-dead-1945/ Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 08/25/23 Full Review Deke P Karloff as I've never seen him before. Looking like a regular human, a General. Warnig others about vampires. And a black plague pandemic. Never heardo til on TV 2-25-2023 Givin it a 3 1/2 RT stars, good - rec Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/01/23 Full Review Audience Member LOL, the funniest Ellen Drew movie ever made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Isle of the Dead

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Most Popular at Home Now