Isle of the Dead (1945) YIFY - Download Movie TORRENT

This isn't Val Lewton's best, although it's by no means a failure, given the strictures of the production -- budget, schedule, and so on.The story has a handful of people quarantined on a Greek island so as not to spread the plague. Half of them die of the disease, two are murdered by a crazed woman who was prematurely buried, and one is a suicide. Only the gentlemanly host and the two young lovers survive.The acting varies in quality, with Boris Karloff being noticeably more professional than anybody else, as the stern, protective General whose skepticism about vorvolaka (some kind of night-time demon from the grave) is finally ground away by the stress and by the whispers of the old crone who believes in the superstition.Unfortunately, the script lets everyone down. Halfway through the film, the wind changes and the plague is forgotten. The rest of the story has to do with that escapee from the premature burial who runs around with a miniature version of Poseidon's trident, using it to the distress of the others.It wouldn't be bad if the two sources of horror were somehow fused and hinged together -- the plague and the vorvolaka -- but they're not. The superstition actually arises out of an illness that has nothing to do with plague, as the film makes clear from the start. We wind up with the impression that we're watching the same actors in the same wardrobe on the same set -- but making two different movies.The direction by Mark Robson is okay, and Lewton will have his little touches. The eeriest scene is a simple one -- a vulnerable woman in a peasant dress following the chirping of a bird through a dark and windy forest. Night. And she's all by herself. And there's a madwoman with a sharp object somewhere. Little Red Riding Hood all ready to be eaten.But that's about it. Whatever scare factor is built into the movie comes from the images on screen, not from the story.What always surprises me about Val Lewton's productions at RKO is that, even when they're no more than middling, they are B movies that manage never to insult the audience. They are never done by the number, or at any rate not by any numbers that exist outside of Val Lewton's head.

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by AlsExGal 6 / 10

Tense psychological thriller but not really a horror film...

... probably not even for 1945.Gen. Nikolas Pherides (Boris Karloff) has just successfully beat back invading troops in 1912 Greece. He is conversing with American war correspondent Oliver Davis about his philosophy of war, when Davis says he is going over to the small island near the battlefield to look around. The general mentions his wife is buried there and says that he will go over with him to visit her grave. When they get there they find the grave has been robbed.They come across the home of retired Swiss archeologist Dr. Aubrecht (Jason Robards, Sr.), his Greek housekeeper Madame Kyra, British diplomat Mr. St. Aubyn (Alan Napier) and his pale and sickly wife, her youthful Greek companion Thea, and English tinsmith Andrew Robbins. Aubrecht explains that the graves were robbed by locals years ago, searching for antiquities. The general and Davis spend the night there, but the next morning the tinsmith is found dead of the plague. This means they must all stay on the island until the winds change and the disease - always fatal -runs its course among them.What follows is a psychological thriller that gets a bit too chatty and claustrophobic for my taste, but it has its good points. The main focus is the general, and how his desire to protect through strict control, which works well in the aggregate when he is commanding troops, turns malignant and to madness when his normally logical mind is peppered with thoughts of a vorvolaka - a type of vampire - by the superstitious and rather malicious servant Madame Kyra. Kyra insinuates Thea is the vorvolaka and that she's the reason that Mrs. St. Aubyn's health is slowly fading. The general's imagination does the rest.

Reviewed by rmax304823 6 / 10

Isle of the Dead

1945

Action / Drama / Horror / Mystery / Thriller

Isle of the Dead

1945

Action / Drama / Horror / Mystery / Thriller

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Movie Reviews

Tense psychological thriller but not really a horror film...

Not dead, but liminal.

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