Island of Lost Souls/Mystery of the Wax Museum - DVD

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS
Starring: Charles Laughton, Richard Arlen, Leila Hyams, featuring Bela Lugosi as "The Sayer of the Law"
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Screenplay: Waldemar Young & Philip Wylie
When Shipwreck survivor Parker is rescued after three days adrift on an overturned lifeboat in the South Pasific, his ordeal is just beginning. He is plunged into the nightmarish world of Dr Moreau (Charles Laughton), an exiled scientist obsessed with the physical transormation of animal into humans. Moreau's plans for parker soon become apparent when he introduces him to a young native woman, who is really Moreau's most successful experiment for whom the doctor is seeking a human mate...
Island of Lost Souls, the first adaption of The Island of Dr Moreau, was banned in Britain for many years and was condemened by the novel's author H.G.Wells for its "vulgarity". It remains today one of the most powerful horror films of the 1930s, with an overtly sexual and subversively political edge, and features a superb performance from Laughton as the satanically bearded doctor, a classic white-suited whip wielding colonial imperialist.

MYSERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM
Director: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Don Mullaly & Carl Erickson
Starring: Lionel Atwill, Glenda Farrell, Fay Wray, Frank McHugh, Allen Vincent
London 1921 - The London Wax Museum is destroyed by fire after an argument between sculptor Henry Jarrod (Lionel Atwill) and his financier partner about their destitute situation, and the financier's desire to collect the insurance.
New York 1933 - On the eve of the opening of New York's own London Wax Museum, the body of a young woman who is thought to have commited suicide disappears from the morgue. A hard boiled female reporter(Glenda Farell) who needs a good story to save her job investigates, and discovers a sculpture at the Wax Museum that bears a striking resemblance to the missing dead girl. The now crippled Henry Jarrod meanwhile becomes fixated with the reporters roommate, who bears another striking resemblance - to the sculpture of Marie Antoinette lost in the London fire.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum is the first and definitive version of an oft filmed story (including the 1953 House of Wax in 3D and Roger Corman's beatnik spoof Bucket of Blood) with Lionel Atwill in his greatest role as the demented sculptor. The stricking art design (heavily influenced by German Expressionism) and early two colour Technicolor give the film an eerie, shimmering look, making it a worthy addition to the canon of 1930's horror classics.