Isle of the Dead (1945)

Isle of the Dead is a 1945 horror film directed by Mark Robson and starring Boris Karloff. It was made for RKO Radio Pictures by producer Val Lewton.

Plot
On a Greek island during the Balkans War of 1912 several people are trapped by quarantine for the plague. If that isn't enough worry, one of the people, a superstitious old peasant woman, suspects one young girl of being a vampiric kind of demon called a vorvolaka.

Cast

 * Boris Karloff as Gen. Nikolas Pherides
 * Ellen Drew as Thea
 * Marc Cramer as Oliver Davis
 * Katherine Emery as Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn
 * Helene Thimig as Madame Kyra
 * Alan Napier as St. Aubyn
 * Jason Robards Sr. as Albrecht
 * Ernst Deutsch as Dr. Drossos

Production
Filming began for about two weeks in July 1944 until production was suspended when Karloff required a back operation. It was completed in December 1944. In the interim, after Karloff had recovered from the surgery but before the cast of Isle of the Dead could be reassembled, he and Lewton made The Body Snatcher. The film had a troubled production, and the central female character of the original script (named "Catherine") was deleted entirely from the tale.

Score
Leigh Harline's somber score makes use of another work inspired by Böcklin's painting, Sergei Rachmaninoff's tone poem, "Isle of the Dead". Harline borrows themes and copies their orchestration, without violating copyright. He made no use of the public-domain "Dies Irae".

Box office
The film premiered in New York City on 7 September 1945. The cost of Isle of the Dead at completion was $246,000, the highest yet for a Lewton horror film, but with domestic rentals of $266,000, and foreign rentals of $117,000, it made only $13,000 in profit for RKO. It was re-issued in 1953 on a double bill with Mighty Joe Young, and made its television debut in 1959.

Critical reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. Author and film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film three out of a possible four stars, complimenting the film's production. Director Martin Scorsese placed Isle of the Dead on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.