Isle of the Dead (1945)

On a Greek island during the 1912 war, 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 ... See full summary »

Director:

Mark Robson

Writer:

Ardel Wray

Stars:

Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer

2 nominations.

Cast

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

Storyline

On a Greek island during the 1912 war, 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.

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Plot Keywords:

plague | premature burial | catalepsy | buried alive | vampire | 

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Taglines:

APPALLING! WEIRD! BAFFLING! (original half-sheet poster)

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Genres:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

1 September 1945 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Ilha dos Mortos

Company Credits

Production Co:

RKO Radio Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

71 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Sergei Rachmaninoff composed an orchestral piece titled "The Isle of the Dead" in 1908, also inspired by the Bocklin painting.

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Goofs

Throughout the film the general wears a jacket with two stars on each collar. As he is quarantined on the island, he has no other clothes, just the uniform he was wearing when he arrived. However when the general confronts Davis and Thea in the woods, his jacket suddenly has no stars on the collar. In the next scene in which he appears, the next morning, the stars reappear on the jacket collar.

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Quotes

Thea: Laws can be wrong, and laws can be cruel, and the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.

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Connections

Featured in TJ and the All Night Theatre: Isle of the Dead + Cat People + the Curse of the Cat People (1978)

User Reviews

It's All Greek to Me!

Boris Karloff heads a group of internationals quarantined on a small Greek island during the Balkan War of 1912. A plague has visited the island and forces a group of unlike people to stay together in order to not spread the plague. Karloff plays a misunderstood, rather austere Greek general known for his coldness. Others on the island include Jason Robards Sr. as a man who prays to the Greek gods of old, beautiful Ellen Drew as a serving woman thought to be a "Greek vampire" by an older superstitious Greek woman, Alan Napier and Katherine Emery as an aristocratic English couple, and several others. Karloff is wonderful in a role that has nothing to do with anything he had ever or would ever play. His face is a character of its own. The rest of the cast is very good too(Robards is a bit annoying, however). Drew is lovely. The real star of the film is the atmosphere created in the film. Director Mark Robson, under the production savvy of Val Lewton, creates a film reeking with eerie settings, a feeling of isolation and all-pervading doom, and a somewhat slow-pace that ordinarily might seem sluggish but under Robson's direction adds only to the mood.