Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain

Directed by Full Moon maestro Charles Band, the film was released in 2004 at a time when Band had lost his smile, so to speak, no longer willing to call his production company Full Moon Features, saying they’d lost their magic, this film was, instead, technically produced by Shadow Entertainment. Heavy stuff.

I wanted to like this film and, unfortunately, did not. 

The film is based on an H.G. Wells novel, famous author, famous story. The idea of Full Moon Features putting out a film based on an H.G. Wells novel feels like it could work. Full Moon is, at its best, when I think of it as the pulpier, sleazier cousin of Hammer and Amblin. Where, at times, it can go from feeling like a young-adult movie to having gratuitous nudity at the drop of a hat (or a … bra). What better to adapt than one of The Invisible Man’s author’s classics?

Again though, it isn’t the best. This is Shadow Entertainment and the nineties have never felt so far. It does have some things I thought could’ve worked.

Basically, the story is about a group of friends who find themselves abducted by a strange doctor and his deformed creations, and are then subjected to cruel torment. The story itself is straightforward and paper-thin. There isn’t a lot more on the bone for it than that.

Something I did like though, or, at least, thought had some potential, was the approach. Straightaway, you can see the film’s budget or lack thereof, but there is some style there. It’s unpolished and they don’t keep up with it, but it aims for a neo-nor aesthetic, trading the black-and-white for magenta and neon-colors (which go over well on Readers Digested). The dialogue is hokey – but I was initially charmed by it. All the girls are called ‘dames’, and when people are killed, they ‘take a powder,’ and other corny stuff like that. Thing is though, I can vibe to that. Something about Full Moon doing a neo-noir film in the nineties feels like it could have really worked. What I was hoping for this film was something closer to The Creeps, another Full Moon Feature that I’d genuinely recommend.

The acting is generally rough across the board. The most polite way to describe everything is to say that I think everything could have used a second take and the dialogue needed a second-draft. John Patrick Jordan is in this film. This is his first Full Moon Feature, but he is actually a mainstay in Full Moon since the turn of the millennium, known for the Evil Bong franchise. The Evil Bong series isn’t one I would recommend (and, I’d know, I’ve seen all of them), but I would single him out as, probably, the strongest core character in that series and certainly my favorite. He … also … isn’t very good in this film. No one is, unfortunately.

Peter Donald Badalmenti plays one of the major foils in this film – one of the deformed experiments of the mad doctor. He is also in a handful of Full Moon Features, and, as far as roles go, this is the one that gave him the most to sink his teeth into. Unfortunately, I found him to be among the weakest performances in the film, with the dialogue written for him and his cadence and delivery being a little all over the place. The guy’s among the most notable names in the film with small roles in Pirates of the Caribbean and credits for playing the on-screen role of Master Splinter in those Michael Bay Ninja Turtles movies. I don’t want to rip on any actor in this film, per se, if only because it feels like whatever problem plagued this movie feels like it has more to do with its production, writing, and direction.

The performances in Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain felt like rehearsals that made it into the final cut and that leads me to believe that it is a victim of Charles Band and the quantity over quality he often lets take full rein.

The worst issue with the film, however, is that it’s boring to watch. I can deal with a lot of cheese (in film, in life, not so much), so long as the film itself is engaging and entertaining. Boiled down to the bare essentials, there isn’t really much of a difference between something like House of Pain versus another Full Moon’s Head of the Family as far as settings go and camerawork, etc. And yet, there’s a world of a difference. The film is missing the charm and, yes, the Full Moon magic that was prevalent in the nineties, and it’s missing it sorely.