The director who resorted to witchcraft to deal with Marlon Brando
In 1996, a film was released that starred a white-faced Marlon Brando, his diminutive sidekick, a furious Val Kilmer, and a cast of actors suffering under layers upon layers of prosthetic makeup effects. The production was so legendarily difficult that it has since been immortalised in a documentary that is arguably more famous than the film itself. In this must-watch doc, the original director, who was unceremoniously fired after only three days on-set, even revealed that Brando had a helping hand in signing up for the unmitigated disaster: witchcraft.
When South African director Richard Stanley got the green light to adapt the iconic HG Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, it must have felt like the four years of painstaking development he’d put into the project was about to pay off. He had previously directed Hardware and Dust Devil, two low-budget horror movies, but this would be his major studio debut. Unfortunately, the experience would become such an ordeal that it spawned the 2014 documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau.
Trying to detail everything that went wrong throughout this doomed production would take far too long, but a potted history of its problems includes multiple actor changes, inclement weather in the rainforest shooting location, a lead star who alienated everyone on set while he was going through a divorce; and another star who refused to learn his lines and also went AWOL at one point by retreating to his private island. That last one was Brando, obviously.
When Stanley was jettisoned by New Line Cinema after only three days and replaced by John Frankenheimer, he must have felt his dream had become a nightmare. After all, he had put so much time and effort into getting the film off the ground and even resorted to unusual measures to ensure Brando’s participation.
In Lost Souls, the eccentric director admitted that he was so desperate to land the legendary Godfather star’s participation that he supernaturally stacked the deck in his favour. He revealed, “Knowing the odds were stacked against me, I resorted to witchcraft.”
Stanley enlisted the help of his buddy Skip, an English warlock who had a knack for fixing things and doing what Stanley called “invisible mending”. They hatched a plan that involved a simultaneous Hollywood meeting and a blood magic spell. At the exact same time as Stanley met with Brando and the studio executives to entice him into signing on the dotted line, Skip and a coven of witches performed a ritual to “save the movie”.
To Stanley’s delight, the spell worked. Brando agreed to do the movie, and everything seemed like it was in place for the director to realise his vision. Three days into production, though, and it was all in tatters. Stanley was gone, and Frankenheimer binned the majority of his script, while Brando took his tendency for oddball, difficult behaviour to extremes he’d never quite reached before.
Bizarrely, it also seemed like the ritual backfired on the people who cast it. Not only was Stanley’s career dead in the water, but in quick succession, Skip contracted a flesh-eating virus, and Stanley’s mother was struck by lightning.
Over the years, many people have posited the idea that production was cursed, and it may have been because dark magic was used prior to its start. Indeed, aside from production issues, there was also a tragedy associated with the film. Brando didn’t simply retreat to his private island because he was being awkward; he did it in the wake of his daughter Cheyenne committing suicide in Tahiti.
Whether the film was actually cursed or not can never be confirmed, but in 2007, when Stanley was asked why Brando agreed to join the film, he seemed to indicate there was no love lost between them.
He cryptically mused: “There was a lot of weird skulduggery going on behind the scenes that I wouldn’t really be able to put my finger on. The entire period of time…with Cheyenne, the whole period is drenched with paranoia and skulduggery. What Brando’s motives were, I can’t honestly say.”
