Isle of the Dead (1945) on Netflix
General Nikolas Pherides and reporter Oliver Davis reach a Greek isle in 1912 to visit his wife's grave. Plague quarantine traps them among strangers, one of whom calls Thea a vorvolaka.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.4/105,828 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
During the Balkan Wars of 1912, General Nikolas Pherides and the American reporter Oliver Davis come to the Isle of the Dead so the general can visit his wife's grave. The crypt has been despoiled. Singing draws them to a house where a retired Swiss archaeologist lives with his housekeeper Madame Kyra, alongside a British diplomat, his sickly wife Mary St. Aubyn, her Greek companion Thea, and an English tinsmith. Kyra tells the general that the rosy Thea is a vorvolaka, a malevolent being in human form; he laughs. By morning the tinsmith is dead of septicemic plague, and Dr. Drossos puts the island under quarantine.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Isle of the Dead (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filming of Isle of the Dead was halted after about two weeks in July 1944 when Boris Karloff required a back operation; while he recovered and before the cast could be reassembled, he and producer Val Lewton made The Body Snatcher instead.
- The troubled production of Isle of the Dead cut the central female character of the original script, named Catherine, entirely from the tale.
- For Isle of the Dead, composer Leigh Harline borrowed themes and copied the orchestration of Sergei Rachmaninoff's tone poem Isle of the Dead, itself inspired by Böcklin's painting, without violating copyright, and made no use of the public-domain Dies Irae.
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