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.
Review of Isle of the Dead
