Second remake, at the least, of the H.G. Wells fable of the beast in man and vice versa, originally made in the early Thirties under the name of Island of Lost Souls. Marlon Brando, as the mad doctor-slash-dictator, makes a splashy entrance half an hour into the action, in Tiny Tim whitewash, coolie's hat, beekeeper's veil. "I understand that I must be shocking to you," he commiserates, dribbling his Brit-twit accent (echoes of Mutiny on the Bounty) through curiously chimp-like lips. Another half-hour and another funny hat or two later, he makes an early but hardly shocking exit. Val Kilmer, a legitimate "child" of Brando, every bit as much as the "manimals" are children of R.G.V. Moreau, is shrewdly cast as the doctor's disciple, and delivers some perfect parrotry of him in his immediate absence. Kilmer himself, however, makes a rather more shocking exit not much later. The principal actor, as distinct from the top-billed one (and two), is in fact David Thewlis, not apt to cause a crush at the box-office. But then again, the proper star of the movie is no doubt the makeup man, Stan Winston, and the main incentive to have gotten the thing off the ground in the first place was the chance, through advanced cosmetology, to improve on the look of the "manimals." The improvement, if any, is insufficient to have made it a chance worth taking. With Fairuza Balk, Ron Perlman; directed by John Frankenheimer. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd