Why Val Kilmer Found His Sci-Fi Horror Movie With Marlon Brando An 'Awful' Experience

Marlon Brando starred in some great movies during his career, but the legendary actor wasn't always easy to get along with. There are many stories about Brando butting heads with legendary auteurs like Stanley Kubrick and other filmmaking peeps, but it can be argued that his eccentricities also contributed toward his genius side. His behind-the-scenes antics on the ill-fated "The Island of Dr. Moreau," however, are next-level outlandish. Be that as it may, Val Kilmer didn't blame Brando for the film's shortcomings.

Brando was cast as the eponymous deviant scientist in the '90s update of H.G. Wells' beloved sci-fi horror story, while Kilmer was given a prominent role as his assistant, Dr. Montgomery. On paper, having an acclaimed veteran like Brando and a rising star like Kilmer as part of the ensemble seemed like a recipe for success, but making the movie was a nightmare experience — the kind that involves unpredictable weather destroying sets, crew members being bitten by poisonous spiders, and a bunch of out-of-control egos — that's chronicled in the outrageously wonderful documentary "Lost Souls: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau."

Brando received lots of flak for his wild on-set ego, but Kilmer had fun working with the actor since he made him laugh. For Kilmer, the main problem was director John Frankenheimer, who was called in to save the film after Stanley was fired and went into hiding in a nearby woods before sneaking back onto the set wearing monster makeup (true story). So, what happened?

Marlon Brando's demands on "The Island of Dr. Moreau" disrupted the production, so much so that the film's original director, Richard Stanley, resorted to witchcraft to try and fix things (again, a true story). Unfortunately, his magic didn't work, and the project went on to become one of Hollywood's most legendary disaster stories. Not even John Frankenheimer, the storied filmmaker behind "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Birdman of Alcatraz," could salvage it. All the same, the replacement director blamed the film's poor performance on Val Kilmer, who opened up about the experience during a Reddit Q&A in 2017:

"Much has been said about how awful the experience was. There were several embarrassed execs who made it seem worse than it was to do because the film was so poorly received, and the replacement director was desperate for a comeback and blamed me for the films failure which doesn't hold water when you watch it because I die in the film and the whole last half is just as bad as when I was alive so how could I have made stuff I wasn't in not work?"

Despite this, Kilmer had no regrets about working on "The Island of Dr. Moreau," as he enjoyed starring alongside Brando and found the whole experience to be quite entertaining. He even asked the studio behind it, New Line Cinema, to make a documentary about the disastrous production, but his pleas went unheeded at the time. Fortunately, someone made a documentary about the film years later, and it's a must-see for fans of behind-the-scenes chaos on movie sets.