31 Days of Halloween - Day 27 Movie 2

Set against the backdrop of the Balkan War, "Isle of the Dead" (1945), is another literate, psychological thriller from producer Val Lewton. Boris Karloff (in his first of three excellent performances for Val Lewton) plays a general quarantined to a cemetery island along with a group of other people when one of them dies from the plague. An old woman begins to plant seeds that the plague may not be their only problem, that a young woman among them might be a vorvolaka, a malignant spirit who drains the life forces of others. As their situation turns dire, and worship of Greek gods comes into the open, the superstitious fear spreads among them as much as the plague, and perhaps there is something to the old woman's fear after all.