Isle of the Dead (L’île de la mort)

This slightly anti-military film is set in Greece during the first Balkan war (1912) against Turkey.  Pherides (Karloff) is a cruel and despotic Greek general who decides to take time out from battle and visit his wife’s tomb on an island. He discovers that all of the tombs have been robbed. He spends the night at the home of an archeologist where another guest is diagnosed with the plague. The general quarantines the island, but the islanders revert to a superstitious belief that the plague is really there turn of the Vorvolka. Boris Karloff was more or less forced on Lewton who did not want to work with him, but they hit if off immediately when Lewton discovered that Karloff hated monster films and was one of Hollywood’s greatest character actors.