The man's name is Oberlus (Everett McGill), and he's a member on board a 19th century whaling ship whose presence is an irritant to the rest of the crew. The captain (Jack Taylor) comments that Oberlus' skills come in handy and that he ought to stay, but still treats him as much like a second-class citizen as anyone else. Frustrated by an attempt on his life, Oberlus jumps ship and swims to a nearby island, where he declares himself king and starts taking on prisoners (Joseph Culp, Michael Madsen, Agustin Guevara) who are forced to do manual labor or lose their fingers, hands, or their lives. Oberlus' reign takes an even darker turn when a young woman named Carmen (Maru Valdivielso) ends up on the island as well, and Oberlus captures her and forces her to be his lover.

The scales on Oberlus' face might as well have been a giant physical chip on his shoulder. His entire life, Oberlus has known nothing but ridicule and hatred due to his face, and that hatred has seeped into his personality. Part of his rule over the island is his sense of justice. He may not be kind, but as long as the men don't try and betray him, he won't betray them either. All Oberlus has ever wanted was a fair shake, to be judged on how he acted or performed rather than how he looks, and in his kingdom he can have his way, the only problem being that he has to hold a machete to make it happen. Years of mistreatment blind him to the fact that revenge and rape don't fit within the parameters of basic decency and respect, and that his soul has become as empty as those who mock him. In one scene, Carmen confronts Oberlus with a revolver, and all he can think of is how cowardly she is for not shooting him when he deserved it, as if her failure to respond to his wrongdoing is worse than the crime itself. Oberlus is simultaneously overwhelmingly sympathetic and utterly repulsive.

Oberlus is a genuine monster (more psychologically than physically), but before Carmen arrives on the island, the world tells her she's a monster as well. She was once married and is now widowed, enjoying her sexual freedom by spending time with a number of men. A priest warns her that she is in league with the Devil simply by not getting married and becoming subservient to her husband. When Oberlus forces her into this very position, she finds herself unable to fight back or defend herself, despite him providing an opportunity. The contradictions and complexities of Carmen's emotional state are less clear than Oberlus', but Valdivielso's performance is very powerful, sending lightning bolts of energy (both frightening and sensuous, depending on the scene, depending on the scene) through her eyes. McGill, comparatively, shaves away every likable aspect of his personality for Oberlus. He has several speeches laying out his rules, each delivered with a cold-blooded simplicity.

Although there is plenty to chew on here thematically, Iguana struggles to remain engaging on a story level. All of the conflict in the movie is philosophical, but this isn't a movie where the characters just stand around having dramatic conversations, either. There is some business with one of Oberlus' former shipmates, Gamboa (Fabio Testi), who is particularly cruel to him. Testi appears a number of times near the beginning and then disappears for nearly an hour, only to come back part of the way through the second half. The characters are a bit too well-defined, with little to no reveal of their personalities to provide a sense of dramatic progression; when the characters enter, they're basically laid out right from the beginning. Some effort is made to give the prisoners played by Madsen and Taylor arcs, but it plays out in a scattershot and unsatisfying manner. Iguana is a fascinating movie (twofold if you're a Hellman fan), but the film feels like a rough draft, waiting to be honed and reshaped into a more narratively satisfying feature.

The Blu-ray
Iguana follows the standard Raro Video template, with artwork that puts the spotlight on the director with a large banner across the bottom, and an image in the middle. Much like the previous DVD, there seems to be little idea of what to do, poster-wise, to summarize the movie short of using a picture of McGill's lizard-ized face, this one going so far as to obscure the human half. The single-disc release comes in an Infiniti Blu-ray case, and there is a short booklet featuring a nice little interview with Hellman, conducted by Fangoria's Chris Alexander.

The Video and Audio
Raro Video's treatment of Iguana on this new Blu-ray, presented at 1.85:1 with slight windowboxing and in a 1080p AVC encode, is tragic in how close it comes to excellence while falling short.

First things first: this transfer was color-corrected and approved by director Monte Hellman and cinematographer Josep M. Civit, and the more artistic aspects of of the image reflect that. The basic visual appearance of the image is undoubtedly better than Anchor Bay's nearly 15-year-old DVD (which also had a couple of minutes missing from it). Where the disc stumbles is more in the techniques used in the execution of what Hellman wanted the image to look like, as well as other choices that may have been made by technicians after the fact. The main issue is black crush, which is pervasive throughout the film. Now, it's possible, even almost certain that Hellman intended the film to be dark, but the film's contrast is too high, with an almost immediate drop-off between light and dark areas, such as the parts of McGill lit by firelight and the dark cave surrounding him. Inside the caves, dark hair often completely disappears into the background, with faces unnaturally floating in the void. Onboard a ship in the last moments of sunlight, a fairly obvious circle of brightness is visible around McGill. Maybe this is inherent to the original photography, but its shape and the ugly banding surrounding it suggests otherwise. The crush is so prevalent that even in a day scene in reasonable sunlight, the edge of a black vest disappears into the shadowy part of a pair of blue pants. Worse is the apparent application of noise reduction, which results in visibly frozen grain in a couple of close-ups on the beach. The island's many rocks appear unnaturally smooth, and the degree of grain in dark scenes is suspicious compared to the near-lack of it in many of the brighter scenes. All things considered, this is a potentially great transfer severely damaged by its journey to Blu-ray, with much of the damage lying outside of what I imagine Hellman and Civit were looking at, or even potentially problems created during the compression on the final product rather than anything they were given to approve.

Sound is a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that fares significantly better but is far from perfect. There is occasional muddiness or distortion to the dialogue when it peaks, possibly caused by environmental aspects like the echoing of a cave. For the most part, though, it's a nice-sounding track, effectively capturing the distant roar of the ocean underneath dialogue and sound effects. An English subtitle track for all the non-English dialogue is included, which features some minor capitalization issues ("I" is frequently uncapitalized).

The Extras
One excellent supplement is included: an interview (20:25, HD) with director / co-writer Monte Hellman. This is a lively, funny chat covering Hellman's involvement with the project, the development process, and the subsequent recut and the film's near disappearance. Even for those who, like me, are a bit ambivalent about the film itself, this interview is absolutely worth a look.

Although the disc's one extra is good, it is a bit disappointing (although, understandable) that Raro Video didn't or couldn't license the audio commentary Hellman, co-writer Steven Gaydos, and Everett McGill recorded for Anchor Bay's disc. It's a fairly significant omission, even if rights were almost certainly the issue.

An original theatrical trailer for Iguana is also included.

Conclusion
No doubt a number of Hellman fans have been waiting for Iguana to be released in an uncut form. This is certainly that disc, but the questionable picture quality and the omission of the commentary track are a strike against the disc, and the film itself is a hard sell to newcomers, a free-form, open-ended meditation on morality with a very unlikable protagonist doing awful things. The disc's single supplement brings the value up significantly, but this is one to rent before buying.