Mysterious Island (1961) (1961)

Mysterious Island was always a favorite Harryhausen film of mine as a kid. The screenplay and direction (like those for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and The Argonauts)is top notch. Director Cy Endfield has a solid cast and the pacing along with Bernard Herrmann's classic score creates an eerie and, well, mysterious feeling for most of the movie. The stand out in the cast is, of course, the marvelous and under rated Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo. If you haven't seen the film, I'd rather not spoil the third act of the film for you so won't go into too much detail.

The Civil War is tearing America apart. A small group of Union soldiers and a reporter escape a military prison during the seige of Richmond, Virginia. They also have a There's a scouting balloon just outside the prison walls. As the attack rages, the prisoners escape in the balloon. They are washed up ashore on an uncharted island with a brewing volcano.

It's not ordinary island (no surprise)though as they discover a giant crab and later, giant bees, chickens and other creatures. They're joined in their Robinson Crusoe adventure by a couple of women who are later washed ashore from a shipwreck. They soon discover the origin of the giant beasts and some nasty news about the volcano as well.

The cast gives a good performance. Gary Merrill (best known for All About Eve and former husband of Betty Davis) and Michael Callan are the most recognizable faces. Callan was a regular in a number of movies and television shows as a supporting actor. Joan Greenwood also gives a convincing performance as well. Still, the stand out here is the brooding performance as Herbert Lom. Lom always managed to raise the bar in any film he appeared in.

The screenplay (for those that are interested)isn't all that faithful to Verne's novel. The basic premise is drawn from his novel.

The transfer is pretty good. I doubt with the multiple exposures used as part of the visual effects that the film could look much better than this. Given the use of traveling mattes, matte paintings and other optical effects the image is occasionally grainy and indistinct. There are also some minor issues with digital grain that crop up on occasion. This is usually due to compression issues. It's not a big distraction though and you probably won't notice it all that much in most cases.

There's also some analog artifacts as well but these are mostly in the war sequence at the beginning which were clearly drawn from stock footage in the Columbia library (much as Jason used stock footage for the attack at the beginning and Sinbad for the longshot of the ship passing in the fog. In the latter film its pretty clear as the crew can be seen wearing 18 century sailor garb if one looks carefully).

As it has been noted in previous reviews the soundtrack is in mono and sounds a bit flat. My guess is that, perhaps, Columbia used a different master for the video version of Mysterious Island or just compressed the heck out of it and boosted the bass to make it sound acceptable for video. The sound is quite good but Herrmann's score is in mono here. It would be nice if Columbia could go back to the original orchestral masters to remix and master this but I'm not sure if the original elements are event available.

The extras are quite nice. The Making of Mysterious Island is quite informative as is the vintage "This is Dynamation" featurette included. The photo gallery and theatrical trailers are an improvement over previously issued Harryhausen DVDs. While this isn't quite up to the quality of, say, the Criterion Jason and The Argonauts laserdisc released a decade ago, it's an improvement over many of the vintage films being dumped onto the market for DVD.

All told this is a pretty good (although not perfect) package from Columbia and a noble effort to release vintage films with extras on DVD.

A very entertaining adventure movie for the whole family with the F/X (special effects) of Ray Harryhausen and music of Bernard Herrmann. Once again this adaptation doesn't follow the book entirely. You still get the same great entertainment even though it does not. Castaway some men and women on an island without "Wilson", but with Captain Nemo, giant animals, giant insects, and cutthroat pirates. This all adds up to fun like the older version of Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island, or some other equivalent classic. Although not produced by Disney it is the same type of quality family oriented film with great cast, sets, special effects, and music. This was English made so the accents are a little thick for being Americans, but the acting is top notch. Well worth owning on DVD. If you enjoyed the Harryhausen version of "Jason and the Argonauts" you should enjoy this.

Buy Mysterious Island (1961) (1961) Now

Entertaining fantasy-adventure based on Jules Vernes' story about escapees from a Civil War prison who hijack a hot air observation balloon during a thunderstorm and get blown off course. They crash land on a strange island and discover it's inhabited by giant creatures. They are joined by two female survivors of a British ship wreck and forge together for survival. They battle a giant crab, a giant bird and a giant honeybee before they encounter the islands' oddest inhabitant---the infamous Capt.Nemo who has invented a submarine and learned to move about underwater with special equipment fashioned from giant sea shells. They are soon set upon by pirates whom Nemo dispatches when he sinks their ship. Nemo agrees to help them escape before a huge local volcano erupts. Great score by Bernard Herrmann and imaginatively filmed with a spirited cast. Only problem is the DVD transfer---it's not very good. Kind of a disappointment since this is a very colorful and stylish film. But since this is the best we can do for now I'll have to recommend it for lovers of escapist fare and Ray Harryhausen fans. The creatures are wonderful and the individual set pieces involving them are great. There's a marvelous underwater encounter with a giant tentacled shell creature near the end of the film that's mostly done in silence to great effect. The film is grand entertainment even if it's not the best quality DVD it should be.

Read Best Reviews of Mysterious Island (1961) (1961) Here

From its opening raindrenched hot air balloon sequence to its catastrophic volcanic eruption, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND is one of Ray Harryhausen's most brilliantly realized films. The master special effects wizard who long before CGI defined stop motion animation brings us fantastic sequences, including the giant crab, bees, chicken (or whatever) and squid. By 1961, Harryhausen had honed his art to where one can only marvel at how much a single man and his team could do.

Herbert Lom (Phantom of the Opera, the Pink Panther series) is remarkable as the gentlemanly Captain Nemo, whose only goal is to rid the world of war; Gary Merrill is the crusty newspaper correspondent who admires Nemo; Michael Craig is the dashing leader of the Union soldiers; teen hearthrob Michael Callan is the somewhat cowardly young man who achieves his manhood after rescuring the fair Beth Rogan from the aforementioned giant chicken; Joan Greenwood is the snooty but earthly Lady; Percy Herbert, one of Britain's finest character actors, shows up as a confederate stowaway; and Dan Jackson is the black naval officer who helps everyone out. The revered Bernard Hermann offers one of his bombastic, but brilliant, scores, and the movie just sails along on its own energetic level.

Children should be delighted to watch this movie, simply because it doesn't rely on gore, and one can show them what movies were like before computers.

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There was a woefully bad 15-part serial version of Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island" released in 1951 that stupidly gave away the big surprise by listing Captain Nemo's name in the credits. Fortunately a decade later the release of this version of "Mysterious Island" replaced that one in the public's consciousness. The team that put together "Mysterious Island" consisted of producer Charles Schneer, special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, and composer Bernard Herrmann, which is important because it puts the film more in the tradition of their earlier collaborations, "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" and "Jason and the Argonauts," than it does Verne's novels. Obviously the 1954 Disney film version of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" had an influence on this 1961 film by director Cy Endfield ("Zulu") as well.

During the American Civil War, Union Captain Cyrus Harding (Michael Craig) is being held prisoner in a Confederate prison camp along with young Herbert Brown (Michael Callan), cynical "New York Herald" reporter Gideon Spillett (Gary Merrill), and a former slave named Corporal Neb Nugent (Dan Jackson). During a massive hurricane the group escape by stealing an observation balloon and sailing over the palisade, taking with them a Confederate soldier, Sergeant Pencroft (Percy Herbert). The storm is so fierce that it blows them to an uncharted (and dare I say, mysterious) island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, where the balloon crashes.

Harding is pulled from the water by unseen figure and the group decides to put the war behind them and work together to survive (I was going to say this is sort of like "Survivor," after the merger, which Nemo playing the Jeff Probst role, but clearly the more relevant television analogy today would be to "Lost"). But beyond the basic requirements of staying alive they learn that they have to contend with monstrously giant crabs, equally giant bees, and a ship full of bloodthirsty pirates. To make things more interesting a pair of shipwrecked female castaways are added to the little band, namely Lady Mary Fairchild (Joan Greenwood) and her pretty young niece, Elena (Beth Rogan). Using the abandoned cliff side cave of the pirates as their new home the castaways settle in for the long haul, all the while receiving timely help from their mysterious benefactor.

I never read the novel, but I still have the "Classics Illustrated" comic book version of "Mysterious Island." For me the big impression was the things the castaways did to bring a touch of civilization to the island, and while that is greatly reduced in the film you do get a least a visual sense of what they have been up to in order to make the best of a bad situation. Of course, the situation proceeds to get even worse, which forces the unseen benefactor, Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom), to reveal himself and his identity, and to help the castaways one last time.

It is a good thing that Lom does not show up until the end of the film, because he overpowers the rest of the cast, just as his character enjoys superiority over them as well. Merrill stands out from the rest as the crotchety reporter, who is almost as smart as he is cynical, and Craig manages to hang on to the hero role throughout, but Herbert and Elena descend to the puppy love phase and are just begging to be eaten by one of the giant creatures on the island, preferably the giant chicken. This is not a great film for this genre, but it certainly holds up as a more than decent Saturday matinee movie.

Harryhausen's stop-motion animation is always fun, even though no one will consider his work in "Mysterious Island" to be up to the finest moments of "Sinbad" or "Jason." The link between the giant animals and Captain Nemo is a bit absurd, since hunger has never been considered one of the causes of the American Civil War, but by the time we learn about these we have already enjoyed the castaways trying to fight the monsters (the crab is the best and the chicken has to be the nadir of Harryhausen's distinguished career). Actually, the balloon journey at the beginning provides the best special effects in the movie, especially given the impressive musical score by Herrmann. This movie is not about political philosophy, but about monsters in an exotic location and the sense of adventure that has thrilled young schoolboys for generations.