falconer99

The setting is rather uninspiring and the special effects mainly someone with an oversized puppet head ... except for when the rats are put on screen together with the humans, when, especially considering the age of the film and the budget, the effects are pretty good. But the trivia says that the film is based on Jules Verne's 'Mysterious Island,' not Wells' 'Food of the Gods.' This is not so. The premise (not the setting) is much like Wells' oeuvre, but the concept of the oversized animals was grafted onto the film of Verne's novel. Or so I remember. It's a while since I read Wells. But I agree that the film is fun and enjoyable and, well, Big.

I hadn't seen this film for many years, but I managed to find it again on Film 4 a few nights ago. I fondly remember the sixties when BBC2 showed many fine (and, unlike today, well chosen) films from around Europe (Forman, Polanski, et cetera) and other non-mainstream films regularly. So I was pleased to find this. Yes, it is superbly-cast, with Guinness and Kovacs in particular standing out. But I remember the music as being by Chico Hamilton and whatever his band was called. I was not impressed during my first viewing, as I would have preferred the music to have been scored by someone more professionally associated with film scoring, but clearly Reed was trying to emulate the success of the "local scoring" as in 'The Third Man.' But that's not my point. When watching tonight, the opening titles, which showed an amorous couple with the film frozen at one point, suddenly shifted slightly, and what I consider to be a new credit inserted, that of "Music played by Frank and Laurence Deniz," or that's what I assume the title read, as I have copied this from the IMDB site, and there it is marked as "uncredited." There is mention of their being 'The Hermanos Deniz Cuban Rhythm Band' in the IMDB credits, but there is no mention of a composer in sight. So, was there ever a composer credit (as I seem to remember)? Was Chico Hamilton wiped from the credits? I can't find a reference to this anywhere ...

I remember having seen this around when it was first shown on British television. I must have been about 12. I remember I was very impressed by the writing (Richard Alan Simmons), and it may have been this episode that made me want to write (my third book is just out). The direction (painfully at night), the score (Leith Stevens), and Falk and Stevens are all brilliant, and the whole thing just, well, comes together superbly. Nobody ever seems to mention Le Salaire de la Peur (Henri-Georges Clouzot), which must have been at the back of Simmons' mind when he wrote this! I assume the title is an homage. But there was quite a lot of quality pioneering television being made back then, even in America. i suppose it's just that they've run out of ideas now.