Mysterious Island

In 1865, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, the union soldiers POW Captain Harding (Michael Craig), Neb (Dan Jackson) and Herbert (Michael Callan) escape in a balloon during a storm with two confederate prisoners, Sergeant Pencroft (Percy Herbert) and the journalist Spilett (Gary Merrill). The uncontrollable wind takes the balloon to a mysterious island in the South Pacific in the area of New Zealand. Captain Harding self-proclaims the leader of the group and they look for food; sooner they discover that they are stranded in an island. Further, they are attacked by a giant crab that becomes their first meal. Along the days, they build a shelter and finds that the island is inhabited by giant animals. A couple of days later, they find two castaways on the beach, the aristocratic Lady Mary Fairchild (Joan Greenwood) and her sexy niece Elena (Beth Rogan). Later they find a trunk with weapons and instruments like sextant and shelter with a journal of a man left alone in the island by pirates. When the pirate vessel arrives in the island, they are helped by Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom) of the Nautilus, a submarine that had supposedly sunk in the coast of Mexico eight years ago. Nemo is famous as the man that tried to end strike among man. When the volcano begins activity, they need to leave the island to save their lives.

"Mysterious Island" is a fantastic and enjoyable adventure from the 60's that recall many films that I used to see in my childhood. The naive story has great special effects for a movie of almost fifty years ago, excellent music score and still is a wonderful family entertainment. While watching this movie, the costume of the sexy Ms. Beth Rogan called my attention and I glanced in a review an humorous comment from an IMDb User about the dress of this actress. Unfortunately in the modern world of satellites and communication, there are no more space for movies about lost worlds; maybe the exceptions are the TV series "Lost" and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village". "Mysterious Island" is a highly recommended voyage to not only a lost world, but also to a time that has gone by. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Ilha Misteriosa" ("The Mysterious Island")

This film starts off with adventure and rarely ever lets up. Starting off with a daring hot air balloon escape by Union prisoners from a Confederate prison camp through a treacherous storm which blows them off course until eventually they land on a mysterious island full of strange giant creatures such as a giant crab, a giant bird and giant bees. These creatures are magnificently brought to life by stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen. This one will appeal mostly to those young in heart and spirit. Herbert Lom is quite good in his role as Captain Nemo, a man trying to find a means of destroying the causes of war. Also has a wonderful score by Bernard Herrmann. Great fun.

Harryhausen crossed Jules Verne with King Kong in his version of Mysterious Island, giving the author's Civil War castaways something really mysterious to look at for a change. The result is a Skull Island-style adventure with a nifty 19th century set-up, and one of the stop-motion maestro's most satisfying films. Harryhausen movies are at their best when Harryhausen is unabashedly the star—-as he is here in Mysterious Island. From this high-water mark in the early Sixties, Harryhausen's films slowly began to shipwreck on two constantly reiterated movie-making clichés. First, writers began to tell Harryhausen that his effects ought to be better integrated into the overall plot, that they ought not to be isolated set pieces sprinkled through the picture like plums in a fruitcake. Secondly, critics continued to repeat the old film music legend that movie scoring is best when it fades unnoticed into the background. Both of these old saws were, in fact, horrible lies. And Mysterious Island is great because Harryhausen and his composer were still refusing to take any notice of them. The effects sequences in Mysterious Island aren't plums in a fruitcake, they're solos in a symphony, they're like the soliloquies in Shakespeare. And Bernard Herrmann's scoring for these episodes is in your face…as it should be. It jumps up and screams "THIS IS A SET-PIECE…AND A GREAT ONE. KICK BACK AND ENJOY IT!" And this, once again, is as it should be. The truth is, that stop-motion isn't an effects technique. It's an art form. If you can't enjoy it for it's own sake, then you can't enjoy it. Every attempt Harryhausen later made to "integrate" his stuff just encouraged people to take it seriously--as a serious attempt, that is, to duplicate reality. Which it isn't. We go to a Harryhausen film for Harryhausen, just as we go to a Chaplin film for Chaplin. If you came in for some other reason, then you picked the wrong movie. That said, Mysterious Island really does work, I think, as a 60s "Jules Verne" picture. The period atmosphere is some of the best in any of those movies and the interesting Nautilus variation we see here is fun to look at in its own right. The acting is quite good also, and Cy Endfield is one of the better Harryhausen directors. But the Verne elements are really just the frame around the picture. Like I said, go for Ray's monsters--then go out and tell the world.

Forget the Harryhausen special effects. What really makes this movie great is the dress the main female character wears. It's incredible! We are introduced to the dress like this: our heroes (escaped POWs) are stranded on a desert island filled with gigantic animals. At some point, two women (aunt and niece if I recall) wash onto shore, after surving a ship accident. The aunt decides to make her niece a new dress, because her old one is all torn up. So she constructs a dress out of leather, and HOLY &@$%#!* what a dress! I don't fully understand why she would make a dress like that, being from the conservative 1860's Midwest and all, but it is the most erotic dress I have ever seen. It's so tiny and skintight, it looks like she can't bend over or it would explode into a million pieces. I spent the entire movie leaning forward in rapt attention, because it honestly looks like it is going to tear apart at any moment. Wow!

The rest of the movie is pretty good, too. The special effects are wonderfully fun. The only really annoying thing is the stupidity of the characters. Case in point: after encountering a giant crab and a giant chicken, a guy and the girl (still looking great in that dress!) wander into a cave, and see giant honeycomb. "Hmm, interesting," they say. Then they hear this buzzing sound, and wonder what it is. "What's that buzzing noise?? It's getting closer..." I don't believe it is humanly possible to be that stupid. It's GIANT BEES, you idiots! Get out of there! Oops, too late. Now a colossal bee is cornering you. Didn't see that one coming, huh?

Worth watching for the FX and the dress.

8/10 stars.

Mysterious Island is a very political movie as it progresses, which is a sign of the times as opposed to the very traditional Journey to the Center of the Earth which was released just two years earlier. While Journey to the Center of the Earth was absolutely magical, Mysterious Island is explosive and dynamic. The magic is on hand, with wondrous shots and music to go along with the island's flora and fauna. The movie is also extremely charismatic. Michael Craig is too good to be true as the lead, Captain Cyrus Harding, but he has a hard edge that gets respect. The supporting players, especially Gary Merrill and Percy Herbert, more then pull their weight. Merrill's role reminds me a little of Dr. Smith from Lost in Space, and Percy Herbert is a gas as Pentcroft. Neb's character is treated like one of the gang, although I believe that Union regiments in the Civil War were either all white or all black so it is somewhat unrealistic. Indeed, how the character's mix together for the good of all is a hallmark of the movie. The strengthening of Michael Callan's character seems to be a major plot point but it gets lost along the way and is moot when Nemo shows up. Beth Rogan is sexy as Elena and the Lady Mary Faichild character ( I can't remember the actresses' name) shoots the movie full of musky, female intensity. The special effects are brilliant and (I hate to keep harping on it) blow away the "movie within a movie" digital nonsense of today. The bees are worth the price of admission alone and the movements of the crab are top notch. When Nemo arrives, the movie gets so political that I feel that I'm back in college. Herbert Lom is a little too snitty for me as Nemo but he's a cool guy and is great in other things so I accept him. The music is absolutely awesome and is one of my favorite musical scores of all time. A grossly underrated movie overall that is clearly meant to manipulate at the end. Along with Journey to the Center of the Earth, this movie would look incredible back on the big screen.