Misterio en la isla de los monstruos

Unfortunately, this one constituted another gaffe within my ongoing Halloween challenge since it's not really a horror film despite title, director (he'd later make the gory PIECES [1983]) and presence of genre icons Peter Cushing and Paul Naschy! In fact, it's a typical Jules Verne adventure (based on his much-filmed "Mysterious Island") which proves surprisingly palatable – thanks also to a lively score – though unbalanced by comedy relief from the youthful hero's bumbling/cowardly sidekick, a Professor of Elocution whose name is constantly mispronounced ("T. Artelet not tartlet!").

Cushing is the protagonist's rich uncle who has purchased an island, to which the boy is sent and where he meets a variety of dangers (pirates, cannibals, monsters) – eventually, there's a twist with respect to most of these, which thankfully explains the sheer poverty of the creatures on display! On the other hand, Naschy has a very small role at the start as a man who has struck gold – which is then coveted by his associates. The latter include Terence Stamp who, for obvious reasons, was Cushing's chief rival for the acquisition of the island; later on, he turns up on it (ludicrously shrouded from top to bottom complete with anachronistic goggles!) with his bandit horde to take the gold by force – to this end, he even plants a female 'shipwreck victim' to lure the hero into divulging the loot's whereabouts.

Coupled with the far better GORILLA AT LARGE (1954; see above) on Fox's-by-way-of-MGM "Midnite Movies" banner, it offers the film both in English and Spanish. At first, always the stickler for a film's native country being its original language, I started watching the film in Spanish but when a narrator began translating the credits into Spanish and the English subtitles proved to be of the descriptive "hard of hearing" variety, I soon gave up my puritan pretensions and watched it with the more 'user friendly' English soundtrack on. At least, one does get to hear Cushing and Stamp reciting their own lines this way...

Mr Kolderup (Peter Cushing) buys a tropical island for five million dollars. His rival Taskinar (Terence Stamp) also wanted the island - because he knows a gold treasure is hidden there. Still he couldn't make a higher bid than Kolderup. When Kolderup sends young Jeff (Ian Sera) to the island along with his teacher (David Hatton), because the lad looks for adventure, wants to become a man et cetera, Taskinar plans to make that adventure much more dangerous than intended...

Well, it's innocent fun with the typical ingredients: shipwrecked on a mysterious island, the heroes meet monsters and unknown enemies, a beautiful lady in distress, and last not least a monkey for comic relief. "Mystery On Monster Island" is not among the classics of the genre, but definitely less boring than most stuff they show on TV in the afternoon.

This is the movie of my childhood. Everything was so colorful with beautiful landscapes of desert island, predictable, scary creatures, monsters, guys behind the masks and the bad guy in the middle, pulling all the strings. Of course, there is a beautiful girl in the very end, who comes as the reward for heroic action of the main character. I just love happy endings, where happy couple proves that love between man and a woman is the only thing which matters on this world.

Whew. Glacially paced, barely directed, amateurish and dopey pseudo-adventure-comedy about shipwrecked travellers dodging evil treasure-hunters on an island packed with rubber dinosaurs, walking seaweed men, and *gasp* giant, whistling, steam-blowing caterpillars. (Yes, really). --Stalwart young hero, comic-relief panicky professor, cute chimpanzee, and embarrassingly-close-to-racist native companion bumble around the island (acquiring along the way a female castaway who's apparently located the volcanic island's only beauty salon) one step ahead of the gold-seekers. Supposedly cute twist ending only makes the whole thing even more preposterous. A long, long way from Jules Verne's original (I believe it's the same story which Harryhausen made FAR better as "Mysterious Island") - too bad Verne can't sue for defamation of plot...

Let me begin by saying that I had read Jules Verne's original source novel BEFORE seeing this movie... and the source is NOT "The Mysterious Island", as most of the would-be intellectuals who reviewed the film would make you believe.

While "L'Ile Mysterieuse" ("The Mysterious Island") was written in 1874, the source of this film is actually "L'École des Robinsons" (which could be translated as "The Robinson School"), first published in 1882... and the entire "plot twist" criticized by the others before me is actually Jules Verne's original idea... it seems he used the "plot twist" before M. Night Shyamalan! Seriously, people... this is a fantasy, a farce, lighten up! Jules Verne himself was winking at his readers throughout the pages of his novel, and the movie only took it further. Since I knew the source of the film, it was a great fun ride to watch a retelling by a director who thought his viewers would laugh with him, not at him (probably just as foolishly as Ed Wood, but that's another story!) I enjoyed this bizarre flick, it was just as fun as some Russian fantasy movies I'd seen as a child, except that it had the brazen attitude of a more adult-oriented fare, but without becoming a "Gwendoline"...

Also, movies are not created and do not exist in a void. When this film was released, in 1981, the era of the blockbuster was not yet upon us, Reagan and Thatcher had just been sworn in, and the Cold War was entering its fourth decade, flaring up again... The great era of the '70s, which had given us so many introspective and serious movies, was over, and people felt they needed more comedies, even hysterical comedies. It all probably started with "Airplane!" in 1980, and the ball just rolled on. There was at least one other title that came out in 1981, blending comedy, spoof and horror as a perfect companion for "Monster Island" - I'm thinking of "Saturday the 14th"...

All in all, the criticisms leveled here don't surprise me. Truly, it's probably not the kind of film appreciated in the U.S. culture.