Best movie of this year hands down!

That was an excellent one.

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Nice effects though.

I don't believe that you can make a bad film of a Jules Verne story. Some better than others, some inferior ones, but not a bad film. The plots and the characters were born for the screen. If Verne had been born later and allowed full credit control in writing and producing films, what films they would have been.Mysterious Island with the help of that other creative genius Ray Harryhausen concerns some Union soldiers who escape from a Confederate prison in a Confederate observation balloon. There's also one Confederate stowaway as well. In what is described as the greatest storm in American history this balloon is blown WAAAAAAAAAAAAY off course and they land on an island they later learn is 1000 miles from New Zealand. And what a place with all kinds of giant creatures, crabs, bees, and even a giant chicken all brought to life by Ray Harryhausen with some of his best work.The man responsible for all this is Captain Nemo late of the Nautilus which it turns out was not sunk as written by Verne in 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, but rather limped into its home base by Herbert Lom in a measured and calculated performance. Nemo has reassessed his life and now thinks that instead of blowing up the ships of war from every nation, he should work toward providing abundance for man. Hence he pioneers organic food and that giant wildlife is part of the experiment.Two women also are shipwrecked as well Beth Rogan and her aunt Joan Greenwood. Michael Craig and Michael Callan are Union soldiers, Percy Herbert who usually plays cockney characters didn't quite get the southern accent down for the Rebel hitchhiker and Gary Merrill is the war correspondent whose got the best lines and the best story in history and no way to report it out.All the human players however pale in comparison to Ray Harryhausen's animation monsters. Mysterious Island which while not a faithful telling of Verne's story is still good entertainment, as good as I remember it at 14 seeing it in the theater.

This movie must have looked great back in 1961, though the special effects today look pretty dated. Now I am not trying to be nasty--I can respect the work Ray Harryhausen did with the film but in this age of incredible CGI work, his stop-motion work does look pretty quaint. Plus, the superimposed backgrounds and other effects just seem to have aged poorly. HOWEVER, the film still looks good and is entertaining--making it sort of a 'turn off your brain and enjoy' sort of film.It begins at a Confederate prison camp during the US Civil War. A group of Union soldiers have a remarkably easy time escaping and seizing an observation balloon. But, once in the balloon they hit a huge storm that takes them way out over the Pacific Ocean. After many days, they arrive at an odd island--odd because there are some HUGE creatures there and also because oddly fortuitous things keep happening. First, some ladies conveniently land there as well (yet the island is supposedly in the middle of no where). Second, when pirates or giant animals attack, Captain Nemo suddenly appears and saves the day. Third, when the island decides to explode and kill them all, they manage to create a means of escape.Now you might think this would make for a silly film, but the overall effect was actually pretty cool. The acting, while most of the actors are relative unknowns, was quite good. The only really familiar faces I saw were Herbert Lom (who played a nice Captain Nemo) and Gary Merrill (one of Bette Davis' many husbands and a very underrated actor). I think kids, fantasy and Harryhausen fans will enjoy this. However, if you are a person who only watches DVDs from the Criterion Collection or the latest and most up to date films, you probably won't enjoy this film nearly as much. I liked it because it was charming for its kitsch value--plus it was pretty fun.By the way, although there are several silly effects in the film, the one that made me laugh is one I see all the time. At one point the folks find a skeleton and it is fully articulated--in other words, all the bones are connected like you'd see in a skeleton in a science classroom. Well, despite seeing these all the time in movies, once the flesh is removed from a skeleton, the ligaments and tendons become disconnected from the bones and the whole thing falls apart. In other words, you'd just find a pile of bones. That's your biology lesson for today, kids!

It ought to be kind of fun, especially for the kids. It's a wild adventure story in which a couple of Civil War soldiers are blown in a balloon from Richmond, Virginia, to some island in the South Pacific. There they encounter strange, over-sized animals -- a giant crab, something that looks like a technicolor emu, and a bumble bee the size of Ford Navigator. They also run into two ladies whose ship was wrecked nearby. Of the two ladies, Beth Rogan supplies sex appeal and Joan Greenwood introduces some class. Then, towards the end, they run into Captain Nemo and his Nautilus submarine.A white-haired, sullen Herbert Lom is Captain Nemo. He informs the others that the volcanic island is going to destroy itself in a few days and they must escape by repairing a ship. They get the vessel repaired just in time and they escape. Well, almost all of them escape.In a movie like this, full of phantasmagorical effects, it's hardly possible to make any comments on the acting. No one stands out as particularly good, nor does anyone draw attention to himself by being especially inept.Ray Harryhausen gets four shots at stop-motion animation: the giant crab (which is pretty good, if you ask me), the colorful emu, the excitable bumble bee, and some kind of underwater cephalopod. The other effects -- the exploding mountain and the crumbling underwater ruins -- I attribute to his colleagues in the department. Of course, stop-motion was long ago replaced by CGIs and the images may look dated but they always had their own special brand of charm, especially when their appearances were underscored by Bernard Hermann's music.There is a brief conversation about the ethics of Nemo's goal of stopping war by destroying its instruments and the men who wield them but it doesn't amount to anything. The movie does what it was designed to do -- provoke thrills, not thought.

Compared with other Ray Harryhausen pictures, like the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, I prefer Mysterious Island. Not because of the effects, but because this movie is actually exciting and well acted / directed. Unlike the very cheesy (still great though in its own right) Seventh Voyage. For example the escape in the balloon delivers some exciting moments and other adventures on the island as well. Great voice over as well, during some scenes. Love the background paintings of the volcano/island. Nice atmosphere, and a great great score form Bernard Herrmann. (my favourite Herrmann score, its rousing!) For those who like the score... there is an absolutely great new re-recording available, spot on performance and conducting. (label: Tribute Film Classics), a work of love. Google it up, enjoy! Highly recommended. (no affiliation)