mysterious island

There's no denying stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen was a master at his craft. But the cast and crew around him weren't always working up to his high standards, resulting in films that had fantastic special effects sequences but very little else to recommend them. Mysterious Island (1961) is one of the notable exceptions. Director Cy Endfield constructs a non-stop adventure story out of Jules Verne's novel, a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which would probably function just as well without Harryhausen's oversized creations as it does with them.

Upon their escape from a Confederate prison, a group of soldiers find themselves blown across the continent in a hot air balloon only to become stranded on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. But it doesn't stay deserted long. Two women are washed ashore and join up with the party as they struggle to survive against oversized crabs, chickens and honeybees, ordinary creatures made enormous by "mysterious" means.

Just as the castaways are becoming comfortable, a more human threat arrives to destroy their tropical paradise. An attack by vicious pirates lures out the real master of the island, Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom), whose experiments with the creation of a supersized food supply are responsible for the island's giant-sized inhabitants. But now an impending volcanic eruption forces them all to find a way to escape or sink to the bottom of the sea.

Unlike many of Harryhausen's films, which struggled to fill the narrative gaps between creature attacks, Mysterious Island finds everyone on the same page. The script begins with a daring prison escape that kicks things off in exciting fashion before we even arrive at the island proper. And Endfield gets to work with a cast that does more than just chuck spears at imaginary monsters (although, to be fair, they are asked to do a lot of that too). Each character is well rounded and memorable while the tropical setting - and imaginative matte paintings - lends the film a pre-Gilligan's Island charm.

Rising out of the sea with a cinematic entrance worthy of Poseidon himself, Lom's take on Captain Nemo is a clever continuation of James Mason's performance in Disney's 20,000 Leagues. And yet somehow Mysterious Island seems like the more "adult" film of the two, even though Harryhausen's work was always written off as kids' stuff. Here the legendary animator introduces some of his most unique creations including an amazingly lifelike monster crab (made by using the actual exo-skeleton of a crab as an armature) and a beautifully realized sequence inside a hotel-sized honeycomb.

This is the second limited edition Blu-ray of Mysterious Island released by Twilight Time, whose first pressing was a quick sell-out. The new release includes a slightly better transfer (the Nautilus grotto scenes and underwater octopus attack are really stunning this time around), an isolated track of Bernard Herrmann's bombastically brilliant score, excellent audio commentary, 30-minute Harryhausen interview, vintage promotional featurette, TV spots, trailers and liner notes.