Movies That Suck - Mysterious Island

Movies That Suck has returned with a favorite of mine. This, my friends, is Mysterious Island from 1961. Based upon a book by Jules Verne and produced by Charles Schneer with special effects by the wonderful Ray Harryhausen. This is actually one of my favorite movies so I shouldn't be giving it the Movies That Suck treatment but, you know... it's one of those movies and this is all in good fun. 

So... we start off in 1865 with a bunch of Union prisoners escaping from a Confederate prison in Virginia. And can I just say the score so far sets the tone. Very dramatic. 

Anyway there's a hot air balloon... for some reason... and our intrepid escapees use it to fly the coop. In a storm. We have the captain Cyrus Harding, a rather shy Herbert Brown, and Neb Nugent as the escapees, along with a guard named Pencroft who tried to stop them and ends up flying away with them in the balloon- he almost ends up getting pitched overboard but they have a change of heart. Oh, and a war correspondent named Gideon Spilitt is with them too. 

Ooh- I just realized Pencroft is played by Percy Herbert who was in One Million Years BC. Never realized that before! 

Anywho it's been four days and they're still airborne. Heading west. Pretty soon they're over water. The Pacific? Apparently. Okay seriously? I mean, the Pacific? They traveled across America? Anyway they have a balloon mishap and run into another storm and pretty soon the balloon rips and... down they go. They have to cut the basket loose to stay airborne long enough to reach... ooh the island that just came into view. Handy, that.  

Well, we're twenty minutes in and they're on the Mysterious Island. And ooh there's a volcano. Looks very prehistoric. They filmed this in Spain apparently. The captain is missing and they're all pretty chill about it except for Neb who's still looking. They found some oysters though and they're big. 

That's foreshadowing for later. 

Anyway they find the captain by a fire that he has no recollection of building. Hmmm. And he doesn't remember being taken or going to the place where they find him. Who is the mysterious benefactor?

They speculate that they're in Fiji. Maybe even New Zealand??? I get that a balloon can go, um, a long way, but from Virginia to FIJI?

"Volcanoes surrounded by tropical palms and sandy beaches." Sayeth our occasional narrator- the captain. 

Ooh at one point they cross a gorge on a fallen tree with a waterfall in the background. Very Lost World- ish. 

Okay so they're hunting now and they come upon... a giant crab! Who's hunting whom? This is one of the iconic scenes from the movie and of course Neb is grabbed after falling down. Poor Neb. They tie a rope around the crab's leg to try and keep it fro getting away, but the crab is intent on absconding with Neb. 

Oh, and they flip it over. 

And then they flip it into a hot pool. There's geysers on the island. 

Instant crab legs!

  

Gee, why was the crab so big?

After climbing the volcano and spying a wrecked boat at a distance they encounter the rest of our cast- Lady Mary Fairchild and her niece Elena. 

"She's beautiful," opines Herbert. 

*Sigh*

Still, Beth Rogen as Elena is rather fetching. They soon begin trying to find a way off the island. And ooh they find amysterious cave. Cue the spooky music! 

Signs of human habitation, a skeleton hanging in the cave... and a diary belonging to a Thomas Ayrton, who apparently took his own life. They soon make the cave their home, constructing an ingenious little lift to get things up there (it's high up), and they soon discover something else- a cask that washes ashore. They find rifles, a compass and charts, and even a copy of Robinson Crusoe. How very convenient! And... they find out where they are, and that the nearest body of land is New Zealand. They did travel far. Still, they're 1873 miles from there...  

Interesting that the rifles are engraved with the letters NAU...

Nautilus?

Captain Nemo?

It's mentioned that the Nautilus was lost off the coast of Mexico eight years earlier. 

More ridiculousness ensues when they are attacked by a huge flightless bird. I love when they flee into their goat pen and the bird just jumps inside it. Poor Elena faints dead away and Herbert- who's been struggling all movie with feelings of inadequacy- leaps into the fray. 

Goodness. 

Herbert's a one man gang taking the thing down. Oh wait, he didn't take it down. Someone shot it. They find a bullet in it. See where this is going?

Dinner time! They make quite a feast out of the thing, and Lady Mary fashions clothing for the men and a rather short garment for Elena.    

 

Lady Mary: "Everyone's going to say it's far too short."

Elena: "Herbert won't."

Elena announces to Mary that she's marrying Herbert. After all, they don't want to wait. 

Herbert and Elena soon explore a weirdly lit cave after spying honey dripping down some rocks... and find a huge honeycomb. And... bees!

A BIG bee.

Fuck that. 

And they hide IN the honeycomb. 

The bee seals them in. That's creepy. Meanwhile a ship appears and now more bees appear. They escape only to find... the Nautilus in an underground cavern even as the others realize the ship is a pirate vessel.  

These weirdly lit caves are creepy but cool. 

Herbert and Elena board the Nautilus but no one is aboard. Pirates come ashore and after a mishap gunfire breaks out. The pirate ship starts cannoning the cave and things look bleak, but then oops. The pirate ship starts sinking...

Castaways 1, pirates 0.

But ooh... Captain Nemo! In a very dramatic moment he rises out of the water to meet our intrepid cast... played ably by Herbert Lom (and wearing a very cool shell breathing device- how does that work?)

Okay so the Nautilus is damaged so they can't just sail away. And yes Nemo is the one who off'd the pirates. But... the volcano is about to explode and they need to get off right? Nemo has a plan. And oh he's been conducting experiments in "horticultural physics"- hence why everything is so big. Something about trying to to give mankind an inexhaustible food supply. Anyway so as we close in on the end here the plan is to refloat the pirate ship so they can escape, and in the process we get a fun scene where they go underwater in those seashell breathing apparati that Nemo possesses. They even discover the remains of a lost civilzation. 

Those seashell helmets are cool. 

The volcano starts to erupt though and they're out of time. Nemo's all like we're done but Harding has an idea to float the ship. They give it a shot and ooh it works- even though it's ridiculous. More cool underwater seawalking but would a story like this be complete without... a giant squid?

No!

So it's people vs. squid as the volcano erupts and they save the day with Nemo's cool underwater energy ray gun. Nemo goes down with his ship- sadly- as the pirate ship is raised and they all escape- all except Nemo. That's too bad. He was awesome. 

And that... is Mysterious Island. A rather rushed ending but a lot of old movies are like that... so much happens in the last ten minutes. This is a fun show though and I had a lot of fun revisiting this. The characters are fun, Harding is interesting as the tough but driven captain, Mary comes across initially as a high society airhead but actually has depth, and Nemo... we needed more of him and I wanted the Nautilus to escape, but honestly... this movie does not suck. 

Sunday Post #566

So I'm going to C2E2 in a few weeks. This is a big pop culture show in Chicago. The Breakfast Club and Critical Role people will be there along w/ many others. Christina Henry is going to be there doing a panel on writing stories set in Chicago. I'll take pics and hopefully have some other goodies from the show for the blog.   

Movies That Suck this week is Sharknado    

  

   Song of the week

 

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