<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Mysterious Island
Release Date	December 20, 1961
Genre	Sci Fi, Fantasy
Director	Cy Endfield
Screenwriter	Jules Verne (novel) John Prebble (screenplay)
Stars	Michael Craig Joan Greenwood Michael Callan Gary Merrill Herbert Lom Beth Rogan Percy Herbert Dan Jackson
Studio	Columbia Pictures Corporation

Mysterious Island (1961) is the most famous of several screen versions of Jules Verne's 1875 sequel to his novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), memorably filmed for Disney by Richard Fleischer in 1954, which introduced Captain Nemo and his amazing submarine, the Nautilus. This fame is, no doubt, due to the contribution of the legendary Ray Harryhausen.

Filmed in England, with locations on the coast of Spain, Mysterious Island was the latest in a series of successful collaborations between Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer. It was also one of four films scored for Harryhausen by the great Bernard Herrmann, long an associate of Alfred Hitchcock’s and an Osc ar winner for The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941).

Director Cy Endfield is probably best known for his epic Zulu (1964), on which he also worked with screenwriter John Prebble. Along with Daniel Ullman and Crane Wilbur, Prebble adapt ed Verne’s novel relatively faithfully, with a notable addition: Nemo is now creating giant fauna in an effort to end world hunger, which justified the inclusion of Harryhausen’s animation.

“Columbia had a script that was just how to survive on a desert island…we had to make it adaptable for the Dynamation medium,” he told interviewer Matthew R. Bradley. “At one time it was going to be a prehistoric island, and finally we latched onto the idea that Captain Nemo was going to enlarge everything, so that there would be more food in the world, and that changed the whole concept.”

Although lacking the charisma of James Mason in 20,000 Leagues, Herbert Lom brought the same quiet intensity to the older, wiser Nemo that he did to the best parts in his decades-long career, including the title role in Hammer’s The Phantom of the Opera (1962). Lom also had a comic flair, most conspicuously displayed as Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther films.

In 1865, three Union priso ners—Captain Cyrus Harding (Michael Craig), Herbert Brown (Michael Callan), and Corporal Neb Nugent (Dan Jackson)—escape the siege of Richmond in a hot-air balloon. Accompanied by war correspondent Gideon Spilett (Gary Merrill) and a Rebel, Sergeant Penc roft (Percy Herbert), they are blown by a gale to an uncharted island in the Pacific.

There, they encounter a variety of oversized creatures, including a crab (animated using the shell of a real crustacean), bees, and a kind of prehistoric chicken called a Phororhacos. In another addition by the screenwriters, they are joined by two shipwrecked women, Lady Mary Fairchild (Joan Greenwood) and her niece, Elena (Beth Rogan), thus providing the love interest.

Signs of human life mystify the group: unseen hands drag the stunned Harding from the sea and summon help with fire; a chest full of necessities washes up all too conveniently; and the Phororhacos, when felled and eaten, proves to contain a bullet. But, like Robinson Crusoe, they make do with other natural resources and reside in a rocky dwelling dubbed “the Granite House.”

This is occupied only by the skeleton of a suicide, who was stranded by pirates, and when the latter return, the castaways are spared by an explosion that sinks their ship. Emerging from the surf in his 19th-century diving suit, Nemo reveals that the Nautilus is no longer seaworthy, so he has dedicated himself to ending war by other means, namely creating unlimited food sources.

Nemo proposes patching the hole in the ship and using the pumps aboard the Nautilus to refloat it, in order to escape from the volcano that is about to blow up the island. While working underwater, the men see a sunken city and encounter another splendid Harryhausen creation, the nautiloid cephalopod, but an explosion kills Nemo and the Nautilus is destroyed as they escape.

While not as famous as Harryhausen’s "Sinbad" trilogy or his adaptations of Greek myths, Mysterious Island boasts his customarily superb special effects and an unusually strong story. In fact, the script of many a Harryhausen film feels like little more than an excuse for those effects, but here, Verne’s absorbing tale of Nemo and the castaways anchors them in a solid foundation.