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When it came to adapting fantastical pieces of literature into films, producer Charles Schneir and legendary visual effects man Ray Harryhausen had a tremendous amount of success. Their advanced work in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver boosted their success in the fantasy genre and it is after these collaborations that the duo decided to try one of the works by the science fiction legend Jules Verne, in what could be best described as a “loosely based” adaptation of his novel Mysterious Island.
Following the pattern in the book, the movie is also set in the time of the Civil War where there is a scene depicting the escape of a faction of Union soldiers from a military prison in Virginia. The group is accompanied by the Union war correspondent Gideon Spilled along with Captain Cyrus Harding, Herbert Brown Corporal Neb Nugent (portrayed by Michael Craig, Michael Callan, and Dan Jackson respectively), and Gary Merrill who was an important voiceover for the film. As discussed previously, in order to execute their ideas, it was essential for them to defeat the Confederate guards and capture the observation balloon they saw anchored next to the prison. With the aid of Gideon, along with the group, they were able to turn the plan around. All of America today is dominated by the sight of the group floating, alongside the Confederate guard Pencraft. The only reason he was not thrown overboard is because he claims to know how to work the balloon. With respect to the prison escapes, unfortunately for our group of heroes (in an ironic twist), they blew their chance during their self-proclaimed great escape when they chose to leave in what is known to be the most catastrophic storm in the history of the US. Because of this, the group of heroes was propelled through the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
It is at this particular moment in this novel that the story shifts more deeply into an unfiltered survival adventure devoid of any supernatural elements. Decidedly, the castaways spend the majority of their days making their new home suitable for habitation where they even tame an orangutan. However, there is a benefactor that is rather more puzzling to our group, one who appears from time to time and rescues one of the protagonists or leaves behind some rather savagely helpful things like firearms and tools that allow them to survive within the wilderness. Now, in terms of the cinematic genre, there too is a puzzling benefactor and not unlike the novel one who lends help to our protagonist from time to time, but the other remarkable residents of this island are the enormous range of oversized creatures what a shame they do not befriend the orangutan in the film and it is these enormous beasts that tell us this island is somewhere deep in the land of in Ray Harryhausen.
Giant crabs were not the only things that Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen added to this adaptation. People who have watched Jules Verne’s works know too well that women are completely excluded from the story and just as in many other cases where Hollywood is tasked to adapt a Verne story, this element is always somehow “corrected.” In this movie, the correction takes the form of two English ladies, Lady Mary Fairchild, played by Joan Greenwood, and her niece Elena, played by Beth Rogan, who was supposedly shipwrecked in the same storm that our heroes were caught in. These lovely ladies not only provide some much-needed “Damsel in Distress” action, but the young Elena serves as a typical love interest as well. Obviously, being stranded on a mysterious island inhabited by gigantic creatures isn’t enough to sustain an audience’s attention.
As revealed in the book and movie, their unknown sponsor turns out to be the infamous Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom) who perished during the events of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. However, in the book, Nemo is depicted as a frail old man spending his last days on the submarine Nautilus. But in the movie we find him residing on his broken submarine where we discover that he has been performing genetic alterations with the aim of expanding food fetuses which explains the colossal creatures roaming the island. He goes on to tell them that the island is on the brink of a catastrophic volcanic eruption and unveils his plan to raise the pirate ship which he had previously sunk to us during the battle. Sadly, they are out of time.
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