Mysterious Island

Based on Jules Verne's semi-sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Cy Endfield's 1961 adaptation offers up a decent mix of Robinson Crusoe castaway survival tale and mini-Jurassic Park creature thrills, courtesy of SFX pioneer Ray Harryhausen. Set during the Civil War, the story opens with a band of Union POWs (with one Johnny Reb and a neutral journalist thrown in for narrative conflict) escaping in a balloon and washing up on the eponymous island somewhere in the South Pacific. Before long, the guys (including Michael Craig, Michael Callan and Gary Merrill, the latter best known as Bette Davis's hubby) are joined by two shipwrecked ladies (the stuffy and delightful Joan Greenwood, and the lithe and buxom Beth Rogan, who wastes little time changing from Victorian frills into something a little more comfortable: a goatskin microskirt), and the lads and lasses flirt, forage, and fight (a giant crab, a giant bird, giant bees) until they encounter the island's only other resident (hint: his initials are Captain Nemo, with Herbert Lom in James Mason's role) and band together for an action-packed finale. Struck from a rather scratchy print, the DVD transfer nevertheless is reasonably sharp and boasts solid color, while the luscious Bernard Herrmann score is well-served with the Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The disc's extras include a new nine-minute "making of," the "This Is Dynamation" short, and an excellent hour-long documentary tribute to Harryhausen's cinema magic, entitled "The Harryhausen Chronicles" (the last two are also included on the DVDs of First Men in the Moon, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver and 20 Million Miles to Earth). Recommended. (R. Pitman)