Captain Nemo And The Underwater City

Nemonomicon

Captain Nemo And 
The Underwater City
UK 1969 
Directed by James Hill
MGM Blu Ray Zone B (German)

Warning: Some spoilers just below the surface.

There’s a place I know where we can go, it’s such a lot to see,
It’s the fun food, the fun food factory.
Theme song from The Fun Food Factory

Okay... I assume I saw Captain Nemo And The Underwater City on television when I was a kid but there’s not much I remember about it, apart from the music. I wanted to give this one a watch while I was catching up and revisiting stories adapted and inspired by Jules Verne and, in the case of this one, ‘inspired by’ is a polite way of calling this one out in terms of having anything to do with the original source. 

I mean, you’ve got a white actor playing Captain Nemo, Hollywood veteran Robert Ryan and, he has a big submarine called Nautilus. And that’s about it in terms of this film having anything to do with Jules Verne, it’s sad to say. Although it would have been an entertaining, fun romp back in the day and, if you can divorce yourself from the perception of how a modern sci-fi action film should play, you may still have a good time with it now.

While, indeed, Nemo saves a bunch of people from drowning when their ship sinks at the start... unlike the original, he did not cause that sinking himself, he just comes to their dubious rescue and there’s no mention of the original character’s intent on destroying ocean vessels in this. Instead, although those rescued are still his prisoners, he takes them to his big undersea city where they can live a good life, if they so desire. The various rescued even have a small child and his kitten with them so, yeah, we’re definitely in a very different world than that created by Verne.

The main survivors are played by Chuck Connors, Bill Fraser (of Bootsie and Snudge fame), Kenneth Connor (who you’ve probably seen in the odd Carry On film from time to time), Allan Cuthbertson (who is set up as the human villain of the piece but dies already, half way through the movie) and also... Nanette Newman. Now I’ve not seen her in much stuff, it has to be said but I remember her as the host of a really annoying children’s TV programme in the mid 1970s called The Fun Food Factory. It’s a TV show that the IMDB barely registers the existence of, dating it as 1976 but listing it as having zero episodes and... perhaps it’s best this show and its annoying title song has officially vanished from the those seeking the stats.. although at least one episode can be found on YouTube (watch it at your peril is what I say). But I used to tune into it on occasion because I liked Nanette Newman and so it’s nice seeing her in a movie such as this. She has a good presence as the mother of the aforementioned sprog and it’s strongly hinted she will be Nemo’s romantic interest after the story of this one, such as it is, has played out. Alas, although she has good presence in the film, she doesn’t really have much to do and could have done with a better written part, to be honest. 

The other big female role in this, playing one of the community living under the sea and also acting as a love interest for Chuck Connors’ character, is the lovely Luciana Paluzzi... who was, of course, the sultry, sexy SPECTRE assassin who tried to kill James Bond before later taking a shot in the back she intended for him in Thunderball (reviewed here). She has a bit more to do here but... yeah, the film is not really big on building decent characters, I would say. 

Now this was made on a shoestring budget but, even so, the scope of the sets and the design of the production is mostly rather good (there’s even some beautiful Bavaesque lighting at one point). However, the fact that everything is made out of gold in the film is a bit of a problem because, although everything is painted with some kind of gold paint to make it seem expensive, the effect is to just make everything look a bit like it’s made out of cheap plastic. Which is a shame because the shot compositions and colours are pretty good. 

Apart from Captain Nemo’s diving suit, that is. 

This is black with big, glittery patterns on it and looks nothing less like a 1930s - 50s American western, decorative cowboy outfit. In the scenes where Ryan wears this stuff, he does look quite ridiculous, it’s sad to say. And, as it happens, the underwater farm sequence where Nemo is showing his ‘guests’ around the parts of the ocean which provide them all with food, looks more than competent but, honestly, slows the film down in pace and is a bit dull. 

One very good thing, though, is the score by Walter Stott (who later became Angela Morley and is billed like that on the FSM CD release from a few decades ago). That being said... an I’m not suggesting anything underhanded here... but the main theme sounds quite like the love theme that Jerry Goldsmith wrote for the 1984 movie Supergirl and the resemblance is so striking that I wonder if parts of this score turned up on the temp track for that movie, when Jerry was given the job (I guess I’ll never know, now). 

Other things of note is that Paluzzi plays something which is both similar and not at all like a theremin in one scene and, another note, a couple of people who ‘leave’ the city at the end of the picture should surely have decompression sickness when they reach the ocean’s surface. They come up way too quick. And the last note I have on this from when I was watching the movie is that Chuck Connors’ hair here is one of the most scary things you’ll see in this tale. I’m assuming it was a wig but, whatever it is, you certainly wouldn’t miss him and his aggressive locks walking down the street. 

And that’s me done here... Captain Nemo And The Underwater City is a pleasant film with not too much going for it to make it stand out in its own right and certainly nothing to do with the source material. If you like Nemo and The Nautilus then you might give it a look but, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this to anyone. Incidentally, I had to pick this one up on a German Blu Ray disc because the film is not available in the UK or US, alas. It’s completely English friendly and has the original UK language track on it but, if you are hard of hearing, know that it doesn’t have a subtitle track on it. 

Mysterious Island

Minding Nemo

Mysterious Island
UK 1961
Directed by Cy Endfield
Columbia/Impact Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: All the mysterious spoilers on this one.

So Mysterious Island is based on the novel of a similar name... my favourite of Jules Verne’s novels, The Mysterious Island. I first heard of it by reading a Marvel Classics comic when I was a youngster and was fascinated by it, especially the twist towards the end. It was long before I caught up with this version on television (I guess I would have watched it in on a black and white set in the 1970s) and I like to revisit this movie in particular every now and again for a few reasons. One is that it’s easily the most entertaining production of this ‘adaptation’. Two is that it’s got an absolutely fantastic, somewhat blistering, driven score by Bernard Herrmann and thirdly, because the last adaptation of this I saw, as a Columbia serial, also heavily featured the queen of an alien race and her cohorts wearing left over costumes from serials like Flash Gordon (reviewed here) and Buck Rogers (reviewed here), chasing the various protagonists around said island for a lot of the running time and, frankly, that’s about as far from the book as you could get.

That being said, this is in many ways just as bad in terms of taking huge liberties with the original text and, truth be told, I’ve never myself seen a straight version of this done properly. The obvious differences here being: Well, there are no women in the book that I can recall but, in this one, two female characters are inexplicably washed up on the beach to join the main characters in a random shipwreck. This seems to happen a lot with adaptations of Jules Verne’s works, I’ve noticed, since they rarely have any major female characters and, for some reason, movie studios insist on putting them in anyway. So they completely screw themselves in the ‘accurate adaptation’ department before they’ve even started. Secondly... there’s no pet dog in this and the four legged character is sorely missed, in my opinion. 

Thirdly, well... it’s a Schneer and Harryhausen production and Ray needs something to animate so, the ‘mysterious’ benefactor of the island (I’ll get to him in a minute) is working on solving mankind’s hunger problems by having figured out how to make crops and animals grow to huge size (the science here is not elabourated on). So we have a giant crab, giant turkey-like bird, giant bee and giant octopus for some of the characters to fight here. Interestingly for a film utilising the genius of Ray Harryhausen, the crab used is a real crab, gutted and with armatures fitted inside it, rather than a rubber model. 

Okay, so the film starts off strongly with Herrmann’s powerful score crashing in over the Columbia logo before his music gets full on broody as the various credits rise against a moving backdrop of the sea (and you can hear it behind the music too), the various shots of the sea tinted yellow, then purple, then blue and then back to yellow again... constantly cycling between various colours as the credits are raised. And it’s during these credits that we have the films first big clunker of a mistake. A total spoiler... I’ll get back to it in a second.

The plot is about five prisoners (actually, four union army prisoners and one confederate captor) escaping gaol during the siege of Richmond, Virginia in 1865. They take a hot air balloon but circumstances are such that they wash up on a deserted island and have to survive. Strange things... no, mysterious things... happen to them. The captain is washed up separately and unconscious but a fire has been lit where he can be found by the others. Some vine creepers are left by the entrance to two caves in a cliff wall, allowing access. The giant turkey thing is shot from afar, saving the lives of some of the crew. A chest of useful implements such as rifles, ammunition, a compass, charts, a sextant, tools, pots n’ pans, a telescope and a copy of Robinson Crusoe conveniently washes up on shore at a convenient point. And a pirate ship which places the lives of the escaped survivors in peril is mysteriously blown up from beneath with an explosive charge. The whole mystery of the original book comes from trying to figure out who the survivors’ mysterious benefactor is. And it’s wonderful... at least in the book.

But let’s go back to those opening credits because, this is where things get silly. There’s a huge spoiler in them because, instead of just listing Herbert Lom as being among the cast, the studio decide to list the credit thusly: “Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo”. Yeah, so that blows, right out of the water, the mystery of the helping hand being Captain Nemo and the surviving remnant of the Nautilus submarine from the earlier Jules Verne adventure yarn 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (Columbia wanted James Mason from the 1950s version to play Nemo again here but, alas, that didn’t happen). 

Luckily, Lom, along with all the other principal actors consisting of Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Gary Merrill, Beth Logan, Percy Herbert and Dan Jackson... are all brilliant in this and, even though the twist is revealed on that opening credit, the film is hugely watchable and entertaining without being forewarned. Although, just to compound their error, in this version, it’s revealed the rifles in the chest are engraved with the word Nautilus... just in case we forgot the whole “it’s Captain Nemo folks’ vibe of the, well, not so Mysterious now Island. 

There’s still a little suspense left though, as Nemo warns his new companions that the volcano on the island is due to destroy it in two days or less. Can they all work together to find a way off the island before they are burned to a cinder? You can probably guess which characters survive and which one doesn’t, I suspect. 

And that’s me done with Mysterious Island for a while. Always a pleasure to watch this one and, although there’s not a huge amount of Harryhausen’s trademark animation in it, it’s still a greatly entertaining movie, even if they do go out of their way to advertise the twist in both their credits and, preposterously, on the original cinema trailers for the film too. I’m glad that, when I was a lot younger than I am now, Marvel Comics at least didn’t advertise the twist ahead of schedule. Still, if you’re going to see a cinematic version of Mysterious Island, this is certainly among the more fun ones, even if it continues the tradition of being completely inaccurate to the original novel.

The Land That Time Forgot

The Lost Whirled

The Land That Time Forgot
Directed by Kevin Connor
UK/USA 1975
Amicus
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Ending spoilers.

The Land That Time Forgot is the first of two movies based on a trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, the two sequel books being The People That Time Forgot (also made into a movie) and Out Of Time’s Abyss.

One of the co-writers of the screenplay is Michael Moorcock, perhaps best known for his various multiverse novels about different aspects of The Eternal Champion, such as Elric Of Melnibone, Dorian Hawkmoon and Jerry Cornelius. Which perhaps comes as no surprise because, if memory serves, he was once an active member of the British Edgar Rice Burroughs Society. Of this film he has apparently gone on record in saying that the last 20 minutes of the film deviates wildly from the novel, due to interference by the studio.

The film stars Doug McClure as Burroughs’ hero Bowen Tyler and is set contemporaneously to when the book was written during the First World War (I believe). This one starts off when a German Submarine…  commanded by officers played by the likes of John McEnery and the future reincarnation of The Master in Doctor Who himself, Anthony Ainley… sinks a ship carrying Tyler, his love interest played by Susan Penhaligon, the ship’s Captain played by Keith Barron and a few other of a handful of survivors, who temporarily manage to take command of the U-Boat themselves for a short while.

Various shenanigans and power plays ensue until the two crews pitch up on an island populated by various dinosaurs and cavemen, representing different areas of the island in a strange set of boundaries representing, even on the life at a microbial level, different time periods in Earth’s history. At which point the two surviving sets of crew members start to work together to find a way out of the vicinity of the island as soon as possible.

I remember missing this film at the cinema when I was a kid so, when I saw the sequel a couple of years later, I was a bit confused when Doug McClure’s character suddenly turns up halfway through the film. I must have seen this film at some point in the 1980s but didn’t remember much about it when I finally got around to watching Imprint’s lovely new edition in a box set with three other similar films featuring McClure from this period. A quick shout out to anybody else who bought this Tales Of Adventure Collection 9 set within the first six months or so… the original disc of this film issued in this set has a bad VHS master of a truncated TV print which looks absolutely terrible. You will need to talk to Imprint who have now repressed the disc with the correct print and transfer on it.

Now, I was expecting the effects in this film to look absolutely appalling now but, Amicus were spending their biggest ever budget at this point and they had Derek Meddings on board as their secret weapon. So obviously the miniatures look terrific and the puppet dinosaurs look, mostly, pretty good. Now I’m not saying, as my mum did when we watched this one together, that the effects are better than Jurassic Park but, they’re not bad either and certainly not as bad as later films in this cycle. Although the first shot of the pterodactyls, three of them flying in a circle, did look a little bit like an infant’s mobile hanging above the bed.

That being said, I was genuinely impressed by the illusion created by the camera work and the editing to and from the dinosaurs and was especially impressed by the social commentary in the movie, such as when a dying styracosaurus is filmed in close up and a tear is seen falling from its eye.

And then we get to the ending of the film, which would have driven me mad if I’d seen it in the cinema when it opened. Almost the entire crew leaves in the sub, which gets destroyed in a, possibly sentient, volcano... killing them all. Only Doug McClure and Susan Penhaligon are left surviving, stranded on the island in 1916, tossing the flask carrying the narration for the movie we’ve just seen inside of it.

So Amicus presumably had their eye on the sequel, at least. A sequel I remember as not being nearly as good as this movie. But, I have to say, I really enjoyed this one, The Land That Time Forgot, more than I have than at any other time I’ve watched it and I have to give credit to Australian label Imprint for being the only game in town to date where I can actually pick up a copy of this British/American co-production on blu ray. So well done to them.

King Of The Rocket Men

Jet Pack To Where 
You Once Belonged

King Of The Rocket Men
USA 1949 Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Republic Pictures 
Imprint Films Blu Ray Zone B

It was the very early 1980s when I personally made the acquaintance of Jeff King (of the Rocket Men). Since the mid-1970s, school kids had been fed with the same four fantastic Universal serials running in the mornings of alternate school holidays... and we loved it. The big four were Flash Gordon (reviewed here), Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here), Buck Rogers (reviewed here) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). But the BBC must have realised at some point that they needed to buy some fresh serials so they introduced the first of, I think I’m right in saying only three others they ever broadcast and... that was King Of The Rocket Men, starting off week nights in the old 5.40pm slot used by those other serials on their debuts (not to mention another load of great B-movie features over the years, such as the Charlie Chan, The Saint and The Falcon movies). 

Now, King Of The Rocket Men was made by the old ‘shoot ‘em up Western’ studio Republic Pictures and, yeah, even as kids I could see that they had nowhere near the same kind of budgets as their Universal counterparts. But that didn’t matter, the Republic serials had Howard and Theodore Lydecker handling their special effects, most of which were pretty good and they had a great team of stuntmen on their very energetic fight scenes, which were numerous. I’ve said it a number of times and I’ll re-iterate it here, if the bad guys and the good guys walked into a room in a Republic picture, anything that wasn’t nailed down would be used as a projectile at some point in the next two minutes.

Suffice it to say, I loved King Of The Rocket Men. As I said, the title character was Jeff King (played by the great Tristram Coffin), inventor and member of the Science Associates, who would don a rocket suit to fight off the machinations of the evil Dr. Vulcan, who would put the world in peril for a fast buck. And, while he did this, King would also have to try and find out which one of the Science Associates members actually was Dr. Vulcan (a common plot in these serials, where the villain is revealed in the penultimate or even the last episode). 

And of course, in order for the title of the serial to make sense, there’s an episode when King’s ‘secretly not dead after all’ colleague, who invented the suit and also a weapon called The Decimator (which causes much trouble during the course of the 12 chapters, due to the writers presumably not knowing the actual meaning of the term decimate) dons the rocket suit himself in order to throw suspicion off of King and rescue him from the bad guys’ clutches. Yep, it’s the old “How can Clark Kent and Superman be in the same place at the same time?” ploy but, heck, it worked for me and, if my fifth or sixth revisit to the serial now, courtesy of a beautful new Blu Ray boxed set of serials from Imprint Films in Australia, is somewhat jaded, I still found myself able to recapture some of the magic and excitement of watching this thing when I was 12 or 13 years old. 

I loved the music... and still do (can we have a CD please?) and the serial scurries along at a relatively fast pace, very much using the old ‘change the footage from last weeks cliffhanger to show how the hero is able to escape’ modus operandi that a lot of the companies used. The flying effects by the Lydecker Brothers are exactly the same as those employed to make the title character fly, at the drop of a Shazam!, in Republic’s The Adventures Of Captain Marvel serial (reviewed here), consisting of a hidden trampoline take off to flight, followed by a rigged, ‘stiff as a board on hidden wires’ dummy for the long shots. It’s silly but great stuff and it’s arguable whether it’s any better or lesser than Columbia’s trick in their two Superman serials... of just having the character turn into a cartoon version of himself after take off. 

Honestly, it may be nostalgia talking but I really loved following along with Tristram Coffin and various, assorted colleagues such as Mae Clark, a curiously age appropriate female lead (and Lois Lane-like reporter) who would have been perfect as the female love interest, if such a thing was ever brought up within the confines of the fast moving plot (it wasn’t). Imprint’s new transfer looks the best I’ve ever seen it on a home video format and, unlike other transfers I’ve seen, doesn’t feature the materialising words (A re-release) on the opening credits of each episode... so this must have been from a different master source than the ones they used to show on BBC2 back in the day. 

King Of The Rocket Men was also influential. Not only was the flying footage re-used in three other serials using the same costume - Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies Of The Stratosphere and Commando Cody: Sky Marshall Of The Universe (reviewed by me here) - all of which are included in the Imprint boxed edition, which also includes Flying Disc Man From Mars, The Invisible Monster and The Mysterious Dr. Satan... but it was also the inspiration for Dave Steven’s loving, comic book homage The Rocketeer, which was itself turned into a very badly adapted but no less entertaining movie of the same name. 

And that’s me done on King Of The Rocket Men, I think. If you are coming to this as an adult and this is your first watch... I would urge you to suspend disbelief and water down any cynicism while watching. All of you who are a child at heart, though, surely can’t fail to have a good time with this one. 

The Mummy Returns

Karnak... 
And How To Get It

The Mummy Returns
USA 2001
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Universal UK Blu Ray

Warning: Some major spoilers.

The Mummy Returns was my most looked forward to movie going experience of 2001, I suspect. The Mummy, reviewed here, was probably the best, big budget, old school adventure movie since the first of the Indiana Jones movies and a whole bunch of us had tickets to see the sequel in a big West End cinema in London’s Leicester Square on its first weekend. I had a very strange experience with this the very first time I saw it though... my friends all loved it but I was really disappointed in it that first screening. I don’t know why but I suspect this is the first of a few films where there was so much stuff thrown at the screen that maybe my mind got distracted and couldn’t process it all on the first run. Fortunately, because my parents had loved the first one and wanted to see this one, I had promised to take them to see it as soon as it opened in my local cinema the following week. I’m grateful that I did because, bizarrely, I absolutely loved it the second time around and, looking at it now, it certainly does still hold up well. 

It’s not as good as the first movie but it does have a lot going for it and, above all, it leaned more into what the first film did for a lot of its running time... temper down the horror aspects and stick more with the action and humour. Not always the best tactic, granted but, yeah, it works really well here. 

All the big guns from the previous film are back for the second helpings too and, they certainly haven’t steered clear of certain characters taking on a new depth in terms of growth and some blatant tweaks. We’ve got Brendan Fraser back as Rick O’ Connor, Rachel Weisz back as Evelyn (now Rick’s wife), John Hannah back as Evelyn’s brother Jonathan, Oded Fehr back as Ardeth Bay, Patricia Velasquez as Anck-Su-Namun and Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep. 

Some of the characters are expanded thusly... Rick O’ Connel discovers the tattoo on his arm from the orphanage as a kid is a sign that he’s an honourary member of the Medjai (Ardeth Bay’s crowd), Evelyn is actually a rebirth of Princess Nefertiri (the living family line of the daughter of the king killed by Imhotep and Anck-Su-Namun at the start of the previous movie) and Patricia Velasquez is the living embodiment of Anck-Su-Namun in the 20th century... and who chooses to host Anck-Su-Namun’s soul in her body.

There are also three very important new characters... Freddie Boath plays Alex (the son of the O’ Connell’s), Shaun Parkes plays Izzy (an old ‘friend’ of Rick) and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson makes his non-wrestling debut as The Scorpion King who, although he’s one of the film’s villains, was liked so much by the crowds here that he spun off into the first film of what became a Scorpion King franchise. 

Okay... not going over the plot here because a) I don’t particularly want to spoil it anymore than I’m going to in a minute and b) I’m sure most people would have seen this one by now. But, of note in this one are the following...

There are a couple of great fights between Rachel Weisz and Patricia Velasquez, taking place in ancient Egypt in one instance and also the current setting of the film, 1933 (around a decade after the events in the first movie) and, considering they are both wearing masks for the majority of the first fight and the dynamic moves and flips the ladies perform, well, you’d think they had a really good couple of stunt doubles. Not so, though. It turns out that both these actresses trained for these fights for 5 months and no stunt performers were involved. So, yeah... those fights are actually quite something in terms of the actresses in question. There’s also a nice replay of the ancient murder scene from the start of The Mummy but seen from Nefertiri’s point of view, watching from afar, which explains why the king’s guards were able to arrive at the scene of the crime almost immediately. 

Alex accidentally knocks down all the support columns in a temple near the start, in the exact same configuration as Evelyn did with the library book shelves in the first movie. Later, when he’s trying to resurrect Evelyn back from the dead using The Book Of The Dead from the first film, he stumbles reading the exact same symbol/character that Jonathan did in the first film... down to using his arms to mimic the flight of a bird, just as John Hannah did. I don’t know who had the idea but, apparently, the 10 year old Freddie Boath who plays Alex cited The Mummy as his favourite film and had seen it at least 30 times. So he quickly became something of an on set advisor for the cast and crew between his scenes and, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was his idea to make the wing flap mannerism when he gets stuck at that same word. Just conjecture though and, either way, it’s a really nice touch. 

Oh wait... did I say Evelyn’s resurrection scene? Nobody ever sees this one coming (including me) but, around half an hour from the end, once Alex has been rescued from kidnappers and also from having the life sucked out of him by the bracelet of Anubis, Evelyn is killed. Run through by Anck-Su-Namun in a perfectly timed scene which really takes you by surprise. And, to the director’s credit, this doesn’t play as a throw away moment. She has a proper ‘last words’ death scene and Rick enters a temple after Imhotep (and the reincarnated Scorpion King), in full vengeance mode. Director Sommers even does a nice series of shots using different takes in different lighting environments all crosscut together of Rick walking down a tunnel to emphasis his ferocity... which is a really nice touch. So the audience really feels the loss of Evelyn but then, wonderfully, her son manages to resurrect her (and Nefertiri co-sharing her body) and she returns to kick ass and help out in the final battle between good and evil. This is all sold really well and, once again, my hats off to the writer/director. 

Anck-Su-Namun also has her own resurrection scene earlier in the movie and I suspect it’s more than just coincidence that it plays out near a body of water... which I suspect is a veiled reference to scenes which were shot but, alas, excised before release - and never re-found - of a scene between Boris Karloff and Zita Johann in the 1932 production of The Mummy (reviewed here). 

Unfortunately, due to various reasons (depending on who you believe), Jerry Goldsmith didn’t return to score this one... instead we have Alan Silvestri doing his own thing with the music and, although I wonder how good a Goldsmith soundtrack might have been for this film, Silvestri does a really good job at bringing some big themes and exciting action music into this one. 

And I think that’s me about done on The Mummy’s Return. Definitely not a jump on movie, you’d have to see the first one if you want to get the most from it but, still, a great action adventure tale with a lot of humour and, once again, the writer/director makes the audience feel like they’re in on the joke with all the genre clichés and tropes... rather than being treated as idiots. I have a lot of time for this director... and these movies... and they’re just the ticket if you want big, periodical action mixed into your viewing experience. A pretty great sequel, it has to be said. 

Magnificent Warriors

Fight Like A Gal

Magnificent Warriors
aka Dynamite Fighters
aka Zhong hua zhan shi
Hong Kong 1987
Directed by David Chung
D & B Films
Eureka Blu Ray Zone B

I’ve been quite taken with Michelle Yeoh, since seeing her at the cinema in 1997 as the new ‘Bond girl’ opposite Pierce Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies (reviewed here). I was aware even then that she was probably not used to letting other people perform her stunts, which she would have sorted out herself in many of these early Hong Kong movies but, as I watched her career with interest (and congratulations to her for winning the Oscar for Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - reviewed by me here), I’d never seen any of those pre-Bond roles. However, between them, British boutique labels such as Arrow Films, 88 Films and, in this case, Eureka Master of Cinema, have finally cottoned on that kung fu films will sell by the bucket load to English audiences, who have hitherto had to pursue bootleg recordings of a lot of these titles. Now, I had no idea which Michelle Yeoh movie I wanted to see first from her early career but then I saw a trailer for this release and realised, yeah, Magnificent Warriors was probably the one.

So, this is set in the 1930s and, I think it would be true that the influence of the then recent US blockbuster movies Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom are very much in evidence here. Michelle Yeoh had not made more than a handful of movies before this and not necessarily action based ones either, but here her training as a dancer and willingness to work hard pays off as she is, front and centre, the main protagonist of this one. Although she’s not an archeologist but a pilot in this. One might say she’s an anti-heroine because she’s also a gun runner, carrying arms in her biplane but, one has to take into account that the film is set historically during the Japanese invasion/occupation of China... so she is very much a resistance fighter, in some ways, to help stop her people being repressed.

And it’s the look and feel of her character which mostly distills the spirit of Indiana Jones more than anything else... as the film is obviously also influenced by various Hong Kong and Hollywood films before those, which also would have fed into the Spielberg films as much as they do here. So Yeoh’s character Ming-Ming wears the leather jacket and uses her bullwhip in ways much more interesting than her American visual counterpart. She really kicks backside in this movie and is especially good with a weapon which, being as ignorant in the art and instruments of war as I am, I can only describe as a pointy, dagger thing on a rope. Certainly, these must have been really intensive shoots (scheduled to their main locations for three weeks but actually taking three months, by all accounts) and the cast must have been left bruised and bloody after each day’s filming. When I watched the sequence where she was flicking the rope all around and spinning it over her head etc, it put me in mind of the same moves used by the Go Go Yubari character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume One. Not saying he got that from here, by the way, I’m sure this choreography is not unique... just drawing the similarity to more widely seen films to aid the brevity of what kind of fighting moves you can see on display here.

And yeah, it’s a rip roaring movie with some good chemistry between all the lead protagonists such as Richard Ng, Tung-Shing Yee and Chindy Lau. There’s lots of humour thrown into the mix too, as Ming-Ming is tasked with rescuing a stranded secret agent who is, in turn, tasked with stopping the Japanese troops from taking over a village community and using the main building as a factory to manufacture their new poisonous gas... there’s even a scene which is reminiscent (or vice versa) of the ‘testing the gas’ scene in Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman movie (reviewed here).

Combine the humour and acting chops with a plot filled to the brim with action and not much room for anything else and, well, you’re definitely onto a winner with this particular audience member. I would have to say that the film’s main weakness might be that the action scenes don’t feel like they lead to a satisfying climax. There’s a long battle scene at the end which pitches the Japanese forces against the Chinese villagers defending their city and it’s certainly fine and explosive enough... but I felt the more interesting action sequences were the ones in the first half of the film, which concentrated on hand to hand combat. So, yeah, it felt a little anticlimactic to me. I was also... and this is no fault of the film... a little disappointed with the liner notes in the accompanying booklet (I should have perhaps waited for a cheaper reissue without the booklet and slipcase, I think). For example, the listing on the back makes great play of it having its original theatrical ending, not seen on home video before. But, there’s nowhere in the packaging that tells you what the difference was, where that ending starts from and why it was cut out. Absolutely no idea. It might be mentioned on one of the two commentary tracks on the disc but, yeah, I rarely have time to do the commentary tracks these days, it has to be said.

Anyway, it’s still a cracking little movie and the print and transfer on this are pretty good. I’ve not seen Magnificent Warriors before but I’ve no doubt this is probably the best way to see it. I really enjoyed this one and might look at seeing what other early Michelle Yeoh films I can get hold of at some point*.

*The writing of this review pre-dates my viewing of Yes, Madam (reviewed here) but I wanted to put this current batch of Hong Kong reviews into some kind of chronological order.

Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl

Her Cool Pirate

Pirates Of The Caribbean -
The Curse Of The Black Pearl
USA 2003 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone 2

Here we go then. It so happens that it’s finally time to watch the Pirates Of The Caribbean films again from the start, since I’ve not really watched these since their cinematic release. My impression of these at the time was similar to what I later thought of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies... that being that the first one in the franchise is a pretty good film and that it’s been followed up with some truly dreadful sequels, none of which has managed to disprove the old adage that, in terms of the quality of both series’ of movies, lightning doesn’t strike twice.

This first one is, in retrospect and as I look at it now, just a little too long in terms of its total running time of almost two and a half hours. That being said there’s very much a case to be made, in my mind, that the movie is made watchable by one particular actor and, coupled with a pretty cool score, he’s the thing which makes this one worth watching at all... although that’s not to dim the light of the other very good performances in this.

The film is based on the 1967 Disneyland attraction of the same name (minus the subtitle). It was the last such attraction to have been steered by Walt Disney himself, although he died a few months before it opened and it’s kind of ironic that, since this film was so financially successful and popularly received, the ride was closed down for a while to make it even more like the movie version... although there are apparently plenty of references to the original ride in this film.

The opening of the movie is a prologue chapter on a ship under the command of a character called Norrington, played by Jack Davenport. Here we see the younger versions of Elisabeth Swan and Will Turner before they grow up, by the next sequence, to be played by Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. Elisabeth’s father, played by Jonathan Pryce, is quite keen that Elisabeth marry Norrington, even though there are obviously years between them (although Jack Davenport doesn’t seem to age at all in the time between the sequences). Of course, she is in love with the village blacksmith, the aforementioned Will Turner, who she knows to have something to do with piracy from the opening sequence, although she’s doesn’t reveal this information to Will. I remember sitting in the cinema and watching this first ten or so minutes of the film and looking at my watch and thinking... please don’t let the entire film be this dull and boring all the way through. Luckily, it’s just at this moment that we get the opening salvo of shots of Johnny Depp’s entry in the story. The music swells as the camera holds back from an establishing shot and we see Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in command of his vast ship and the score gives wind to his sails. It’s only then that it’s revealed that Sparrow’s ship is, in fact, a tiny boat with one smallish sail and a reliance on how the camera can change the perspective of a shot and flatten it out. A nice little punchline as the boat is obviously sinking and Jack starts trying to bail it out as he nears port. A follow up shot not so long later sees Jack gliding confidently into port with a pullback to reveal he’s standing on top of the still sinking mast which just manages to get him to port so he can gracefully step off as the boat goes under. Nice stuff and this has got to be one of the best and most elaborately shot entrances for a character in modern Hollywood.

And then the writers throw a plot and some action at everything of varying quality but the film is, frankly, completely reliant on Johnny Depp’s exaggerated performance of Captain Jack Sparrow as the very heart and soul of the entertainment. Without Depp, in this case, the film would be nothing but here he really adds the ingredients so sorely missing from the sequences which find themselves "Deppless" and some nice concoctions of skeletal pirates, blood sacrifices to Aztec gold, coupled with some great swordplay and chase choreography make the film a pleasure to behold. Admittedly, it’s a slow trundling pleasure but there are some nice little movie references too, to keep the weary audience afloat and there are a lot more doubloons than duds in this one... something which sadly can’t be said for the other films in the series, if memory serves.

There’s a nice moment, for instance, where Jack Sparrow and Will Turner decide to team up and use an overturned rowing boat to walk beneath the surface of the sea, like a miniature submarine, using the naturally formed pocket of air left in the top of the boat to breathe. This is, of course, a nice little shout out to the exact same submersible solution created by James Hayter in The Crimson Pirate, as he uses the idea to transport himself, Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat out of trouble (if you’ve never seen this marvellous movie, make a point of doing so... not only does Hayter’s character invent this submersible when called for... he also invents gun powder and the hot air ballon throughout the course of the story). Similarly, a well choreographed bit of ‘rescue nonsense’ at the end of the movie where Turner tries to get Jack Sparrow away from his impending execution is similarly choreographed almost like a dance routine and recalls the acrobatic antics of Lancaster and Cravat in certain scenes in The Crimson Pirate.

And then there’s the score. Although it’s composed and credited to Klaus Badelt (who also did a marvellous score for the reboot of The Time Machine), he also had a lot of help, primarily from Hans Zimmer who wrote the themes and, according to the original soundtrack album credits, ‘over produced’ the CD release. When you start digging deeper, however, you start to realise that there were a few composers working on the movie but, be that as it may, it’s a great score. There have been some marvellous scores over the years for pirate movies... the as yet unreleased score for The Crimson Pirate by William Alwyn and the much re-issued John Debney score to Cutthroat Island, to name but two... and The Curse Of The Black Pearl certainly joins them in having a rousing and much loved score. It does the job admirably and the strong Jack Sparrow action theme, albeit somewhat similar to something which originally appeared in Zimmer’s score for Gladiator, is one of those cues which people will be humming through the ages. It’s mixed quite heavily into the foreground in this movie and, frankly, it’s all the better for it. More movies these days, where the sound designers are in love with their own miasma of audio bombast and submersion, should give the music greater room to breathe, in my opinion. The films would certainly reap the benefits.

So there you have it. Well before Pirates Of The Caribbean came out, I was an admirer of Johnny Depp as a great actor and on screen personality and, although I’ve learnt in recent years that a good Johnny Depp performance isn’t always enough to save the day (Secret Window, The Tourist, Mortdecai etc.) this is definitely a film where he shines enough to carry the action and weight of the movie on himself and turn it into something quite watchable. There’s much buckling of swashes to be had in this first installment of Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl and, though I couldn’t watch it every decade, I feel like there’s still a few viewings of this one left for me. If you like big adventure movies and you’ve never seen this one before... you’re in for a good time.

Tomb Raider

Bust In Show

Tomb Raider
2018 UK/USA Directed by Roar Uthaug
UK cinema release print.

Remember when Robert DeNiro ate himself into all that extra weight so he could play Jake La Motta? Or that time when Christian Bale slimmed his weight down to almost nothing to play the central protagonist in The Machinist? This is what an actor does to get himself closer to the look and feel of the character he or she is playing. This is why I just don’t like Daniel Craig as James Bond. In the books, Bond has short black hair. Not smudgy blondy browny stuff (admittedly he has a facial scar too which they should have had right from the start of the movies). Anyway, this is why I can’t take the character of James Bond as seriously as the new films seem to want me to. Like Roger Moore’s version of the character... it’s just not James Bond unless they get the physical details right too.

Now do you remember when Angelina Jolie played Lara Croft for the first two Tomb Raider movies? She wore false breast enhancers because, presumably, she knew how integral the character’s huge bust size was to getting her characterisation right. I have those statistics written down in a celebratory magazine about the original computer game character somewhere. I can’t remember the exact size but the point is that they were important enough at the time that the game publishers knew exactly what the measurements were... possibly because her bosoms helped her keep her balance on crossing dinosaur filled chasms on precariously balanced logs, I should think. So, as much as I love Alicia Vikander as an actress... and I really do, she’s great... I really can’t take her that seriously as an on screen version of Lara Croft if she’s not trying to bring the physical attributes of the character into cinemas with her.

That being said... it’s totally not Alicia Vikander’s fault because, apparently, the various games which have continued the series long after I stopped playing them (I’d finished with the third or fourth game in the series, I think) have been completely contradictory with the various back stories and origins of the character as the series progressed and, yes, even to the point where they reduced her bust size... which is just crazy. I think they should have just been confident enough with the character to do the right thing by her and leave her exactly the same as she always has been and it’s quite sad that they should make these changes.

So, although I am quite offended that they have chosen to change all these things and reduce the character to a point where she completely loses integrity... yeah, I can’t lay the blame for that at the door of the new writers, director or star. Not their fault, I think.

As it happens, the new Tomb Raider film plays hard and fast with the legend of Lara Croft again anyway and she’s actually trying to make her pennies last in this because she doesn’t, by choice, have control over her potential inheritance. People seem to have forgotten... and so does the internet search engines, by the looks of it... that Lara Croft was originally born on something like January 10th 1968 (one day after my own birthday) and not February the 14th, which is what it was changed to a few years later to make a nice tie in with Valentine’s Day. The new movie is set contemporary to its release, which means the central character should be 50 years old now. So... clean slate and a reboot of sorts, it seems. Forget everything you thought you knew about Lara for this one because... they’re just making things up as they go for the movie.

It’s not a bad movie, though, despite having some fairly negative reviews...

Vikander is, as you would expect, excellent in the lead role (as she is in just about any role she takes on, as far as I’m concerned) and she pretty much carries the film. She is ably assisted by Dominic Cooper as her father (another character who has had a name change over the years), Walton Goggins as the villain Mathias Vogel and Daniel Wu as her new sidekick Lu Ren. And, yeah, it’s a straight up action adventure in the style of the original proposition of the first games I used to play... a kind of updated Raiders Of The Lost Ark with a female Indiana Jones figure front and centre. Or back and centre really because the third person gaming style engine on the originals meant you saw a heck of a lot more of Lara’s wiggly backside than you did of anything else, if memory serves.

And... contrary to some reports I’ve heard... it’s no better or worse than the previous Tomb Raider films and, since I quite liked the previous movies, that’s fine by me. It’s a straight, archaeology in action kind of deal and, although there are no new modern twists in the tale, which I suspect is the reason it’s getting something of a lukewarm reception, it is pretty well made and it doesn’t get too dull. Even though... and this is a shame... the story has been stripped of any supernatural elements and, perhaps, resembles more an episode of Scooby Doo in that it leads the audience in with the strong promise of a terrifying, death dealing super being and instead gives us a different and less incredible reveal than we were, perhaps, hoping for.

Still, it’s a fun film and I thought it hit a lot of the right notes.

Visually it’s very interesting because there’s a richness to the images and textures throughout. By that I mean that the director has gone out of his way to give the film a certain amount of depth to it. Not in terms of the 3D version I saw... the 3D is rather unnecessary here... but in the way that he uses various layers on screen to show the audience more going on in the background than they might get usually. It’s essentially the same trick that director Roger Corman used to use on stuff like his famous Edgar Allan Poe inspired films for AIP back in the 1960s... he always used to leave a door open into another room/part of the set to add depth and interest to the frame composition. Director Uthaug seems to be using the same kind of method here and it works fairly well. There’s never, visually at least, a dull moment.

That being said, my favourite part of the movie was the first twenty or so minutes, set in London, where the basic character of Lara is set up in somewhat contradictory form to what we have known from the character in the past. This includes a dodgy appearance by Nick Frost and a truly cool bicycle chase sequence that, alas, seems to top anything else that comes later in the movie. That being said, the director has at least tried to put in a lot of trade mark, physical ‘character situations’ from the game and you will see Lara stumble and fall and generally be placed in the way of various death traps during the course of her adventure. So that’s kind of nice.

Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL) continues to show great proficiency as a film score composer and I’m pleased to see that this one, at least, has a CD release. It’s appropriate to the piece and has many nice moments which really help hold the movie together. My understanding is that he gave up the Justice League gig (reviewed here) to work on this one so I’m guessing he was a player of the old Tomb Raider games back in the day.

Ad there’s not much else to say about this one, I think. Other than stick around for a few seconds into the final credits to see another iconic piece of Miss Croft’s imagery added into the mix. A well put together action movie which has nothing really special going for it but which certainly succeeds in pretty much everything it’s trying to do. Maybe give Tomb Raider a go if you are a fan of the games or the Angelina Jolie movies.

Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon

Savage Creatures

Doc Savage: 
Phantom Lagoon
by Will Murray writing as Kenneth Robeson
Altus Press
ISBN: 978-1618271341

You know, it must be really hard to, not only write a continuation of the exploits of an already famous literary character, but to write it in the style and spirit of the original author. It’s a neat trick if you can pull it off and, while I found a few of the latest batch of modern Doc Savage novels to be a little out of kilter with their 20th Century counterparts, I have to hand it to Murray and say that they are definitely more hit than miss and, even on the occasions when they do miss the mark a little in terms of authenticity of the characters and styles of situations in comparison to the original versions, they are nearly always entertaining.

One thing Murray definitely pulls off in his Doc Savage novels is the breakneck pacing which was often an obvious stylistic flourish of the pulps, especially within the work of Lester Dent (the original Kenneth Robeson) and his Doc Savage tales. However, I have to further congratulate Murray in that, with Phantom Lagoon, he also manages to not only get all the ingredients of a classic Doc Savage novel just about absolutely right, he also manages to push the edges a little bit in terms of some of the events which happen in this one (I don’t want to get too spoilery here) and you know that Dent would surely have approved of these exciting dramatic decisions. They are absolutely in the style of what Dent would have done... and he did sometimes stretch his own formula himself, on occasion, just to shake things up.

The events I am talking about in this particular volume are those kinds of incidents which threaten to somehow change the status quo of the tried and true formula of any future Doc Savage novels. They rarely do have any permanent after effects which last them for longer than the opening set up of the next novel, after the events have occurred in the previous story, but they are quite drastic alterations for the duration of the tale. Of course, with a character like Doc Savage, who has an unlimited reserve of money he can call on to fund his work at any time, it’s rare for anything really groundshaking to be irreparable, but certain “big things” often are written in such a way that they certainly seem like massive events at the time... again, without giving away spoilers here, it’s hard to go into.

Suffice it so say that there are some scenes of destruction and devastation which have an effect on the possible future of the narrative and also, of course, add to the dramatic impact and gravitas of the latest caper that Doc and his crew end up investigating. Now, it’s possible Murray may have decided to do what he’s done here to tie into a drop off in certain ingredients in the later World War 2 and post World War Doc Savage tales. I can’t quite remember (or find online now, either) specifics of just where Doc was at with various locations and equipment at certain stages of his crime fighting career, but I trust Murray enough to know that he wouldn’t be one to threaten the continuity of the chronological setting where this novel gets tucked into the original stories. And, like I said, the events portrayed in this novel are, as far as I’m concerned, things Lester Dent would have approved of himself.

For instance, the original Doc Savage story Fortress Of Solitude tale features an outrageous attack on Doc’s arctic retreat which would seem to have long reaching effects on the series (Murray even picks up some threads from this story himself in at least one of his previous Doc novels) but, ultimately, equilibrium is restored. Similarly, when people break out from Doc’s famous Crime College or the Mayans are embroiled in a plot, or even when various devastating attacks on Doc’s skyscraper headquarters have taken place in the past, they are really examples of Dent just having his cake and eating it at the same time. Big, dramatic events that are a threat to the easy, continued lifestyle of Doc and his crew are ultimately reversed and swept under the carpet with a quick sleight of hand... and it always works and makes sense within the realms of the fictional character because, after all... money talks.

So no worries on some of the incidents in this particular novel that might seem a tad overcooked or sensational to some readers. As far as I’m concerned, these are all valid approaches to the drama. No complaints here.

As for the rest of the novel?

Well, it’s a real humdinger of a tale, for sure. Starting out by almost immediately putting Doc and his crew in a reactive stance rather than being in an investigation they have chosen to take part in from the outset. It deals with watery backdrops and sea creatures who won’t rub up any of the traditional Doc Savage fans the wrong way... this novel sticks to the formula of always having a hard, scientific reason for the initial hook of the weird phenomenom that Doc encounters in his adventures. As with all of the writing I’ve read by Will Murray, it moves at a mile a minute, is stupendously well written and, like the majority of his other efforts under the Kenneth Robeson “brand name”... hugely entertaining.

If i had one criticism to make on this one, it’s the transparency of the misdirection Murray uses in a certain scene. A character drops into the narrative about a third of the way into the novel and my initial thoughts were, since I know both Murray and Dent’s plotting fairly well, that a very specific character was adopting a disguise. Then, to muddy the waters, Murray has one of the villains of the piece already wise to these kinds of shenanigans and clearly naming one of The Amazing Five as the person adopting the disguise. This would have maybe thrown first time readers off the track a little but, pretty much any fan of the exploits of Clark Savage Jr would be pretty sure of the real identity of the character in question, I would imagine. It’s not really a problem though... just a personal reaction to what I see as an obvious red herring for the reader.

Doc Savage: Phantom Lagoon is a pretty solid entry into the series of additional “Wild Adventures Of Doc Savage” and the sophisticated degree to which Murray is able to effectively “do a Robeson” never ceases to amaze me. Added to this we have “the war in Europe” which sets up slightly different rules that Doc and his crew can operate under... also an interesting addition to the atmosphere on this one. This is a definite good read for all fans of The Man Of Bronze and I would definitely urge those who have been sitting on the fence with the latest batch of novels to go out and grab a couple... and you could certainly use this one as a jumping on point. Although two of Doc’s crew are missing, you have the counter balance of his cousin Pat added into the mix so that’s a good bonus and, if I remember rightly, Doc’s aides did start slowly disappearing as the novels progressed towards the end of the series, with characters being whittled down until it was just Monk and Ham in on the adventures as the characters came towards the end of their original run... so once again, Murray’s adds another shot of authenticity into his work, by making sure the ingredients he puts into his verbose concoction are more specific to where this one fits into the chronology of the original pulps. Looking forward to catching up to the next two in the series as soon as I can. Hopefully over Christmas if Santa brings the next new volume in his sack.

Mystery On Monster Island

A Verne For The Worse

Mystery On Monster Island
1981 Spain/USA
Directed by Juan Piquer Simón
Midnite Movies DVD Region 1

This film first came to my attention only a couple of weeks ago when I finished reading the excellent book on Paul Naschy promotional material, Muchos Gracias Senor Lobo (reviewed here). I saw some beautiful poster artwork for this movie in this book and, not only did it seem to star Paul Naschy... top billing went to Peter Cushing and Terence Stamp. Furthermore, it was also based on the writings of one of my favourite writers, Jules Verne, so there was no way I wasn’t going to order the cheap Midnite Movies edition off of Amazon for less than a fiver!

I’d assumed, when I first saw the poster, that the Jules Verne tale this one took as its source would have been my favourite of his tales, the semi-sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea... Mysterious Island. There were no monsters in the original tale of that one, of course, but there is a mystery at the story’s heart and famous adaptations of that particular work in the past have often featured giant monsters of one kind or another (heck... I even have a 1950s cinema serial of Mysterious Island which also sees fit to include invaders from another planet lead by a dominant queen) so this was my first guess on the source.

And of course I was dead wrong... something which most reviewers of this movie, it seems, tend to ignore or remain ignorant of when doing their own research on the subject! Being as most of them seem to proclaim that this movie is based on Mysterious Island. Not so!

In actual fact, the film is based on Verne’s work School for Robinsons, which I believe may well have been a partial sequel to one of his many other, interlocking books but unfortunately, my little knowledge of Verne is sadly limited to the 10 or 12 of them which are continually kept in print in the UK... and we have nothing like the whole of his work available to us over here (although maybe if I joined the Kindle revolution?). So, having said that, I obviously can’t judge as to whether this movie is a good adaptation.

What I can say for definite is... it’s a mostly lousy movie. It does have some cheesy looking monsters in it and, obviously, that can only be a good thing... but ultimately, this movie never really succeeds in hitting that mark where, “it’s so bad it’s good”. Instead, becoming a mostly tiresome and plodding effort which you will probably find yourself wishing to end sooner rather than later.

It’s a bit of a strange beast as well because it’s obviously a childrens film - certainly, the comic relief character is squarely and irritatingly pitched at a younger audience in the most over the top manner you wouldn’t even catch on an episode of Playschool and, since he seems to get the majority of the screen time, it’s pretty much a kid’s holiday film at heart. Much less a family film than it is a youngster’s glittery distraction. However, saying that, Paul Naschy is seen taking a few blood squib explosions to his body very early on in the proceedings and is depicted with both his arms literally running red with blood... which is interesting considering the obvious target audience. I really couldn’t imagine this got much, if any, of a release in this country at the time.

Which leads me into Paul Naschy’s demise and the way that he and the two actors who take top billing are treated. This must have been a really cheap movie because Naschy lasts less than five minutes on screen before he is blown up and drops out of the story. Peter Cushing and Terence Stamp fare a little better... but not by much. Cushing and Stamp really only appear for 5 minutes or so at the start of the film and 10 minutes maybe at the end. The budget obviously didn’t stretch to having them on set for very long and, for the rest of the movie, the beleaguered audience has to make do with two male leads who, between them, seem to show either a total lack of personality or, in the case of the comic relief, an overabundance of obvious and overblown comedy enthusiasm. This doesn’t make for good viewing. What’s worse is that Terence Stamp is supposed to be the main villain but for the majority of the picture the main villain and his many henchmen run around with their bodys and heads totally covered in heavy masks and coats... presumably because the cheap budget meant that the producers had to hide the fact that they didn’t have Terence Stamp on set most of the time, instead electing to dub his voice on a hidden actor's lines instead.

Having said all that, there were a few things which made it so, as bored as I was, the movie wasn’t one I actually regretted seeing... although it was a close call. The monsters are mostly fairly cheesy and this lends the few scenes where you actually see some, a certain amount of amusement (or at least more amusement than the official comic relief provides, at any rate).

Secondly, in an effort to defend their desert island home from Stamp’s villainous horde, our irritating heroes construct some defences around the piece of sand they call their home. One of the things they make, although I’ve no idea how, is a homemade Gatling gun made of bamboo chutes which rapidly fires bananas at the turn of a handle. This is, of course, something of a stroke of genius and I am, and always will be, happy to say I’ve seen a film in which a banana firing, bamboo-chute Gatling gun is used to ward off a bunch of antagonists.

A third thing, which is another mixed bag, is the music. The composing credit doesn’t come up until the end of this one but it seems to be put together by three separate composers. So I’m guessing this means the movie has a needle-drop style score, from a library of universal cues written by these particular composers... or the film had a very troubled production history (which I suspect is probably the case). Or possibly, even, a less than thrilling combination of both of those elements. Either way, there’s a really strident and neat tune which is played quite a lot throughout the movie at various points which really does catch the ear. Unfortunately, though, it’s completely inappropriate to any of the scenes it’s used to score. So while I am quite happy to keep this as my own personal earworm, and would rush to buy the score to this movie if anyone is wise (or perhaps foolish) enough to release it... I would have to say that the movie itself suffers from the inclusion of most of the music here and if anything, the score robs the lacklustre shot design and jarring edits of any kind of power it might have had a chance at gaining and kind of makes things a lot worse most of the time.

Nice music though.

And there’s no more really to say about this one. I don’t regret buying this movie (banana Gatling gun, remember?) but this is definitely not a film I’d recommend to many people, even die hard B-movie enthusiasts who have a love of cheesy monsters. It’s just not that noteworthy I’m afraid. For the jaded and curious only, I would say. All others may be best advised to keep their distance. The greatest mystery of Mystery On Monster Island is how the budget holders were persuaded to let loose their purse strings and unleash such a piece of uninspired tosh into the world.