Dusan Petrovic
This is the movie of my childhood. Everything was so colorful with beautiful landscapes of desert island, predictable, scary creatures, monsters, guys behind the masks and the bad guy in the middle, pulling all the strings. Of course, there is a beautiful girl in the very end, who comes as the reward for heroic action of the main character. I just love happy endings, where happy couple proves that love between man and a woman is the only thing which matters on this world.
horrorfilmx
Taken for what it's intended to be this movie isn't nearly as bad as most others have said. Unfortunately many people are quick to criticize a film for not living up to their preconceptions, and even more just like to slam movies to make themselves feel superior to the film makers, as if mocking a film were somehow a greater accomplishment than creating one in the first place. People like that should limit their opinions to two words --- "It sucks" --- and let it go at that. Anything more is a waste of time.Getting back to MONSTER ISLAND: First the good points. It's well produced and quite well photographed. The sets look good and the locations, while limited, are beautiful. And despite the rather violent opening it is clearly intended for children, and rather young children at that. It reminds me more than anything of the old BANANA SPLITS ADVENTURE HOUR. I'm quite sure if you sat a bunch of six year olds down with this movie they'd be quite entertained, and a kid's film that entertains kids can hardly be called a failure. Regarding the much maligned monster effects, granted they're not convincing but this is explained away in a reasonably plausible manner, and bad as they are they're integrated into the film with clever and reasonably successful perspective shots. The seaweed creatures are simple but initially impressive even if they lose something in the full shots. And the "French" castaway is certainly cute.On the debit side: Well, crappy monsters even plausibly explained still look like crap, and the comic professor becomes just unbearable after a while. And the action is staged very poorly.Final verdict: watch it with a bunch of little kids before you pass judgment. Smug frat boys and MST3K fans are worthless when assessing a movie like this.
Redils
This wasn't smart enough to be considered campy or tongue-in-cheek. Although, come to think of it, it did have every cliche of bad monster/castaway/uncharted island movies. I suppose that's an accomplishment.
ultramatt2000-1
OK, I watched 20'000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and CAPTAIN NEMO AND THE UNDERSEA CITY, and they were good. But this one is pretty poor. Yet it was kind of silly, and a little cartoonish. The professor gets hit, and you here a "Buh-oooiii-iiinnnggg" kind of noise (hey I heard that noise in SESAME STREET). The monsters in this film are pretty bad and lame. You see beasts that look like a combination between the gill man and a baboon. A big monster that looks like a combination between an allosaurus and a gorilla (how did they do that, a man in a suit, a robot)?Weird. Glops of sea weed that come to life. It looks like a bunch of SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS rejects. And caterpillers that blow steam. I thought this was a "creatures from lost worlds" kind of fantasy, but at the end, everything was joke island. The music in certain scenes like the chase scenes with the thieves sounded like cartoon music of the early 80's. The set where the hero and company were chased in a cave resembles the cave from the 1960 remake of THE LOST WORLD. Since the movie was called JULES VERNE'S MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND, how come you see beautiful birds or harmless monkeys. I was expecting some prehistoric life forms. As Blockbuster Video Movie Guide says, "stick to MYSTERIOUS ISLAND". This film (like KING KONG ESCAPES) is not available on video, but you can tape it on the Sci-Fi channel.
AD
