The greatest movie ever made..!

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Jules Verne must turn in his grave every time this daft adaptation of his story is shown any where in the world. As a lover of creaky creature features and sci-fi schlockers myself, I can understand to a small degree why the odd genre fan will stick up for this as a piece of fun and harmless entertainment, but they shouldn't kid themselves that this is not the lowest of the low of Z grade monster movie world. Something like Plan 9 has viable budget excuses, this, however, does not.In Terence Stamp and Peter Cushing you have two of Great Britain's most elegant actors appearing, and location work comes from the Canary Islands, Asturias and Puerto Rico. There was money there, definitely. But what follows is a crude attempt at a comedy/adventure movie that just embarrasses every one involved. In fact with Stamp and Cushing only really bookending the picture, you have to feel that they drugged them and never let them see the hour and half of film in between!Again I have to say that there are many a "man in rubber suit" movies that I enjoy and gladly have as part of my own DVD collection, yet this sullies the good name of low budget schlock creators. The bad "monster" creations aside for a moment, the acting reaches new levels of awfulness, so bad in fact that Ian Sera, David Hatton, Gasphar Ipua and Blanca Estrada are out acted by a chimp! The monsters are laughably bad, the sort you see when your 8 year old nephew makes a 5 minute monster movie short in your back garden. At one point our hapless castaways are menaced by seaweed monsters, they are all wearing gabardine trousers! (pants for our American friends). Funny? Yes it was. Insulting? Without doubt.Amazingly there's a real nice print on the DVD, with Andrés Berenguer's lovely location photography sticking out like a sore thumb (filmed in Dinavision Technicolor no less!). There's even the joyous site of a Gatling Gun firing bananas, while the presence of some genuine wildlife animals briefly lifts the spirit. Yet there is every chance that if those animals could talk? With all things considered...they too felt embarrassed to be in this hopeless waste of time and money. 1/10

Mr Kolderup (Peter Cushing) buys a tropical island for five million dollars. His rival Taskinar (Terence Stamp) also wanted the island - because he knows a gold treasure is hidden there. Still he couldn't make a higher bid than Kolderup. When Kolderup sends young Jeff (Ian Sera) to the island along with his teacher (David Hatton), because the lad looks for adventure, wants to become a man et cetera, Taskinar plans to make that adventure much more dangerous than intended...Well, it's innocent fun with the typical ingredients: shipwrecked on a mysterious island, the heroes meet monsters and unknown enemies, a beautiful lady in distress, and last not least a monkey for comic relief. "Mystery On Monster Island" is not among the classics of the genre, but definitely less boring than most stuff they show on TV in the afternoon.

Let me begin by saying that I had read Jules Verne's original source novel BEFORE seeing this movie... and the source is NOT "The Mysterious Island", as most of the would-be intellectuals who reviewed the film would make you believe.While "L'Ile Mysterieuse" ("The Mysterious Island") was written in 1874, the source of this film is actually "L'École des Robinsons" (which could be translated as "The Robinson School"), first published in 1882... and the entire "plot twist" criticized by the others before me is actually Jules Verne's original idea... it seems he used the "plot twist" before M. Night Shyamalan! Seriously, people... this is a fantasy, a farce, lighten up! Jules Verne himself was winking at his readers throughout the pages of his novel, and the movie only took it further. Since I knew the source of the film, it was a great fun ride to watch a retelling by a director who thought his viewers would laugh with him, not at him (probably just as foolishly as Ed Wood, but that's another story!) I enjoyed this bizarre flick, it was just as fun as some Russian fantasy movies I'd seen as a child, except that it had the brazen attitude of a more adult-oriented fare, but without becoming a "Gwendoline"...Also, movies are not created and do not exist in a void. When this film was released, in 1981, the era of the blockbuster was not yet upon us, Reagan and Thatcher had just been sworn in, and the Cold War was entering its fourth decade, flaring up again... The great era of the '70s, which had given us so many introspective and serious movies, was over, and people felt they needed more comedies, even hysterical comedies. It all probably started with "Airplane!" in 1980, and the ball just rolled on. There was at least one other title that came out in 1981, blending comedy, spoof and horror as a perfect companion for "Monster Island" - I'm thinking of "Saturday the 14th"... All in all, the criticisms leveled here don't surprise me. Truly, it's probably not the kind of film appreciated in the U.S. culture.

I kept expecting to see 3 shadows along the bottom of the screen.utterly stupid, giving P9FOS a run for the $$$. The only saving grace was Estella Blanca as Dominique, and then only for the obvious visual attributes. Totally improbable, in one scene we see the "bad guys" blown up over a pool of molten lava, two scenes later , they are back unharmed.