Literary Adaptation

Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (2010)

If I thought the 2005 version was poor, then this dull, cheap and silly Syfy channel produced and action-lite adaptation is without question the absolute nadir of Mysterious Island screen adaptations.

Bermuda Triangle time-travelling

It keeps the US Civil War escape, the hot air balloon, Captain Nemo and the island, and then introduces a Bermuda Triangle time-travelling aspect when a modern jet plane crash lands.

that sucker is now nuclear

Fortunately for our heterosexual male castaways, out of the wreckage step a pair of glamorous young white women, very much inappropriately dressed for the environment, and perilous encounters with strange creatures create opportunity for romance, as well as lame moments of culture clash comedy.

giant octopus

One is named Julia Fogg, presumably in homage to Jules Verne and his creation Phileas Fogg, from Around the World in Eighty Days.

Nemo is a very white and American genial grandfather, who has put aside his grudge against the British to pursue world peace. As for his submarine the Nautilus, to paraphrase Marty McFly, that sucker is now nuclear, and lightning is harnessed to facilitate the castaways escape.

electric gun

There’s pirates, a volcano, a giant octopus and an electric gun, the last two have clearly wandered in from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But at least that suggests someone on the production team is at least passingly familiar with Verne’s work.

However there’s no stars, no dog, a minimum of not-so special effects, poor acting, dreadful dialogue, and tepid direction. Devoid of tension, excitement or sense, this is worse than the most cheap episode of Dr Who, even the Sylvester McCoy ones.

fantastical element

Amazingly, it’s clear someone involved had hopes of a sequel, or maybe a franchise or spin-off TV series, which is the easily the most fantastical element of this entire sorry enterprise.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

You can read my review of the 1916 adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

Read my review of the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1967’s The Stolen Airship, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

Mysterious Island (2005)

This Hallmark TV movie is an uninspiring adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic colonisation adventure novel which is chiefly remembered for featuring the return of famed aquanaut Captain Nemo.

Reasonably faithful to Verne’s story, a starry headline cast of Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan is supplemented, or possibly squandered alongside screen stalwart Roy Marsden, TV stars Gabrielle Anwar and Gabrielle Anwar, footballer-turned-actor, Vinnie Jones, and Omar Gooding, the brother of Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, Jr.

giant rats, scorpion and giant bees!

Cleaving reasonably close to Verne, MacLachlan stars as Cyrus Smith, the leader of a band of US Civil War castaways stranded on a desert island and suffer various perils including giant monsters and pirates.

Verne’s upstanding hero Smith is nicely subverted by the casting of MacLachlan, an actor who’s incapable of not suggesting a less than healthy and far from incorruptible moral fibre beneath his square jawed Hollywood leading man looks.

The younger of the two women is kidnapped twice.

Impressive Caribbean location, compensate for lack of CGI, and what special effects there are make you feel nostalgic for the virtues of MacLachlan’s 1984 sci-fi adaptation, Dune.

Anwar and Calvert play characters invented for the film whose job is to provide glamour and be rescued. The younger of the two women is kidnapped twice.

As ever, Neb is the only non-white character and unlike in Verne’s novel is an equal member of the team, and often at odds with the cowardly southern ‘gent’, Pencroft.

nuclear weapons

Verne’s Indian prince, Captain Nemo is once again whitewashed, but at least Stewart adds gravitas to his portrayal of the ageing aquanaut. This version of Nemo was born an Englishman who was raised in India and committed acts of war against the British Empire killed his wife and child.

Nemo now wants to end all war by creating a weapon so powerful it could obliterate an entire city. This not so-veiled nod to nuclear weapons would have been perfectly at home in the post-war paranoia of the 1950’s.

But here Nemo seems more a low-budget steampunk 007 Bond villain. Nemo’s Neru jacket-wearing English henchman alludes to Nemo’s Indian upbringing, but also calls to mind 007’s adversary, Dr No, itself a riff on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

There’s a dinner party scene with Stewart and MacLachlan where some actual acting breaks out, and
at least both actors are in the same room when it was a shot, unlike a later scene where Stewart is palpably absent, and seems a post-production inclusion to make Nemo a more sympathetic character.

swashbuckling intellectual property

I suspect in their thespian heads Stewart and MacLachlan are playing out a version of The Tempest, with the outcast scientific ‘wizard’ Nemo as Prospero, and Smith as Prince Ferdinand.

Jones contributes his unique acting skills in a pleasingly minor role as the pirate Captain Bob, and I’ve a strong suspicion his vocal performance has been dubbed out of existence.

Anyway, the side effects of Nemo’s experiments cause local flora and fauna to grow to prodigious size, producing giant rats, scorpion and yes, giant bees! They have nothing to do with Verne and were first introduced to The Mysterious Island mythology in Ray Harryhausen’s 1961 film version, as well as recurring in the later 2012 version.

However the special effects seem to have gone backwards in quality since Harryhausen’s time, and the giant Preying Mantis is sadly laughable.

Cast, crew, production designers and presumably the effects guys are all trying hard, but this whole enterprise is a great example of what happens when the budget and schedule are far from sufficient.

There’s no obvious love of the source material, and Verne’s work seems treated as a convenient vaguely swashbuckling intellectual property to be exploited in a mediocre-at-best manner in the wake of the Oscar-nominated blockbuster box office success of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

the door ajar for a sequel

Mysterious Island aims for mainstream family swashbuckling fun but everything feels geared to just passing muster, and will make you feel a lot kinder to even the most bloated episode of Keira Knightley’s pirate franchise.

This was directed by Russell Mulcahy with the love of hammy performances seen in his far superior 1986 fantasy action movie, Highlander, and he provides a more open ended finale than Verne did, leaving the door ajar for a sequel which so far hasn’t occurred.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

You can read my review of the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

My review of 1951’s Mysterious Island is HERE

You can read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1967’s The Stolen Airship, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

Mysterious Island (1995)

A lengthy and largely location set TV adaptation of Jules Verne’s second Captain Nemo adventure, this Canadian & New Zealand co-production is underpinned by the intriguing premise, ‘what if Captain Nemo was the bad guy, a psychopath enjoys playing mind games with people instead of helping them?’

Staying true to the sweep of the novel, the US CivilWar-era castaways crash land on a deserted island. Only here they have been shot down by Nemo. This is a knowing riff on how Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest begins, with the wizard Prospero creating a storm to shipwrecks passing boat so he can toy with them.

Further drawing on The Tempest, this Nemo is a manipulative figure played with theatrical relish by John Bach, who uses the island castaways for lab rats in a series of experiments to explore the limits of human psychological endurance.

Nemo becomes increasingly sinister and violent figure, adding much needed tension, with the tone nearing that of TV’s The Prisoner at its best moments, with the castaways being provided with gifts by Nemo, while subject to ever more ingenious and dangerous trials, and anticipates the rise of Reality TV shows such as, I’m a Celebrity.

Far from being an exiled Indian prince, Nemo is white, nor is he seeking revenge on the British for past wrongs. He does live in a steampunk Nautilus, and is introduced early as the antagonist. He’s interestingly complex, wanting to be the sole arbiter of death on the island and not taking kindly to his will being thwarted.

Living in splendid isolation with no-one to talk to, he records his thoughts by speaking them into a machine, so the audience can hear his thoughts and intentions. And his viewing machine harks back to communicator device of Ming the Merciless from the 1930’s Flash Gordon serial.

This version mixes up, takes away and adds to the core list of castaways, enhancing them from Verne’s empty paragons to more complex, more realistic and dramatically interesting, failures of humanity.

There’s no dog or orang utan and the characters are fleshed by the game performers. Verne’s character of young Herbert is reconfigured as the teenage son of Jack Pencroft, who is accompanied by the new character of his Irish wife, Joanna. A woman!

As Joanna, actor Colette Stevenson often outshines the men and is a scowling sarcastic nurse and nursemaid and object of attention from not just her husband. And she’s frequently frustrated at being left at the home while the men go off hunting and fishing.

Here the Confederates among the castaways are unrepentant racists, and Neb is a freed slave turned Union soldier under command of Captain Cyrus Harding, which allows for more dramatic conflict among the castaways than Verne achieved or was interested in.

Neb is eager to act as a salve to Cyrus’s conscience, and no sooner has Neb been used b the scriptwriters to forgive Harding his slave-owning past, then Neb is dispiritingly revealed to be regarded as little more than a Star Trek redshirt.

For an adaptation which cleaves reasonably strongly and pleasingly to its source, this is one departure than rankles rather than enhances the series.

However the introduction of Maori characters make for an interesting addition to Verne’s story, and they speak in own language with the show providing subtitles. And Nemo revels in the castaways ‘becoming a downtrodden minority in their own home’.

Yes this series is often formulaic and each episode feels padded, but it’s no worse than other shows of the time and it improves as it goes along. There’s great use of New Zealand locations, the stunt team are working hard, and with a little more money spent on interiors and props, plus a sharper sense of humour, this could have been very good indeed.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

You can read my review of the 1916 adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

My review of 1951’s Mysterious Island is HERE

You can read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1967’s The Stolen Airship, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett


The Mysterious Island (1975)

This brisk sixty minute animated adaptation is hand drawn in the style of the famous TinTin cartoon series, and delights in its similar sense of old fashioned derring do.

Faithful to Verne in its story, character, US Civil War-era setting and spirit of adventure, it sees am intrepid band of balloon-wrecked castaways and their dog attempt to colonise their new island home.

Fighting pirates and escaping the erupting volcano are given prominence, and the characterisation is appropriately two dimensional.

Nemo appears early, a watchful, mysterious and potentially malevolent figure, but is eventually revealed as an old dying man, and though his appearance alludes to his background as Verne describes it, his identity of Dakkar, Indian prince is not mentioned, nor is his vendetta against the British. Neb is introduced as a manservant, but is otherwise treated as simply another member of Captain Harding’s team.

The Nautilus is an enormous, palace-like vessel, bearing little relation to Verne’s description and unlike Verne’s version is capable of firing torpedoes.

Unremarkable yet straightforward, faithful and enjoyable, and played at a pace it’s target audience of young kids may have been content with at the time, but to a modern generation it will seem painfully slow.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

My review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, is HERE

You can read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1967’s The Stolen Airship, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

Under the Seas (1907)

This thoroughly delightful silent short film by early cinematic genius Georges Melies is a parody of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

It bears little relation to Verne in terms of story, character, location or humour, but does channel his sense of wonder at the natural world, while nodding to his work with the inclusion of a submarine and an exciting battle with an octopus.

Melies gives this story far more fun and invention than Verne allows his audience, and it’s probably important to suggest the debt the filmmaker also owes to HG Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, first published in 1900.

Most of Under The Seas is now sadly lost along with much of Melies‘s work, but what we have remains . What we do have is wildly inventive and charming in the single camera static style familiar to fans of his work. Melies provides fantastical fish and dancing underwater nymphs among the slapstick, adventure, fantasy and spectacle.

No discussion of the cinematic adaptations of Verne would be complete without a passing mention of Melies, not least because his astounding and enchanting 1902 A Trip to the Moon is indebted to Verne’s 1865 novel, From The Earth To the Moon, featuring a group of scientists who travel to the moon in a cannon-propelled capsule.

Under the Seas is well worth seeking out and tragically it won’t take long to watch.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

Read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

Read my review of the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

Captain Nemo and the Mysterious Island (1973)

Jules Verne’s second adventure novel to feature his greatest creation, Captain Nemo, is brought to somber if reasonably faithful life in this low budget Spanish production, which swaps the action packed thrills, larger than life monsters and wild imagination of previous adaptations, for the pleasure of Omar Sharif‘s company and plenty of political commentary.

Also known as La isla misteriosa y el capitán Nemo, or simply, L’Île mystérieuse, this production is either a TV movie or a TV mini-series, depending on where it was broadcast, and relies heavily on the undimmed star wattage of it’s sole name actor, Egyptian superstar Omar Sharif.

But it’s fair to say his decline at the box office had already begun from his sixties heyday of 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia, 1965’s Doctor Zhivago, and 1968’s Funny Girl, and his best efforts are hampered by a director more comfortable and interested with ideas than with pushing Sharif‘s performance or creating dynamic action sequences.

Verne’s US Civil War adventure about escaping Union POW’s being swept to a pacific island where they experience various perils as they establish a US colony and and meet Captain Nemo survives mostly intact. Yes, the extensive colonisation of the island is skipped, but the five principal characters are all there, including the African American, Nab, rechristened from Neb in other versions. He’s not given much character or agency but at least he isn’t relegated to a domestic role as in the source novel.

The POW’s escape from the stockade takes the form of a pitched battle and is excitingly staged on an impressive scale, but is sadly not indicative of what follows. The underwater photography is fine if far from groundbreaking, and the special effects are typical 1970’s TV quality.

Unlike the novel, Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus appear very early on to hook in sci-fi fans and the casual viewer with its star turn. Though a younger and more robust Nemo than fans of the book may expect, Sharif is a dignified and fittingly regal presence and never looks less than magnificent. And of course he has the charisma to carry off the role of Nemo, even in this staid production.

Nemo initially seems dressed in Flash Gordon’s wedding outfit, but later appears more conservatively in a turban and Nehru jacket, reflecting Nemo’s true identity as Dakkar, a deposed Prince of India.

I can’t be sure if Nemo’s real identity is explained or is just alluded to by his attire, but at least this version is giving Nemo’s Indian heritage its due, rather than whitewashing the character as some other versions will later do. Yes, I’m looking at you, Michael Caine. And you, Patrick Stewart.

Nemo uses his science to save a young boy from death. Harbert Brown is played by Rafael Bardem Jr. but I can’t find any biographical information for him. Though given this show’s director is the son of Rafael Bardem, a noted Spanish film actor whose career stretched from the 1940s through the 1960s. I suspect he is some relation.

Juan Antonio Bardem co-directs with Henri Colpi, and the former was imprisoned by Spanish fascist leader General Franco for making anti-fascist films. In case you were wondering, Juan Antonio is the father of director Miguel Bardem and uncle of actor Oscar-winner and James Bond 007 villain, Javier Bardem.

Nemo and his crew wear head scarves and flowing robes which may be a nod to Sharif’s turn in David Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, but it also certainly represents North Africa to the show’s Spanish audience, thus adding a layer of historical local conflict.

This version leans into the idea of the watchful Nemo not being an altogether benign presence, and allows this show to lean into the politics of Spain, then under the regime of dictator General Franco, who died in 1975.

Nemo employs electronic weaponised surveillance devices to spy on the shipwrecked POW’s, and this is reminiscent of 1967’s British avant-garde sci-fi TV series, The Prisoner, an idea also used in the 1995’s Canadian adaption of The Mysterious Island.

And this island surveillance of the shipwrecked also draws on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, whose central character, the powerful magician Prospero, spies and manipulates the behaviour of the castaways on his desert island. Later versions lean more heavily into Nemo-as-Prospero. I’m still looking at you, Patrick Stewart.

The costume department doesn’t shirk from styling the pirates in bandanas and Breton shirts, and when the action picks up the sound editor gets to be loudly expressive. It’s just a shame this decent bit of work is undermined in a lack of interest in or development of the characters.

The design of the Nautilus exterior errs towards the work of Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds fame, which would no bad thing if the quality achieved were anything near even his weakest moments. And there’s an absence of the novel’s sojourn to a nearby island.

However there’s good location work at sea with a raft and a canoe, and Verne’s volcano is intact until it isn’t and erupts. It’s a spectacular if all too brief moment, and I assume it’s stock footage, albeit of a superior quality. That said my viewing copy was a poor transfer to digital and the colours were certainly more muted than I suspect were intended.

I’ll point out here I watched the original Spanish-language version of this without subtitles, any very basic grasp of Spanish means any exposition, nuance or sophisticated humour was pretty much lost on me, assuming it’s in there to begin with.

This sits nicely alongside BBC’s sci-fi series, Blake’s 7 by way of Mike Hodges’ 1980 adaptation of Flash Gordon, in that exterior locations exploit the possibilities of local quarries, there’s plenty of stagey composition in the single camera set-ups, and the cast are all acting in capital letters. Only I enjoyed both those shows more than this middling-at-best take on Verne’s masterpiece of speculative fiction.

This is a generally dour and ponderous adaptation, not helped by the mournful and haunting soundtrack. As ever, Verne’s dog and chimp are employed to provide the meagre laughs.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea {1954}

Verne returned to Captain Nemo in his 1875 novel, The Mysterious Island, which has been filmed several times. Read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

Read my review of the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea {1954}

This definitive big screen big budget adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1870 science fiction novel is a handsomely-staged family adventure mostly remembered for Kirk Douglas star performance and fabulous design. Yet there’s also a surprising degree of Cold War concerns bubbling beneath the surface, making this hugely entertaining version far more interesting than most subsequent adaptations.

Running at just over two hours, the filmmakers sensibly abandon the vast majority of Verne’s self-aggrandising scientific posturing in successful pursuit of huge box office success.

Broadly faithful to the wide-eyed adventurous spirit and plot of Verne, we follow a Professor, his servant and a harpooner, who’re kidnapped at sea by the mercurial and revenge-driven submariner, Captain Nemo, and join him for several escapades onboard his submarine, the Nautilus, while plotting their own escape.

The trio were recruited by the US government in San Francisco, a reassuringly ‘Western’ opening location for the audience, before sailing to the South seas to confirm or deny the existence of a sea monster which has been sinking ships. 

The smooth but shady US recruiting agents want to to beat other nations in capturing this sea monster in order to establish and exploit any military capability it may possess. And thus the 1950’s audience is immediately plunged into an allegory of the post-war arms race with the Soviet Union.

Whereas the French writer Verne had the US government employ Professor Aronnax in order to have a compatriot hero to appeal to Verne’s home readership, here Aronnax is not only valued as a scientific advisor but his nationality offers the cover of political neutrality to a US military expedition in contested overseas territory.

This accurately reflects the use of other nation proxies to project US power and further its national interests during the then developing Cold War and establishes a degree of paranoia which the film later develops when it deploys mushroom cloud imagery. 

However while the film demonstrates the destructive power of nuclear weapons, it also offers an argument in their favour and sympathy to those who developed them. More of which later.

Peter Lorre is a wonderfully cowardly cynic as Conseil, servant to the dull Professor Aronnax, played by Paul Lukas, who’s performance suggests the Hungarian actor fully understands he’s not there to upstage the top-billed star, Kirk Douglas, who plays the two-fisted harpooner, Ned Land.

Already a household name and a double best actor nominee for 1949’s Champion, and 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful, Douglas perfectly understands the material, and delivers a wonderful cigar- chomping, scenery-chewing and scene-stealing performance, which screams ‘movie star’.

A role tailor-made to demonstrate his athleticism, humour, charisma and boisterous comic ability, Douglas also commits fully to the required singing and dancing, and if he’s not the greatest at either, well I doubt there was anyone on set with the authority or nerve to tell him.

It would be hard to find a scene in his career more joyous than the one where he shares a song and kiss with a pet seal, and their duet is a piece of wonder that is comic, angry and tender. If only Douglas had always been this generous to his co-stars.

And in the fight scenes you have to worry for the stunt team as the 38 year old Douglas, still six years from  playing rebellious Roman slave, Spartacus, seems determined to never pull his punches. At times he seems to be auditioning for a live action version of Popeye the sailor.

Director Robert Fleischer would re-team with Douglas two years later with The Vikings, and in a lengthy career, Fleischer would go on to make 1967’s serial killer drama, The Boston Strangler, 1973’s sci-fi conspiracy thriller, Solyent Green, 1980’s musical remake, The Jazz Singer, and 1984’s Sword-and -Sorcery sequel, Conan the Destroyer.

The mysterious Captain Nemo is revealed by turns a brilliant scientist, ruthless, an intellectual and a sympathetic victim, an ‘other’, i.e. a non-WASP, who serves his ‘guests’ ‘unusual’ food.

All this is true to Verne, but although early film incarnations of Verne’s novel recognised Nemo’s royal identity as an Indian prince, here Nemo is played by white British actor, James Mason. His other major role that year was alongside Judy Garland, in A Star is Born.

Here the template is set for subsequent interpretations to whitewash the role and those who follow in Mason’s footsteps include the very non-Indian actors, Herbert Lom, Michael Caine and Patrick Stewart.

But Mason’s character is more interesting than many later interpretations, with Nemo’s non-white otherness being coded as Jewish, and Nemo’s struggle for revenge on the British empire being substituted for the fight to use nuclear power to defend the state of Israel.

Verne’s Nemo wants revenge for the slaughter of his wife and child by the British during the 1857 Indian War of Independence, but Mason’s Nemo is a widowed state-less refugee, a survivor of slavery in a mine producing phosphate for war weapons. 

We later see the mine which is visibly intended to evoke the Holocaust of the Second World War. Nemo was sent there after refusing to divulge the secret of the power source of the Nautilus, implied as nuclear power. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the European Jewish emigre scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project and its development of the first nuclear bombs, will be able to see the intended parallels.

The world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was delivered to the US Navy in 1955. Thus Nemo using nuclear power for world peace dovetails nicely with contemporary US military policy, he’s also trying to protect his island sanctuary from assault, a haven which can be read as a proxy for the recently established state of Israel. Nemo repeats, ‘There is hope for the future, when the world is ready for a new and better life then all this will someday come to pass in God’s good time.’

There is hope for the future, when the world is ready for a new and better life then all this will someday come to pass in God’s good time.

The giant squid which threatens the Nautilus is direct from Verne’s novel, but allied to the theme of nuclear power aligns 20,000 Leagues with sci-fi monster movies of the day, which saw humanity threatened by insects and other creatures mutated to enormous size by nuclear sources.

Nuclear paranoia of sci-fi classic, The Day The Earth Stood Still, had been released in 1953, and Ray Harryhausen’s 1955 The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, saw a hibernating dinosaur released by an atomic blast to terrorise the world.

Released the same year as 20,000 Leagues, Them! saw huge radiation-affected ants bring terror to the US, and Godzilla stomped into cinemas in 1954. The US was threatened by aliens in 1953’s It Came From Outer Space, and by giant spiders in 1955’s Tarantula! Whether aliens, monsters or giant insects, and whether nuclear powered or not, 1954 was hotbed of paranoia about the Soviet nuclear threat.

It must also be noted that 1954 was the height of McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and the communist ‘witch-hunts’ in Hollywood. Ever the patriot, Walt Disney had testified before the HUAC hearings in 1947, and it’s interesting that the ultimately sympathetic Nemo argues in favour of the benefits of nuclear power, and the film ends on an audience-reassuring note in faith in god, science and the future.

The nuclear subtext is dressed up in art direction and special effects and 20,000 Leagues deservedly won Oscars  in both those categories, as well as scoring a nom for the editing. 

The sets, model ships and submarines are great and the locations are epic, representing Hollywood at the top of its game. If the Nautilus is more a metallic fish than the tube of Verne’s imagination, the submarine is a gorgeous steampunk creation, with brass fittings, red upholstery and a magnificent organ. And long before Spielberg’s 1993 dinosaur adventure Jurassic Park, the animatronic work of the giant squid is spectacular.

Although stock footage of whales and dolphins is occasionally mixed in with scenes on deck clearly filmed in a studio, there’s an impressive commitment to the underwater diving sequences, made when aqua diving was a novelty not an easily-accessible holiday activity. 

These sequences were filmed in the photogenic waters of the Caribbean, as was the silent 1916 version of 20,000 Leagues, and if that gives some sections the air of a travelogue, it’s worth remembering foreign travel was an expensive luxury at the time and this form of visual escapism was very much intended to drive box office. 

Still, the shark attack is very impressive and the location work helps retain Verne’s tone of wide-eyed wonder and his view of the sea as a resource to be worked. Mind you, the man-handling of crabs and giant turtles by the underwater performers wouldn’t be allowed today.

Sadly the same couldn’t said for the depiction of the South sea islanders, who Nemo describes as ‘cannibals’, and whose appearance is played for laughs, and their portrayal is no less sophisticated than similarly portrayed people in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. 

And though Nemo drolly asserts the ‘cannibals’ right to attack the Nautilus, true to the book he then defends the Nautilus with electric shock treatment. 

Similarly to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, there’s no denying the scale of the action is impressive, perhaps ever more so than then, in our CGI era. And seeing Douglas run through the jungle reminds us of his son Michael, in 1984’s Romancing the Stone.

Despite the film throwing a series of grandly staged set-pieces at us, it’s possible a modern multiplex audience may find the pace plodding. Yet the crowd-pleasing ticking clock plot and punch-ups of the finale are pure Hollywood entertainment, harking back to Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s, and anticipating the missions of 007 of the following decades.

And though the final scene of the novel is downbeat, the filmmakers compromise by cleaving closely to Verne yet also providing a note of uplift, in which Kirk Douglas’s seal is seen to survive, and Nemo is given the last word.

To do this a cinematic sleight of hand is used which would be echoed two years later in Elvis Presley’s big screen debut, Love Me Tender. The enduring fascination with and longevity in popular culture of Verne’s greatest creation, Captain Nemo, lies with his mercurial nature which allows for continual reinvention. However, never did I think when I began writing this that I would end with a comparison with the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.

Available on Disney+.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Verne returned to Captain Nemo in his 1875 novel, The Mysterious Island, which has been filmed several times. Read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

Read my review or the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

Nautilus (2000)

A submarine crew from an apocalyptic future collides with present-day terrorists in this low rent action adventure mash-up of superior sci-fi fare. Functional at best with a lack of flair in cinematography, design, acting and writing, the enterprise is haunted at every turn by the spirit of Hollywood auteur, Ed Wood.

Taking its name from the submarine which featured in the classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by father of the science fiction Jules Verne, this seemingly hastily assembled affair unfairly subtracts rather than adds to his reputation. However the author may have been tickled by the time travelling plot, and the way his treasured eco-themes survive intact.

In the Mad Max-alike eco-ravaged future of 2099AD, we’re introduced to the crew of the Nautilus submarine, including its widower captain and his glamorous daughter.

Before you can say Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home, or even think of mentioning Terminator 2 or 1980’s The Final Countdown, our heroes activate a time travelling device and take the submarine back to the present to prevent a drilling exercise called The Prometheus Project and so save the future from eco disaster.

He is channelling Star Trek’s Square-jawed grey-haired Captain Pike, while his all-action gun-toting, truck-driving and scuba-diving daughter is obviously modelled on the then hugely popular video game character Lara Croft.

She’s played by Miranda Wolf with the talent of an actress whose other credits include the role of Prisoner #1 in a spin-off reboot of talking car TV show, Knight Rider, and a role in another submarine thriller where she’s billed as Lt. Hickey, which may be a reference to Corporal Hicks of James Cameron’s Aliens, or a cruel and tasteless in-joke.

Father and daughter run into a team of terrorists trying to steal Prometheus which is being defended singlehandedly, but with twice the biceps of the rest of the cast combined, by Richard Norton.

The former kick boxer plays a smug two-fisted mercenary, with whom our time travelling submariners reluctantly team up. Norton seems cast as close as the producers could afford to Kurt Russell or Bruce Campbell, which is to say, not close at all.

The central oil rig location is impressive as are the underwater sequences which presumably hoovered up the budget, there doesn’t appear to have been much petty cash remaining roost for the far from special effects.

I did like the submarine itself, though if you told me it was left over models of the Seaview submarine from 1960s TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I’d believe you.

There’s some footage of a very real aircraft carrier and it’s jets, and I couldn’t tell if it was filmed with permission, stock footage, or test shots from the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, filmed by a disgruntled and hungover 2nd unit before Tony Scott came onboard to direct Tom Cruise et al.

Director Rodney McDonald previously made submarine terrorist thriller, Steel Sharks, which also featured Wolf, and there’s no faulting his enthusiasm for this project. And it’s possible to suspect the producers dreamed this might be a pilot for a spin-off TV series, which not surprisingly has never materialised.

And given Nautilus is firmly mired in the bottom-feeder end of the action market, we’re gratefully spared a gratuitous shot of naked breasts which I suspected to see swimming over the horizon at any moment. It’s remarkable this is less sleazy than 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness. This is generally a sexless experience with barely a sniff of romance.

What I did appreciate about Nautilus was the gonzo makeshift feeling of ‘let’s put the show on in the barn’, with the production having wrangled maybe a weekend’s shooting on a scheduled for demolition oil rig, found some stock footage, added the scraps of script held together by cliche, sellotape and willpower, and somehow managed to conjure up a coherent movie.

Despite its many long shortcomings this is a triumph, of sorts, of enthusiasm, graft and grift, over ability. And that is in itself something to celebrate.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

My review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

The 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

Read my review or the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett

DUNE (2021)

Extraordinary and epic, this new adaption of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 sci-fi novel doesn’t just demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible, it questions whether there exists a screen large enough to do justice to this Lawrence of Arabia meets Apocalypse Now space opera.

Directed with a relentless majesty by Denis Villeneuve, the Canadian takes the tremendous sense of scale he essayed in Blade Runner 2049 and beats it mercilessly into a cocked hat as he crafts a tale of cosmic proportions.

Assembling the considerable weapons of the Hollywood arsenal such as a huge budget, state of the art special effects, a pantheon of big name stars and a well known intellectual property, Villeneuve allies them to his astonishing vision and outstanding technical ability to deliver thumping action and spectacle on an out-of-this-world scale.

Starring as Paul, a young man is stripped of his wealth and status, and outcast on a dessert planet where he begins to develop his mystical mind control powers, Timothee Chalamet further cements his heartthrob-with-talent status with a nuanced performance geared to character development.

If this setting all sounds familiar then you won’t be surprised to find there’s also an evil all-powerful empire and a brutal lord as the villain who commands an army of faceless stormtroopers.

Dune was one of the key texts influencing Star Wars supremo George Lucas, but where he leant into the comedy, Villeneuve’s broadly faithful and respectful version embraces the slowly unfolding tragedy.

With its litany of betrayals and battles Dune is at times extraordinarily exciting, yet the script has time to explore contemporary concerns such as resource scarcity and colonialism. It’s a film rich with its own internal history and yet also is remarkably intimate, exploding with charisma as humanity blooms across the desert with romance, loyalty and love to spare.

Paul’s dreams are filled with visions of a beautiful woman of the desert planet Arrakis, as she’s played by Zendaya this seems perfectly reasonable for a person of his age. And the accomplished actress brings much needed humour as she casts her lines with a delivery even more dry than Arrakis. Fans may feel short changed by her screen time, but her charisma allows her to make an impression even among this most manly of company.

Paul’s troop of macho role models are played by Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Jason ‘Aquaman’ Momoa, and it’s the latter who’s swagger is closest the film has to a Han Solo character. Opposing them is the considerable muscle of Dave Bautista and Stellan Skarsgard.

This remorseless machismo is partially offset the icy presence of Charlotte Rampling, and a ferociously commanding Rebecca Ferguson, who’s quite astonishing at conveying the complex layers of emotions and pain involved in being Paul’s mother as she guides him to his destiny.

Meanwhile Sharon Duncan-Brewster is given the gender-flipped role of Dr. Liet-Kynes, and makes it her own with a subtly powerful performance of openly guarded wit and grace.

Villeneuve treats his audience as adults by throwing in Herbert’s vocabulary of ‘Fremen’, ‘Mentat’, ‘Bene Gesserit’ and so on, but this is no more puzzling than Sith, Jedi, and so on. Besides, the storytelling is so well rendered you could follow the story without the dialogue. Puny humans being terrorised by giant sand worms looks the same whatever language the characters are screaming in.

Plus with the outrageous phallic symbolism of the hero having to master an enormous worm as proof of his manhood, it’s difficult not to imagine Herbert smuttily giggling to himself as he conceived the idea, and laughing out loud as he dared himself to write it.

In a film of wondrous design, it’s the rotating winged aircraft resemble mechanical insects, called ‘thopters, which make you gasp, and stand alongside the Eagle craft of TV’s Space 1999 as a classic of sci-fi iconography.

Complementing the monumental cinematography of Greig Fraser, who’s work can next be seen in next year’s superhero neo-noir, The Batman, Hans Zimmer’s score is a teeth-rattling achievement, even for this noted composer of titanic-sized themes, and Zimmer seems to have invented a new language of noise, which blends seamlessly into the equally unique and thunderous soundscape.

David Lynch’s disowned 1984 film version has been not ungenerously described as ‘a glorious mess’. But I’ve respect for its imaginative leaps of hideous design, and it scores over this version in that it manages to complete the book in one sitting, whereas Villeneuve only delivers the first half or thereabouts of the book.

However the sheer Everest-like enormity of Villeneuve’s Dune ensures it never feels like half a film, instead it feels more like a myth fashioned in primordial clay and brought to life by the lightning of the gods. This is a planet-stomping titan of a movie, and for us not be presented with part two would be a crime against cinema.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

The Stolen Airship (1967)

Magnificent boys in their flying machine

A delirious fusion of live-action and animation very loosely based on Jules Verne’s 1875 novel, The Mysterious Island, this glorious fantasy is a heady kaleidoscope of boys’ own adventure, wild invention, political satire and knockabout action, with occasional moments of whimsy and a huge amount of humour.

Verne’s novel is set during the US Civil War and sees a group of Union prisoners escape by hot air balloon to the titular Pacific Ocean island. However Czech film director, Karel Zeman, often called the ‘Czech Melies‘, uses Verne as a jumping off point for madcap escapades as a group of schoolboys makes a bid for freedom from an oppressive and corrupt regime.

Brave, bright eyed, loyal and combative, they steal an airship and fly to a remote island, and in their absence are tried in their absence and sentenced to hang.

Zeman’s energy and imagination are boundless and we’re treated to a multitude of Heath Robinson-style devices and flying contraptions, as well as Mission Impossible-style face masks, sharks, shotgun-toting boot-makers, dancing ducks, and pirates.

Heath Robinson, I presume?

Among the fights, physical humour and acrobatic antics, a woman castaway becomes allies with boys and together they run rings around the men trying to subdue them.

Old buoy; Captain Nemo

In the middle of the madness, and lifted from The Mysterious Island, there’s a brief meeting with Verne’s most memorable creation, Captain Nemo, who’s portrayed as a tech-loving Methuselah, while his submarine, the Nautilus, is handily labelled ‘Nautilus’.

Ideas tumble over each other at dizzying speed in a bewildering mix of illustrative styles, musical interludes, and stock footage.

Much of Zeman’s style may seem familiar to you and that’s likely due to his influencing not only his countryman, the famed animator Jan Svankmajer, but also to the filmmakers Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, Ray Harryhausen, and Wes Anderson.

Spies are us

More specifically, The Stolen Airship, with it’s love of steampunk tech, a fairground rumpus, zeppelin, an incompetent bowler-hatted spy, and with a corrupt official and his glamorous wife bearing more than passing resemblance to Baron Bomburst and his wife, it seems to have been a considerable influence on the Cubby Broccoli’s 1968 family musical fantasy, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I suspect the screenwriter of that film, Road Dahl, would have enjoyed this occasionally macabre and surreal tale with its shades of Kafka. And Zeman’s merry mocking of social conventions and keen eye for the absurdities of life also takes aim at pomposity, greed and stupidity.

Scrumptious? Moi? Truly?

His film is undeniably underpinned by the thrill of freedom, and is unmistakably political in its ruthlessly condemnatory of the military, which along with the corrupt bureaucracy and a surveillance society, are ridiculed throughout.

And there’s also a great deal of courage in Zeman’s needling of authority as this was made in the period immediately before The Prague Spring, the period of political liberalisation and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic which ended abruptly at gunpoint on 21 August 1968, when the USSR invaded the country to suppress the reforms.

Absurdly charming, and occasionally just a little bit saucy, I watched it in its native Czech language without subtitles and so lost some of the nuance and detail.

What I received in perfect clarity was Zeman’s breathless collision of invention, cynicism and optimism. An absolute delight throughout, The Stolen Airship beat The Beatles’ psychedelic animation Yellow Submarine, to the punch by a year, and I loved every extraordinary minute of it. Please watch.

Love classic sci-fi? Check out my website HERE

Read my review of Disney’s fabulous 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, HERE

You can read my review of the 1916 adaptation of Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1929’s The Mysterious Island, HERE

Read my review or the 1941 Russian adaptation of The Mysterious Island, HERE

You can read my review of 1951’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And you can read my review of 1961’s Mysterious Island, HERE

And my review of 1973’s version HERE

@ChrisHunneysett