Mystery on Monster Island (1981)

Another of those semi-obscure Jules Verne adaptations whose existence I was aware of, but had never seen, Mystery on Monster Island (1981) - aka Monster Island - finally turned up on an extremely obscure streaming channel the other night.  Despite headlining two UK actors in Terrence Stamp and Peter Cushing, I'm not sure that this film ever had a UK release in any format.  The first thing to note is that it isn't (despite what many others have erroneously claimed) an adaptation of 'Mysterious Island', even if the title and content, (an island full of monsters and pirate treasure) invites such a conclusion.  Rather, it is based upon a lesser known Verne title which is usually translated into English as 'Godfrey Morgan: A Californian Mystery' (1882).  Up to a point, the film is a relatively faithful adaptation, in that it involves the titular character (renamed Jeff Morgan in the film)who, having set sail with his tutor in search of adventure before getting married, finds himself (with the tutor) shipwrecked on an island, where he encounters cannibals and saves an African man from them, before eventually being rescued by his fiance's uncle.  Where it departs from the novel is in having the island populated by various monsters, inserting a  a beautiful female castaway into the action and having the uncle's business rival turn up with a gang wearing what look like Ninja outfits , searching for some lost pirate treasure.  The final twist, which sees the uncle revealing that he had arranged the fake shipwreck, (it was his ship that Morgan had been travelling on), the fake monsters, the cannibals and the African (all actors) not to mention a volcanic explosion in order to give the boy an adventure, is actually taken from the book.  Only his business rival's incursion and the castaway (who is revealed as being in cahoots with the villain)were unplanned.  (In the book, obviously there were no monsters and the business rival doesn't turn up in person, instead releasing several non-indigenous predators to the island in revenge for the uncle having outbid him for ownership of it at an auction).

Bearing in mind that the film was clearly aimed at younger audiences, it isn't at all badly made and generally entertaining, if around fifteen minutes too long.  Director Juan Piquer Simon, (who would later direct the US-Spanish slasher/giallo hybrid Pieces (1982)), had form for this sort of movie, having been behind an earlier Verne adaptation, Where Time Began (1977), loosely based on 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth', also featuring various monsters and an international cast, (headed by Kenneth More), which was likewise quite enjoyable.  Like that earlier film, the monsters in Mystery on Monster Island are a mixture of men in suits, (sometimes photographically enlarged) and mechanical puppets, most of their appearances being reasonably effective, if not quite on a par with those seen in Where Time Began.  While Cushing and Stamp are top-billed, playing the uncle and his rival respectively, the reality is that their roles extend to little more than extended cameos, with Cushing giving his familiar kindly eccentric performance and Stamp providing a smoothly villainous presence. Likewise, continental exploitation favourites Paul Naschy, Frank Brana and Luis Barboo make blink and you'll miss them appearances.  In reality, the bulk of the action is carried by Ian Sera and David Hatton as the Morgan and his tutor.  While Sera makes for a pretty bland hero, he at least handles the action scenes reasonably well.  Hatton's character, however, with his constant prissiness and bitching, quickly become tiresome.  Interestingly, although apparently confronting each other on the beach at the film's climax, it looks as if Cushing and Stamp's scenes were shot separately. If you watch carefully, you will see that they are never in shot together.  Indeed, the only other main cast characters Stamp interacts with are Cushing's Chinese firework expert and the female castaway.  Before the beach confrontation, his character has spent his entire time on the island with his face covered and the actor's voice over dubbed.  The Chinese character, incidentally, highlights one of the film's problems - even by 1981 standards it relies far too much on racial stereotypes, with the Chinaman - who speaks like an awful British sitcom parody of a Chinese person - being particularly offensive.

While the source novel (whose original French title translated literally into English as 'School for Robinsons'), was a 'Robinsonade' and was both homage to and parody of Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe', the film retains this aspect while also parodying, to some extent, 'Mysterious Island' and its movie adaptations.  Not just in the insertion of monsters and pirates into the action, nor in the existence of a mysterious benefactor who keeps providing the castaways with tools, (the uncle in Monster Island, Captain Nemo in 'Mysterious Island'), but also in some of the technological devices they are able to construct using local materials.  At one point, for instance, Morgan and co are able to build a dart firing 'Gatling gun' from bamboo.  Consequently, the film is, in a curious way, one of the more 'authentic' Verne adaptations out there, (barring monsters, of course), although the thing it most reminded me of were the series of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations produced by Amicus in the seventies, (one of which, At the Earth's Core, had co-starred Cushing), which also featured lots of man-in-a-suit monsters.   On its own level - as essentially a children's film, rather like those aforementioned Amicus movies - Mystery on Monster Island actually provides a reasonably entertaining experience, even if its attempts at humour ultimately grate and its pace flags too often.