Mysterious Island

Cy Endfield
1961

Based on the Jules Verne novel of the same name, this adventure yarn proves dizzyingly entertaining due to the sheer weirdness of it's content. Things get rolling when a handful of Union POWs break prison and escape in a hot air balloon(!) with a Confederate soldier and a journalist in tow. Somehow the airborne gang travels all the way from the American South to a remote island in the Pacific...a mysterious island. Strange things begin to happen to the balloon-wrecked men as they find the titular isle populated by giant crabs, giant bees, regular sized goats, and British women. The giant animals (including a wicked flightless buzzard) are brought to screen by incomparable effects genius Ray Harryhausen. Unlike other Harryhausen efforts (all the Sinbad pictures come to mind) the stop motion wizardry is supplemental to the film as opposed to being the only attraction, making for a pleasantly well-rounded outing. The mastermind behind the island's mystery is the wily Captain Nemo (played by Herbert Lorn looking like a homosexual Peter Stormare), and if this movie doesn't already seem to be saturated with fantastic elements there's also marauding pirates, seashell-based scuba gear, a lost Atlantis-like civilization, an erupting doomsday volcano, and a malevolent seamonster. It's as if the script came straight from the fevered imagination of a hyperactive 12 year old boy.