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
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