ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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I took me several days to create this post back in October of 2014. I was a labor of love. Enjoy yourself, folks!
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Mysterious Island (1961)

This post comes with a music soundtrack -- an All Sci-Fi exclusive Special Feature!

Click on these links and let YouTube play the original motion picture soundtrack for Mysterious Island while you read this post. The two suites have slightly different selections, so if the first suite finishes while you're still reading, start the next one!

Enjoy!

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In 1961 I was a fresh-faced lad of thirteen, stuffed clean full of enthusiasm for science fiction in general and Ray Harryhausen in particular.

Having seen Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth at a drive-in with my family, and 7th Voyage of Sinbad at a downtown theater in Atlanta, I was more than willing to hop on a bus with two buddies — Jimmy and Chuck — in 1961 and travel to a local theater like the one shown below when Mysterious Island came out, eager to see this newest Harryhausen feature.



We certainly weren't disappointed. There's a lot to like about this movie, and we liked it all!

It's the perfect adventure for three young guys living smack dab in the middle of the Kennedy era, desperately wanting to escape reality in a dark theater on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The price of a movie ticket was well under a buck in those days, and here's what we got for our money.



The action-packed escape in a stolen balloon during a violent windstorm and torrential rain was certainly a great way kick off the adventure! And the spectacular music by Bernard Herrmann (which you're probably listening to right now from YouTube), was the perfect music for a high-flying ride clear across the continent and right out over the Pacific.



And where did the escapees finally land? Smack dab on an island with the wildest topography since Dorothy walked out the front door of her extremely mobile home and discovered short people in colorful costumes who had a real knack for speaking in rhymes.

For three boys who wanted God to let them live on Skull Island when they finally passed away, this movie was the next best thing. We nudged each other and whispered about the seagulls in the foreground — a King Kong homage if ever there was one.





We even got a scene with a big old log laying across a deep chasm. Yes indeed, we knew we'd found a new home . . . for as long as we could hide from the theater manager!



It wasn't long before a stroll on the beach turned into a battle between five hungry men and one large order of sea food.

If you remember the first time you saw this scene, you can imagine the expressions worn by three young guys in the tenth row who knew exactly who created this cinematic miracle — and exactly how he did it.











By 1961, my friend Jimmy and I had done our own stop-motion animation on 8mm film, so we had a keen appreciation for Harryhausen's amazing work. The pictures below are screen grabs from one movie we teamed up on. The clay monster was built and animated by Jimmy (shown as he actually sculpted it) in a battle with a clay dragon he also sculpted, and I animated.

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Click on the image below and watch one of my brief 8mm animation movies, The Warrior and the Monster (coming soon to DVD and Blu-ray. )



Meanwhile, back on the Mysterious Island . . .

The brave castaways turn a life-threatening situation into a clam bake on the beach after they showed that mean old crab just what the combined efforts of determined men can do when faced by a large crustacean with a crabby attitude. (oooow . . . sorry. )





And just when my friends and I back in 1961 thought this movie couldn't get any better, Joan Greenwood and Beth Rogan arrive to take care of any further cooking duties the men folk might need. After all this was 1961, and women knew their place back in those days, by gum!





So, now the island has a cozy group of castaways which included a captain, a nervous young sidekick, a few miscellaneous guys, two attractive ladies, and (later on) a brilliant scientist who could make clever devices out of natural materials, such as (you guessed it) . . . bamboo.

Sound familiar?

Thank God none of the characters were named Gilligan or we'd never get through this movie with straight faces!



But oh-my-goodness, isn't Beth Rogan a lovely young lady?

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(Oops, sorry! Wrong young lady.)

Here's Miss Rogan, making a fashion statement almost a century ahead of it's time!



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Jimmy, Chuck, and I were mesmerized by the movie for plenty of reason besides the charms of Miss Rogan. Good lord, what a Saturday Matinee this was turning out to be! A wild ride in a balloon across a stormy sea, a crash-landing on a Technicolor version of Skull Island, a monster crab that nearly eats a man, and a hot babe in a deerskin miniskirt.

Could this get any better?

The answer was . . . yes!

The castaways set up housekeeping in a very cool cave, halfway up a cliff — complete with a Swiss Family Robinson elevator to the castaway's Granite Penthouse. This prime bit of real estate came with a pirate's bones for decoration, a pirate's diary for light reading, and a pirate's humongous gourd filled with hard liquor — Yoho, yoho, a pirates life for me!







And before my friends and I could get back from the snack bar with our second bags of popcorn and fresh Cokes, the adventurers found a floating trunk packed with more goodies than eBay, and they fixed up the cave with handmade furniture and room dividers so that all the starry-eyed kids in the audience would spend the next ten years fantasizing about living there!











But Mr. Harryhausen had barely gotten started with the treats he'd planned for this feast of fantasy, and before you could hum the first few bars of Turkey in the Straw, the scene with that giant bird brought me and my friends to full attention when the colorful buzzard leapt down from the top of the frame and tried to peck poor Beth Rogan to death!









Herbert — the guy who confessed to being a big chicken during a Civil War battle a little earlier in the story — took a flying leap off a split rail fence and rode that bird like a rodeo champion!









Fans of Bernard Herrmann know the story about how he gave Ray Harryhausen a nervous moment during pre-production when Bernard put on his best poker face and told Ray that the perfect music for the giant bird scene would be the aforementioned Turkey in the Straw!

The castaways celebrated Herbert's glorious rescue of Lady Beth with a giant turkey dinner that makes you wonder why we don't all go live on this amazing island!



I tried to find a YouTube video of Turkey in the Straw by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (the best version I know of), but I struck out. If anybody else has better luck, let me know.

But I did find a nice YouTube video of Flight of the Bumblebee, and it sounds remarkably similar to the music Bernard wrote for the scene which occurs just after the one in which Beth Rogan answers the big fashion question —

~ What color will the undergarments be on the best dressed castaways this year?

The answer, as we ALL know, is yellow. I recommend that you click on this link and listen to Flight of the Bumblebee while you enjoy the pictures below. You can pause the Mysterious Island music and come right back to it afterwards.











But this rousing adventure was not about to get caught with its pants down, and before my friends and I could aggravate our on-coming teenage acne by staring too long at the lovely Beth, a giant bee interrupts their picnic, and they're forced to flee into the cave containing the giant bee hive.









Minutes later we were treated to the sight of the Nautilus, floating serenely in the hidden grotto. (I'd love to know what happened to the miniature they used in this movie. I think it's gorgeous.)







It wasn't long before we got to meet Captain Nemo himself — and now the Mysterious Island had it's own "professor" to invent the things they needed to be rescued!











This Saturday Matinee adventure played out with never a dull moment, as the castaways and their distinguished new member displayed bravery and intelligence, raising the pirate ship that Nemo cleverly sunk. During the underwater repair job on the pirate ship, we're shown the remnants of an ancient civilization —





— and Nemo's 'electric gun" . . . which, frankly, doesn't seem like a smart thing for people use under water, since water conducts electricity. But that certainly didn't bother me and my friends back in 1961 when we were dazzled by this snazzy weapon.



We also watched the guys battle a giant sea creature along the way, which they turned into sushi with the electric gun.













The action, adventure, and romance stayed right on course until the end of the story, when the castaways sailed away in the recovered pirate ship — a classy way to demonstrate the superiority of brains over brawn!



I actually remember walking away from the movie theater in 1961 with Jimmy and Chuck while we all talked at the same time and re-ran the movie in our heads. We tried not to bump into lamp posts and mail boxes while our eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight.

Actually we did the same thing two years later when Jason and the Argonauts came out. But that's another story — and another post.
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Bonus Feature:

The Making of the Mysterious Island Post - the bee jpegs.

Just a small example of the effort I went to while making this post -- I created this picture (also shown above) --



-- by combining these two pictures.





And this picture of the three bees is a composite of three pictures, using the best pose of each bee.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)