Near the close of the American Civil War, four Union-aligned men escape from the Confederate prison where they are being held, seize an aerial observation balloon, and escape: all amidst the wildest storm of the year. Their departure is not uncontested, however, and they end up with a Confederate prisoner in the balloon basket with them.
They'll soon be grateful for their enemy's presence, however, as he at least understand how the balloon is operated, and can land them safely ... well, he can as soon as the wild winds die down!
However the storm continues to blow; the five men travel vast distances until they eventually crash on a tiny tropical island. They must now try to survive here long enough either for rescuers to find them, or until they can manufacture their own means of escape.
Easy, right? Well, did I mention that all their food and weapons were lost in the crash? That's a complication right there. Oh yeah, and there's one other thing: this island already has inhabitants. They're just not human, and Ray Harryhausen is their father.
Yep, this is a Harryhausen stop motion creature feature and adventure yarn, loosely based on the Jules Verne novel of them same name. It's not one of the great man's most renowned works, but it is definitely at its best whenever one of his creations is on screen, trying to eat the human cast. Those sequences fortunately occur relatively frequently, livening up the otherwise sometimes rather stilted plot.
If you've a hankering for an old-fashioned adventure movie, and/or an appreciation for Harryhausen's meticulous stop motion effects, this is worth a couple of hours of your time.
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