Longtime collaborators of sci-fi adventure films of the 50's and 60's producer Charles H. Schneer and special effects artist Ray Harryhausen are together again here for Mysterious Island. Harryhausen, renowned for his Dynamation process of stop-motion special effects turns to giant birds and crustaceans in this film but no dinosaurs although the original script did call for some. Several changes were made right up until filming with one having the island as a link to the lost continent of Atlantis. Another change involved the character Tom Ayerton. In the novel The Mysterious Island by Jules Vern, the character Thomas Ayrton is found living on the island where he had been abandoned after appearing in another Jules Verne novel called The Children of Captain Grant where as the former quartermaster of the ship Britana he hatched a treacherous plot to seize control of the Duncan. the character of Thomas Ayrton was to have been included here as Tom Ayerton with some other changes. He was a man abandoned on the island and who turned green from eating strange poisonous mushrooms. The "green man" was to have been played appropriately so by actor Nigel Green who was cast in the role but the character was eliminated from the final script before scenes were shot. Nigel Green's name remained in the credits although no footage was actually filmed. The only reference to the character in the film is some bones the castaways find in a cave. This adaptation of the Verne story is by screenwriters John Prible who would go on to write the story Zulu, Daniel B. Ullman who was a screenwriter of B-westerns and would go on to television screenplays, and Crane Wilber who was both a writer and director. Cy Endfield who would direct the acclaimed film epic Zulu is this film's director. Noted cinematographer Willie Cooper who worked on The 7 Voyages of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, First Men on the Moon and One Million Years B.c. is the film's photographer. A balloon carrying three escaped Union prisoners from the Civil War, a Confederate guard and a yellow journalist is carried adrift in a storm and eventually lands far out in the Pacific on a remote island. They are soon joined by two women from a ship that has sank and so with seven castaways we have the original Gilligan's Island. The younger of the two women, abandons her Victorian era modesty and cavorts the island in a sexy homemade leather minidress that would predate Raquel Welch's wardrobe in One Million Years B.C. Also showing up on the island is Captain Nemo and his submarine from Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He's been busy experimenting with animal growth to help feed the growing world's population. He's a nice guy Nemo this time around and comes in handy for the ill-fated castaways. Americans Gary Merrill, Michael Callan and Dan Jackson are among the British cast including Michael Craig, Percy Herbert, Beth Rogan and Joan Greenwood and Czech-born actor Herbert Lom. This is an entertaining movie and I would give it a 7.0 out of 10.