Good Samaritan Peter Cushing pays $5 million for an island during an auction and hereby beats mean bastard Terence Stamp who knows for a fact there's a gold treasure buried somewhere. Cushing sends his nephew to the island to explore, accompanied by a clumsy professor as some sort of comic relief, but things already start to get awry from the ocean journey. One night the nephew finds the crew dead and the deck infested with cheesy seaweed monsters inspired by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The ship explodes but the boy and his nutty professor wash ashore the island where they're welcomed by plenty of other abnormalities. There are dinosaurs, seaweed zombies, Arabs with sunglasses, gas-spurting caterpillars and a beautiful French female castaway. I got "lured" into watching "Mystery on Monster Island" because of the famous names (Cushing and Stamp in one movie!?!) in the cast and crew (Juan Piquer Simon made my personal favorites "Supersonic Man", "Pieces" and "Slugs") and also simply because it sounds awesome and purely nostalgic. In reality, however, this is a very misleading family/comedy/adventure movie instead of a mystery thriller. I can easily stand a little bit of comedy, but I really wasn't prepared for an uptight professor teaching table manners to a chimpanzee and diction to aboriginals. Another reason why you can tell this movie is family-friendly: the nephew remains faithful to his fiancée back home, even though the gorgeous French chick literally throws herself at him. I think it's highly unlikely any man will refuse (or able to resist) such an offer in this particular situation.
"Mystery on Monster Island" is somewhat reminiscent to the Sinbad movies; expect they're a lot more infantile. The special effects are really back-to-basic, with giant plastic dinosaurs and postcard images of waterfalls and cave entrances and even a little bit of exotic wildlife. The aboriginals set up a wooden fort faster than MacGyver and The A-Team combined and that where there's not a hardware store in sight. Where do they get their equipment? Peter Cushing and Terence Stamp perhaps receive top billing but naturally they only appear briefly in the film. Altogether not even five minutes, I estimate. There's another famous horror legend in the cast, namely Paul Naschy, but his character already dies within the first three minutes of the film. Absolute nobodies play the real main characters of the story. It's a total rip-off however you look at it. Avoid
"Mystery on Monster Island" is somewhat reminiscent to the Sinbad movies; expect they're a lot more infantile. The special effects are really back-to-basic, with giant plastic dinosaurs and postcard images of waterfalls and cave entrances and even a little bit of exotic wildlife. The aboriginals set up a wooden fort faster than MacGyver and The A-Team combined and that where there's not a hardware store in sight. Where do they get their equipment? Peter Cushing and Terence Stamp perhaps receive top billing but naturally they only appear briefly in the film. Altogether not even five minutes, I estimate. There's another famous horror legend in the cast, namely Paul Naschy, but his character already dies within the first three minutes of the film. Absolute nobodies play the real main characters of the story. It's a total rip-off however you look at it. Avoid