This movie was only a vague childhood memory until I rediscovered it here on Amazon. I had only remembered small sections of an old-fashioned looking, black and white movie with strange undersea creatures. I was probably 4 or 5 years old when I saw this on TV, and it made a lasting impression on me. I have a short list of vague early TV memories that have been a mystery throughout my adult life. This one remained elusive because I'd always thought that it was a much older film, probably from the 1920s and the early days of cinema, and I didn't connect it with Jules Verne at all.
When I stumbled on this one here on Amazon, I thought that MAYBE this was the same film I'd seen only once almost 50 years earlier. One look at the trailer and I knew I'd finally found it, so I immediately rented it. All those fond memories came rushing back. Besides solving a long-time mystery for me, the film itself is an amazing piece of special effects work, and especially ambitious considering it was made in 1958. Yes, it's disjointed and grainy, the sound is terrible, and the print is not at all restored in any way, so it seems really rough by today's standards. But I don't care. I grinned through the entire piece and enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, the acting is stiff, but I sense that the actors had no clear idea of the animation into which their scenes would be inserted. I think that it was shot on a blank stage, and all the multiple special effects shots were superimposed in camera, which, though this technique was well established already in hundreds of other films before it, here it was treated like a piece of art.
The imaginative use of period-looking woodcuts really captured the feel of Jules Verne's world perfectly, and reminded me a lot of Terry Gilliam's early animation work, on whom I suspect this film was an influence. If you're a fan of those classic Monty Python animations, you'll see what I mean when you watch this film, which has its own wonderful little moments of visual humor. This is an almost-forgotten gem that should be required viewing for any fan of science fiction or film history. For 2 bucks, it's a bargain and a no-brainer... rent it NOW!
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