The fantastical creatures and special effects of Ray Harryhausen are at home here in this adventuresome Jules Verne tale as in Greek mythology and the ancient world of the dinosaurs. This story, set in 1865, has a small group of Union soldiers, a Confederate prisoner, and a civilian adrift in an air balloon that blows them into an exotic island where mysterious and fantastic discoveries await.

The escape from the island would never work, of course, but part of the charm of Verne's worlds is that ingenuity is always justly rewarded, in spite of the messy constraints of practicality.