The set up on this film sounds like one of those fake movie announcements that pop up on the internet around April 1rst - an Italian miniseries adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND but set in space and starring Anthony Quinn as Long John Silver. But it is real and I've seen it. Young Jim Hawkins finds himself going on a intergalactic journey when Billy Bones (Ernest Borgnine, who has the sense to get out early) hands him a treasure map. Directed by Antonio Margheriti, this actually sticks pretty dang close to Stevenson's classic (yes, I've read a book) and features all of the famous bits from the book except with the occasional spaceship and android running around. Quinn just barely saves himself from Richard Harris STRIKE COMMANDO 2 levels of Italian exploitation embarrassment because this production actually looks like they had a budget to work with. There are actually some pretty impressive space ship set here. Plenty of familiar faces fill out the cast including David Warbeck as Dr. Livesy, John Morgan as Hands, Klaus Löwitsch as Capt. Smollet, Bobby Rhodes as Black Dog, Sal Borgese as Morgan, Biagio Pelligra as Pew and Hal Yamanouchi as the amusingly named Pete. The version I watched was actually a condensed one that runs 2 and 1/2 hours.

If you've seen every other goofy Italian sci-fi flick and thought you'd exhausted the field, fear not! Here's EIGHT HOURS of Antonio Margheriti doing what he does best, compositing cool model spaceships with beautiful starscapes and familiar B-level actors, in an utterly unnecessary (yet glorious) updating of Treasure Island. Everything here holds together: the sets, the models, the props, the costumes, etc. This is no bottom-of-the-barrel cheapskate production! This is Margheriti's magnum opus, and the logical pinnacle of Italian SF - derivative, fast, and fun!See it if you can! Unfortunately for us Americans, we'll have to make do with cruddy "grey- market" versions until (if ever) a real release comes along . . .

First of all...why?-Because this movie got so deep into my heart being one of those movies which surprised me in a very special way becoming the one i somehow waited and had wished to be created and still it over passed all my expectation and fulfilled my every childish dream.The movie has something mysterious and magic in the same time,combining the fairy tale of childhood which parents used to read us at bedtime about pirates and treasures with the teenager's dream of time conquest and space traveling mixing them both with intrigue and adventure,creating an unique feeling of something true and possible in the future,..creating in the teenager's mind -The Dream!

I'm surprised someone has written about this movie, because you cannot find it easily in the shops.The movie tells the story of a 12-year old boy, Jimmy (played bij Itaco Nardulli), who lives in the year 2300 at Sicily in an abandoned spacecentre. His mother owns the inn. This is the place where Billy Bones arrives, and later on the scoundrels: they are looking for the treasuremap. Of course the story is well-known. But this time it all happens in outer space. A marvellous idea, because I like sf-films.Fortunately I have got this film on VHS-tape as one complete movie with a length of 2h and 25 minutes; English spoken with Dutch subtitles. Unfortunately the quality of the tape is not as it should be. I will try to make a scan of the cover, so that Imdb can show it on the empty place of the page of "Tresure Island in outer space" or "Isola del tesoro,L" if they still want it of course.My opinion is: a feel-good movie, suitable for all ages above 8, with great adventure and humour and suspence. I will vote for this film and mark it with a 9.Greetings from The Netherlands, Govert van der Kemp.