No Strings On Me: Cinema's Living Puppets 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (U)

Part of No Strings On Me: Cinema's Living Puppets – inspired by and celebrating the unique charm and history of puppetry in cinema.

Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre and James Mason star in Richard Fleischer’s fabulous and fantastical adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Winner of the Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects – including an awesome giant squid – it was Disney’s costliest production to date, an ingenious and imaginative technical feat using puppetry to create its wondrous, dangerous underwater world. 

Douglas plays a roguish 19th century seaman trying to discover why so many whaling ships have disappeared. Teaming up with a scientist (Paul Lukas) and a diver (Lorre), he sets sail to investigate – and is promptly captured by megalomaniac Captain Nemo (Mason), skipper of the Nautilus, a lavish, scientifically advanced submarine.