Lionel Jeffreys is Dr. Cavor, a loony English inventor who takes Edward Judd and Martha Hyer along on a trip to the moon in 1899 in a sphere propelled by his anti-gravity paste ("cavorite"). The moon, at first, looks rather like the imaginations of 1964 would picture it -- barren, mountainous, and dark. The image of the distant earth had not yet acquired its stippling of white clouds.
It isn't long, though, before the intrepid trio discover one of those secret civilizations dwelling beneath the surface, where they've built a giant oxygen-producing machine that makes the atmosphere breathable. The society seems to be built around a three-caste system -- giant caterpillars, big furry soldiers, and technologically advanced eggheads. Conflict ensues. The trio escape and head back to earth for a happy landing.
I nodded out once or twice towards the end because the story wasn't actually gripping in any sense, though it was nice to see Ray Harryhausen's special effects. That monster caterpillar was pretty spooky.
The problem that fantasists like Wells, Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. Ryder Haggard had was that they generally had some illuminating intuitions about how to get from the ordinary to the fabulous, but then sometime stumbling while figuring out what to do once they reached the alien corn. Welles' "The Time Machine" was fine until we wound up with the pale and naive Eloi and the cannibalistic subterranean Morlocks when, unless you were clued in to the fact that Welles was trying to predict the future evolutionary status of the working class and the aristocrats, it seemed a little confusing and arbitrary. "The First Men on the Moon" has a similar problem. F/X aside, I kept thinking, "So what?", through the cerulean haze of stage one sleep.
Edward Judd, formerly of "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," was okay. And Martha Hyer gives her most animated performance on film, which is kind of like watching a digital clock click from one minute to the next. Lionel Jeffreys is more than your usual quirky scientist. (Miles Malleson, here as the Dymchurch registrar is quirky.) Jeffreys is positively manic, running around screaming, stumbling over things, repeating himself -- "I've got it! I've got it!" -- when he should be begging for lithium.
And the photography is great in many ways, images that are crisp and sharp, but a fable like this deserves to be bright, cheerful, and inviting, like George Pal's "The Time Machine." This fairy tale is dark, too dark, rendering every background object minatory. I mean, a murky hole in the ground filled with terrifying monsters is depressing. Reminds me of my childhood. The subdued lighting is expertly used in the scenes at Cherry Cottage, though, deep greens with the subtle pink of flowers in the shrubbery. And the rich score is impressive.
It's still a light-hearted and appealing movie, though. The kids ought to get a big kick out of it too.
It isn't long, though, before the intrepid trio discover one of those secret civilizations dwelling beneath the surface, where they've built a giant oxygen-producing machine that makes the atmosphere breathable. The society seems to be built around a three-caste system -- giant caterpillars, big furry soldiers, and technologically advanced eggheads. Conflict ensues. The trio escape and head back to earth for a happy landing.
I nodded out once or twice towards the end because the story wasn't actually gripping in any sense, though it was nice to see Ray Harryhausen's special effects. That monster caterpillar was pretty spooky.
The problem that fantasists like Wells, Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. Ryder Haggard had was that they generally had some illuminating intuitions about how to get from the ordinary to the fabulous, but then sometime stumbling while figuring out what to do once they reached the alien corn. Welles' "The Time Machine" was fine until we wound up with the pale and naive Eloi and the cannibalistic subterranean Morlocks when, unless you were clued in to the fact that Welles was trying to predict the future evolutionary status of the working class and the aristocrats, it seemed a little confusing and arbitrary. "The First Men on the Moon" has a similar problem. F/X aside, I kept thinking, "So what?", through the cerulean haze of stage one sleep.
Edward Judd, formerly of "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," was okay. And Martha Hyer gives her most animated performance on film, which is kind of like watching a digital clock click from one minute to the next. Lionel Jeffreys is more than your usual quirky scientist. (Miles Malleson, here as the Dymchurch registrar is quirky.) Jeffreys is positively manic, running around screaming, stumbling over things, repeating himself -- "I've got it! I've got it!" -- when he should be begging for lithium.
And the photography is great in many ways, images that are crisp and sharp, but a fable like this deserves to be bright, cheerful, and inviting, like George Pal's "The Time Machine." This fairy tale is dark, too dark, rendering every background object minatory. I mean, a murky hole in the ground filled with terrifying monsters is depressing. Reminds me of my childhood. The subdued lighting is expertly used in the scenes at Cherry Cottage, though, deep greens with the subtle pink of flowers in the shrubbery. And the rich score is impressive.
It's still a light-hearted and appealing movie, though. The kids ought to get a big kick out of it too.