Film: 'The First Men In The Moon' (1964)

(Pre-written holiday cover)

Now, fresh in the aftermath of watching this for the first time, this movie can be safely classified as being fascinating. For an extremely long stretch of time, it is actually brilliant, but then suffers from the HG Wells effect and becomes merely good as horror acquires a greater prominence. However, it is still a great film, and one which is definitely anachronistic for its time.

In this adaptation of the HG Wells story, a moon landing in 1964 (yes, five years early!) is confused when the astronauts discover a small British flag spiked into the ground through a claim paper made in 1899. Radioing this news back to the Earth, a team tracks down one of the people who were on the expedition, who recounts a fantastical tale. Yes, three people did go to the Moon, and they saw amazing things, but only two returned. The surviving early astronaut, an Arnold Bedford, reveals it all.

The main reason to check out this movie was originally the presence of the legendary Lionel Jeffries, who played the crackpot scientist Professor Cavor, inventor of the gravity-defying substance Cavorite. Bedford, who is not a particularly nice person, cons his fiancée Kate Callender into a dodgy deal involving his rented cottage and then invests the money into Cavorite. However, Cavor has something he wants to do first, which is a trip to the Moon! Needless to say, all three principal characters end up on the voyage, which leads to an encounter with an alien race living beneath the surface and a host of Ray Harryhausen effects. Sadly, it doesn't end well, with the humans' aggression causing misunderstandings, and the so-called Selenites becoming worrying inquisitive about the military operations and unity of the Earth peoples.

'First Men In The Moon' is not, however, a perfect film. There are character problems during the establishment of the 1899 storyline, with dear Lionel Jeffries apparently floundering for a little while until he finds his way through the role, and Edward Juff and Martha Hyer not being a particularly convincing couple, but it does pick up. There are some bona fide Harryhausen effects during the Selenite sequence on the Moon, which will probably polarise viewers, and the downer ending is frustrating and a little repetitive for those who have knowledge of other HG Wells stories. The framing device works wonderfully, though, and Jeffries does save the film. Ah, he was a great performer. There is also a great attention to some of the details, and not to others, but the general effect is to add authenticity to the goofy origins of the story.

Overall, a very solid science fiction movie, which could have been better but for it's doom-laden climax. Good.

O.