Joanna Mccarty
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
Sabah Hensley
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Caryl
It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
O2D
H.G. Wells and Ray Harryhausen,how can that fail? In more ways than you can imagine. Even if you can buy into the ridiculous scenario that gets them to the moon,the movie quickly falls apart. I was really expecting it to get good when they got there but it got much worse. The bad guys are bugs that are sometimes people in bad bug suits and sometimes dolls that aren't really there.Very disappointing for Harryhausen. And they don't hurry up getting to the moon.It starts with some reporters in present day and then they find an old man who tells a very long story about the past. When it is interesting,it doesn't make much sense. Watch this if you like Harryhausen(that's why I watched) but don't be expecting a mind blowing epic.
BA_Harrison
Struggling entrepreneur Arnold Bedford (Edward Judd) invests in the latest invention by crackpot scientist Joseph Cavor (Lionel Jeffries): Cavorite, a substance that defies gravity. In order to test their product, the pair embark on a trip to the moon in a metal sphere, accompanied by Arnold's unwilling fiancé Kate Callendar (Martha Hyer). Once on the moon, the trio run into trouble with a race of technologically advanced bug-eyed creatures that Cavor calls Selenites.First Men In The Moon is an entertaining sci-fi yarn boasting great performances, solid direction from Nathan Juran, and some impressive visual effects (for the day), including a couple of nice Ray Harryhausen Dynamation creatures; but what I like best about the film is that it sticks steadfastly to H.G. Wells fanciful scientific invention, no matter how absurd it all gets. If the book was to be adapted for the screen these days, I have no doubt that much of the content would be drastically altered to make it seem more plausible, but in the process, Wells' story would be robbed of its innocent Victorian futurism charm.In Juran's 1964 movie, it's all intact: the crazy sphere with blinds coated in Cavorite, the massive caterpillar-like moon cows (sadly, not a thing, as we have since discovered), the weird and wonderful lunar vegetation, and the intelligent insectivorous beings (mostly realised via men in unconvincing rubber suits) who must create their own oxygen to breathe (which leaves one wondering how they evolved). The script, by Nigel Kneale, also throws in the silly idea of using deep sea diving suits as space attire, plus a near miss (of about 90 million miles) with the sun.It's all extremely daft, but therein lies the fun.
DKosty123
I rate this one fairly high based upon the visual effects. The H G Wells novel is followed so faithfully that the script at times borders on the ridiculous. Still, it is quite an effort. 5 years before man went too the moon, this is not the first version of this, but it is the best visual of it. There are some cave sequences of this which look very much like the caverns used in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. The images in this one and the sets are amazing. This one comes off as rather simplistic for todays audience.Martha Hyer and Lionel Jeffries are the best known members of the cast. Though it is dated, it is quite watchable.
irishm
No? Well, then, 6 is the best I can do as an average.We had 9 minutes of excerpts from this film on 8mm when I was a kid, and we loved it. It was all the best stuff from the moon, none of the Earth-bound early scenes. The Earth scenes provide necessary exposition and set up the story, as well as introduce us to the characters. Unfortunately, the two halves of the film seem almost to have been directed by two different people, or perhaps the same director with some sort of bipolar disorder.The first half is loud, broad slapstick. The second half is filled with adventure, mystery, and extraordinary special effects. Quite honestly, if I hadn't been so sure the film would get much better because I remembered the moon part so vividly, I might not have made it through 20 minutes of Lionel Jeffries screaming "Gibbs! GIBBS!" at the top of his lungs and running about like a maniac. That was just painful.But once the adventurers make it to the moon, it's worth the wait. The interior-of-the-moon effects, as I've already noted, are quite wonderful. The excerpts we had in the 60's were in black-and-white, so all the color was new to me this time through and added a great deal. I've always loved the head-butting giant caterpillars, the enormous perpetual-motion wheel, the Harryhausen-animated Selenites (the ones in rubber costumes are laughable; watch for the creepy stop-motion animated ones). Fabulous! The score is marvelous. First time I've ever watched a whole movie, then re-watched the opening titles just to listen to the overture again.First half 3, second half 8.5. Fast-forward through Jeffries' Three-Stooges behavior at the beginning if you can't stand it anymore, but don't give up... the scenes on and in the moon are well worth the trouble to get there.
