Space 1979 Wells-A-Thon 4: The one with Ray Harryhausen

 

 Title: First Men In The Moon

What Year?: 1964

Classification: Runnerup/ Prototype/ Parody

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In planning out this feature, the most difficult decision was choosing a fourth out of the five I definitely wanted. In a sense, the penultimate entry was The Shape of Things to Come, but I already had that where I wanted it. I also wasn’t interested in covering the George Pal movies, which were too old and high-profile for my usual standards, or Food of the Gods, which I deemed redundant after Empire of the Ants. I finally did a deep dive for more material, including films indirectly influenced by Wells (Memoirs of An Invisible Man gets honorable mention), but there was nothing I was satisfied I could do justice on short notice. That brought me back to one I had had in mind all along, also outside of the time frame this feature was meant to cover but no more so than the 1990s version of Dr. Moreau. So here is First Men In The Moon, the only Wells adaptation from the legendary team of Charles Schneer and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, last sighted in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Our story begins with a peaceful, multinational expedition landing on the Moon, which is our first hint how well this one aged. As the astronauts explore the surface, they make a perplexing discovery: A British flag is already planted, apparently from decades earlier. Soon, authorities on Earth find an old man named Bedford who may have the answer. He recounts that at the start of the 20^th century, he was the partner of an eccentric inventor named Henry Cavor, who claimed to have discovered a way to cancel the effects of gravity. We then follow their misadventures as the pair go on a very Victorian trip to the Moon with a reluctant lady in tow. There, they discover an insectoid race called the Selenites, who live beneath the surface of the Moon. Cavor and the lady are soon captured for study by the rulers of the Selenites. While the naïve inventor learns to communicate with the aliens and quickly tells them  rather too much about humanity, Bedford plans a bold and not very welcome rescue. But what will the expedition discover in the present?

The First Men In The Moon was a 1964 British/ American film released by Columbia Pictures, based on the 1901 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Nathan Juran, previously responsible for The Deadly Mantis and the Schneer/ Harryhausen film 20 Million Miles To Earth, from a script by Nigel Kneale, best known as the creator of the Quatermass series. Lionel Jeffries was cast in the role of Cavor, with Edward Judd as Bedford and Martha Hyer as the introduced romantic interest. The spacesuits used in the film were actual high-altitude suits developed by the RAF, reportedly also used in Dr. Who and the Star Wars franchise. The movie was deemed a commercial disappointment, with a North American box office of $1.6 million. Harryhausen and Kneale were both critical of the comedic tone of the film, which the latter reported was significantly expanded in rewrites of his script.  

For my experiences, I can’t help but tie this one to an observation I first made with Star Trek and The Twilight Zone: 1960s science fiction TV and films had a particularly hard time when they were trying to be funny. I admit this is still very much an anecdotal assessment, and I certainly don’t claim to be able to explain it; if anything, I’m quite baffled. There are plenty of ‘60s comedies I like very much, including Dr. Strangelove, which many accept as science fiction. I’ve also read a lot of very funny science fiction from the time, when sci fi  comedy/ satire was advancing in leaps and bounds in the hands of writers like Fredric Brown, Harry Harrison and Ron Goulart. But whenever people tried to bring that to the screen, it always seems to end up strained at best, at least to me. What’s most curious of all with this one is that H.G. Wells had an underappreciated gift for humor that was more evident than usual in the original novel. Yet, even with plenty to work with in the source material, this movie in particular doesn’t hold up as well as actual Wells comedies like “The Purple Pileus” and “Jim Goggles the God”.

With all that said, it’s still difficult to judge where to start assessing the film on its own merits. On any amount of consideration, the greatest strengths of the movie are Harryhausen’s effects and Jeffries’ performance as Cavor, and it’s really the latter that does the most to sustain the movie, especially in the lengthy buildup to the trip to the Moon The inventor comes across pretty much as he does in the book, which I am once again going with from one or a few readings from a long time ago. His head is too far in the clouds for him to be openly greedy, but he also shows an unsettling indifference to the consequences of his work and the safety of others. Above all, he is genuinely funny, at least when he has enough room to run with the material. Meanwhile, Harryhausen’s effects fist come into play with a mishap that destroys a good part of the house, followed by the voyage itself, which I timed at just short of 50 minutes in. Here, we see the good matte work that distinguishes Harryhausen’s work as much as the actual stop-motion, with a further old-school charm that endures up to the present.

After sitting through all this, plus the awkward prologue, the encounter with the Selenites inevitably feels rushed, though its share of the running time is comparable to the page count in the book. What’s really striking is that Wells’ Selenites seem almost generic in hindsight, when in fact his vision of a hive-based civilization was decades ahead of similar written fiction and still ahead of science fiction movies even in the 1960s. It’s of further note that Harryhausen’s role in bringing them to life is quite limited. We see a giant caterpillar-creature that supplies the main monster action, suspiciously close to the 1961 debut of Mothra. The main event where stop-motion is concerned is a ruling Selenite who studies the human captives, easily among Harryhausen’s finest creatures, all the more noteworthy for being neither threatening nor specifically “good”. More representative and problematic are gangs of Selenites clearly played by men in suits. They quickly bring the film down to the level of more typical ‘50s-‘60s fare, conspicuously the rubbery creatures of Quatermass And The Pit. However, there are impressive moments, particularly when the camerawork gives a sense of their numbers without focusing on the all too visible flaws in the suits. It’s genuinely unnerving to see them literally swarm into action, particularly in a sequence where they easily strip the space capsule.

Now, it’s more than past time for the “one scene”. My choice is the main encounter between Cavor and the Selenite scientist who questions him. The scene starts with the lady walking in and out of a sort of scanner used by the Selenite. In a brief tribute to Harryhausen’s earlier work, she is turned into a stop motion skeleton; in a further demonstration of the master’s talent, even the short time taken to cross the scanner’s field is enough to give a sense of her motion and mannerisms that completely lines up with the actress’s performance. While the lady is indignant, Cavor remains too intrigued to acknowledge he is a prisoner rather than a colleague. As the scene goes on, he becomes excited as the Selenite repeats and then responds to his speech. In the process, we get several views of the scientist through his own scope, evidently magnified but not transformed. I find the appearance quite striking, in some ways similar to the Space Jockey in Alien. (There’s also an even stranger resemblance to Watto in Star Wars Episode I.) While Cavor is at the peak of his enthusiasm, the Selenite gives the movie’s most iconic quote: “Absolutely imperial!”

In closing, I must acknowledge what was already obvious: Of all the Wells adaptations, this is the one that was outdated by the time it was made. There can be no further doubt that the main reason it was made at all was that George Pal’s films effectively snapped up the most famed and marketable Wells works, while also demonstrating their commercial potential. Even so, the core problem was not with the book, but with the undue effort and screen time put into making it “current”. Add in the unaccountably awkward comedy and a “hero” so undistinguished I have literally gone through the whole review without talking about him, and you have a movie that was bound to go straight to the second tier. What’s really of note is that the film did as well as it has then and since. That is certainly owed to Harryhausen’s talent and fame, but also to the efforts of Jeffries, Kneale and Wells himself. It may be an also-ran, but it’s a runner-up to the very best, and still at least as worthy of attention as many more successful films. Give it a try, and the one thing you won’t be is unimpressed.