Tonight's movie, "First Men In The Moon" (1964) was based on another H.G. Wells story. Like "Things To Come", which we saw and reviewed a week ago, it is futuristic, except in this case we are kind of going back to the future. Hey, that would make a great title for a movie! (now wait a minute, Ad...)
But yeah, even though the story begins in the future, we have to go back several decades to tell it, because.....well, it'll make more sense if I start at the beginning.
You've gotta hand it to H.G. Wells. The guy was amazing, as far as predicting the coming of airplanes, space flight and even laser weapons, and he did all this when the telephone and electric lights were in their infancy, and radio had yet to become a household item (and television was four decades away). Yeah, he really was a super genius, and in his book "The First Men In The Moon", he wrote about a scientist who discovers an anti-gravity compound that will enable him and his neighbor to make a trip to the Moon. He wrote this in 1901, sixty eight years before we finally got there. More importantly, he was talking about anti-gravity as a propulsion system, as far as I know the first author to do so.
According to IMDB, the movie has added scenes that aren't in the book. The most important of these scenes comes at the beginning. As the movie opens, we see a modern day (1964) spacecraft about to make a lunar landing. This is only five years prior to the real thing, and the filmmakers got the details right. They show that the whole world is watching the landing on TV, just as it would actually happen in 1969. They have a landing module that looks not too different than the LEM of Apollo 11, and the landing as depicted in the movie has similarities to what we all saw on TV on July 20 1969. This 12 minute opening sequence was added to Wells' original story to give the movie some currency during the Space Race of the 1960s.
The point of the opening is that the whole world is watching the astronauts land on the Moon, and everyone takes for granted that they are the first men ever to set foot there. But then, shortly after they exit the capsule to begin their exploration of the lunar surface, one of the astronauts discovers some artifacts that are instant proof of a prior visitor. Among the items are a tattered British flag (and please pronounce British in the appointed way), and a note with a woman's name on it.
All of this is broadcast worldwide as it is happening, so the British news media erupts into a frenzy of trying to track down the woman whose name appeared on the note. But the note was dated "1899", 65 years in the past, so even if the woman is still alive, she would be very elderly and maybe non compos mentis.
Or she might be still on the Moon!
Through due diligence, emissaries from the Space Agency (modeled on NASA) are able to locate a man who, in 1899, was an associate of the Moon Woman. Actually he was her boyfriend. Now, he is 97 years old and living in a nursing home, but he is lucid and has quite a story to tell.
It seems that in 1899, he was a young playwright, staying for the Summer at a rented home in the English countryside, where he hoped to get some work done. He has a girlfriend he hopes will become his fiance, and he also has a rather eccentric neighbor, a Mr. Cavor, a scientist from whose house a lot of racket emanates, sometimes from a minor explosion.
The playwright's girl doesn't like Mr. Cavor, and sends her boyfriend over to complain, but he is short circuited from that mission by what he sees inside the house, and by Cavor's energy and enthusiasm in describing his work. The interior of the home is a laboratory (and please pronounce it in the British way). Through years of experimentation, Cavor has concocted a liquid compound he calls "Cavorite" in honor of himself. When cavorite is painted on an object, such as a chair, and then left to harden, the object will after a short time rise from the ground very rapidly. He demonstrates this to the playwright, who shortly thereafter is pinned to the ceiling!
His directive to complain to Mr. Cavor is all but forgotten. Now he wants to invest in the production of Cavorite! Then Cavor announces his ultimate goal, which is to use the Cavorite to propel himself to the Moon, in a capsule he has already built. He shows the playwright the capsule, and persuades him to come along. As you can imagine, the playwright's girl (Martha Hyer) is now even more furious with Mr. Cavor.
It's all very Steampunk, and this first hour or so of the movie is quite enjoyable, propelled by the energy of Lionel Jeffries as Mr. Cavor. They do get to the Moon, of course, with Martha Hyer in tow, and at that point things get a little dicier in the art department. You have to be ready to cut the movie a little slack for it's early 60s "papier mache" moonscape. The surface of the Moon looks awesome, as do all the Outer Space and rocket effects, thanks to Ray Harryhausen. It's when they go underground that the film takes on that "1960s" look with the fake cave walls and colored lights. But it's still highly enjoyable because of the Selenites, the Alien race the trio will encounter on their journey.
Martha Hyer has brought along a large hunting rifle - an "Elephant Gun" - even though Mr. Cavor told her not to, because "what if we run into some creature up there"?
They do run into a whole bunch of creatures, and the presence of the gun will figure prominently in what Wells' will use as a moral of the story.
That's all I will tell you, but definitely give "First Men In The Moon" a watch, especially during this historic anniversary Summer of Apollo and the real first trip to the Moon.
It gets Two Thumbs Up from me, just regular thumbs but solid ones, and it's a lot of fun. //////
That's all for now. Gotta go to the store and then to the Libe for more movies! Have a great afternoon and I'll see ya tonight at the Usual Time, and maybe one of these nights I can get squared back around and finish a blog all in one sitting!
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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