The First Men In The Moon

Throughout the history of movies, audiences have wanted their action-adventure movies to be loaded with the latest formal accoutrements. That was true when Abel Gance's "Napoleon" played across three scenes in the silent era; it's true today, as we watch films in 3-D IMAX; and it was true in the sixties, when director Nathan Juran, cinematographer Wilkie Cooper, and special effects legend Ray Harryhausen collaborated to adapt H.G. Wells' "The First Men in the Moon."

They shot the film in glorious Technicolor, and framed it in super-wide Cinemascope. That gave them the opportunity to lavish the film with luxurious long shots of space effects and alien beings -- it allowed them to dwell on the genre's inherent sense of wonderment. As such, it seems a bit pointless to recall the plot of the film in too much depth. A manned mission to the Moon reveals a long-buried flag, which leads us to a flashback in which a small crew from Victorian England -- an eccentric scientist and a young engaged couple (shades of "Back to the Future" -- use anti-gravity tech to reach the Moon's surface a full generation earlier.

They eventually encounter meticulously-designed space aliens: Skeletal torsos, a bug's body, and humanoid faces, all rendered with Harryhausen's unfailing eye for disconcerting details. Then there are the moon cows: Hulking creatures that waft across the frame like King Kong, dwarfing the cast of humans in astonishing fashion. But even before the sci-fi standards, Harryhausen wows us with his work: Check out the long shots of the spacecraft approaching the moon, or lifting off from the Earth. They get at the same sense of balletic motion that Kubrick's "2001" did -- they're pulp poetry.

Twilight Time's Blu-ray release brings with it an isolated score track, two trailers, and a short featurette that mixes together behind-the-scenes footage and archival shots of actual space programs in-action. (Both the trailers and the featurette are sourced from the film's original release.) But the disc's primary features revolve around Harryhausen: Special effects artist Randall Cook provides a short introduction to the film, then joins Harryhausen for a full-length audio commentary of the film, where they discuss their influences, memories of the shoot, and strategies for creating the film's memorably pulpy design.

Harryhausen's effects remain a gold standard in the film industry, and not in any relative sense: They're simply the best. Even the most well-designed of today's CG effects display a weightless, airless effect. You see a car fly out of a plane in "Fast and Furious," and it looks like it was painted on top of the sky. Not so for Harryhausen's miniatures and moon cows. There's a blessed tactility to each of his effects -- a sharp detail to their edges, and a weight to their appearance. Maybe they're no longer cutting-edge, but that doesn't matter much. They were there -- they actually existed. And our eyes can tell the difference.

"The First Men in the Moon"
Blu-ray Limited Edition
Screenarchives.com
$29.95