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The antiquarian and the modernist are braided parallels, not for nothing is the Lang of Frau im Mond the mainstay. "The big event" is a UN rocket to the moon ca. 1964, celebratory parades back on Earth are somewhat hampered by the discovery amid lunar rocks of a frayed Union Jack with a note dated 1899. The answer lies in a Dymchurch resting home, the geezer (Edward Judd) was once a blocked playwright investing in anti-gravitational paint. "Cavorite," brewed in a furnace to coat a chair that floats to the ceiling, its inventor is a buoyant crackpot (Lionel Jeffries). The ideal propeller for the sphere in the greenhouse, the launch into space sensibly stocked by the fiancée (Martha Hyer) with chickens and gin and bitters and a big-game rifle. "Madam, the chances of bagging an elephant in the moon are remote." A pleasing bit of Victorian steampunk for the Space Race, H.G. Wells orchestrated by Ray Harryhausen and Nathan Juran for artisanal high spirits. (Jeffries' resemblance to a skinny young Michael Powell is surely not entirely coincidental.) "Imperial" is the word for the first sight of the orb's surface, under it is the Selenite Kingdom like a vast ant farm adorned with brutalist hexagons and encrusted with multicolored crystals. "Ha! Infernal contraption." Dynamation and Panavision, at the service of a gargantuan snapping caterpillar last seen vanquished via laser by insectoid wranglers. (Another Selenite doohickey is an X-ray prism that envisions the captive heroine as a protesting skeleton.) No need for an invasion by bellicose Earthlings to fulfill the Grand Lunar's fear of oblivion, the common cold courtesy of a scientist is all it takes. "Well, you've certainly given them a taste of human violence." Verhoeven grants the bugs their revenge in Starship Troopers. With Miles Malleson, Norman Bird, Gladys Henson, Hugh McDermott, and Betty McDowall.
--- Fernando F. Croce |