1899. Dotty and excitable scientist Joseph Cavor (a marvelously hearty performance by Lionel Jeffries),dashing young Arnold Bedford (likable Edward Judd),and Arnold's feisty fiancé Katherine "Kate" Callender (a sweeting and appealing turn by the lovely Martha Hyer) travel to the moon in a sphere invented by Cavor. The trio discover a strange race of insect-like aliens living beneath the moon's surface. Director Nathan Juran, working from a smart and imaginative script by Nigel Kneale and Jan Read, treats the story with admirable sincerity, maintains a steady pace throughout, adds a good deal of pleasantly amusing lighthearted humor, and ably crafts a strong sense of genuine awe and wonder. Granted, the opening half drags a bit (it takes over forty minutes for our engaging protagonists to even get to the moon),but fortunately Jeffries' considerable vitality and twinkling screen presence stops things from ever becoming dull. Naturally, Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation creations are as impressively fluid, graceful, and enchanting as ever, with a giant predatory caterpillar rating as the single most gnarly being. The crisp cinematography by Wilkie Cooper and Harry Gilliam boasts a few snazzy visuals flourishes and offers plenty of neat shots of the desolate lunar landscape. Laurie Johnson provides an extremely classy and flavorsome score which never becomes too overwrought or obtrusive. A really nice and entertaining movie.

Compared to "2001: A Space Odyssey" (which came out just a few years later),the special effects in "First Men in the Moon" are somewhat primitive. However, compared to the other sci-fi films of the 1950s and 60s, it is quite lovely--and a nice step forward. Aside from a few cheesy scenes here and there (such as VERY obvious wires used to make the astronauts seem to bounce due to the Moon's gravity and the cheesy alien costumes),the film is lovely and I wish I could have seen it on a big screen. The matte paintings were fantastic and some of the sets were wonderful. All this serves to give the film a nice look--one that overwhelms a story that, at times, is a bit weak.

The movie begins in the present time. A landing of Earth astronauts on the Moon is shocked when they discover relics left by an earlier landing--one made many decades earlier!! They are able to track down one of the people responsible for this prior moon flight and this elderly man is able to recount what had occurred. The rest of the film is an extended flashback.

It seems that a supposedly inventor (Lionel Jeffries--who was wonderful in the film) has created a serum that makes gravity disappear! And, using this 'Cavorite', he plans on eventually making a trip to the Moon. Joining him for the ride are an annoying woman and a man who likes to kill things--both are VERY weak characters, indeed. Their behaviors simply make little sense at times--reacting instead of thinking. I don't want to ruin the film by saying too much, but suffice to say that they find alien life on their journey! What exactly happens next is really up to you to find out yourself.

Aside from two dumb characters, occasionally cheesy effects and a story that occasionally drags, the film is a treat for the eyes and is quite enjoyable--particularly if you are a fan of sci-fi or the work of Ray Harryhausen.

Five years before the Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touch down on the moon, this film adaption of the H.G. Wells story First Men in the Moon came to the screen. A moon expedition has finally landed and to the amazement of all a perfectly preserved union jack is found and presumably claiming this large piece of real estate for the United Kingdom.

And a diary with three names in it gives the names of those people who were on this first lunar expedition. One of them is still alive and in a nursing home in Great Britain. It's Edward Judd, now in his eighties or nineties as you'd have it and he has an amazing adventure to tell.

I use the phrase deliberately because such an amazing adventure is the kind of stuff Stephen Spielberg would find ideal. And if he reads this, maybe he'll think on it as a future project. But if he does it, it will have to be without the special special effects of Ray Harryhausen who created an enchanting, but very dangerous world on the moon.

Judd's story is how he and his fiancé Martha Hyer got involved with an eccentric scientist Lionel Jeffries. Jeffries may look eccentric as he usually does in his roles, but he's developed nothing less than a totally unique form of propulsion and he knows what he wants to do with it. Nothing less than a trip to the moon.

Like Jeanette Macdonald in Maytime or Gloria Stuart in Titanic, Judd from the man's point of view tells the story of his lost love Hyer and that unique trip to the moon. As to what happens there and what happens to Jeffries, Judd, and Hyer you have to see the film for that.

Since it's a Ray Harryhausen film you kind of know what to expect and Harryhausen delivers in grand style.

It almost makes you believe that it was Judd, Jeffries, and Hyer who took that one small step for man first.