First Men in the Moon - 1964

 I had an unintentional Ray Harryhausen double feature here, since I just watched It Came From Beneath the Sea.  I didn't know he did effects for this film when I grabbed it at the library.

The First Men on the Moon is HG Wells, fresh off the success of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds.  In this one, we have astronauts landing on the moon and discovering that in fact there is a small British flag and a note written, saying that people have been there before.  They track down the person who wrote it, now an older man.  This man tells a strange story we see unfold, a story of a brilliant scientist, a trip to the moon, and the creatures they found there.

First Men is a very ambitious sci fi film, way ahead of it's time.  It's a strange story, going all over the place, and giving a whole lot of time to it's few characters as well.  We have the inventor and eccentric scientist Cavor, who creates a liquid which repels gravity, and enlists broke Bedford and his love interest Kate in a trip to the moon.  Once there, they use underwater diving suits to explore the moon, eventually finding underground tunnels and strange bug-like aliens that inhabit them.

The aliens and the effects are first and foremost awesome.  I mean, the octopus in It Came From Beneath the Sea looked spectacular, and I thought it was likely because of the black and white effects, but this is in color and looks even better.  There is also a LOT more effects use in this, the entire last 50 or so minutes is all effect shots, and the actors are interacting with these things in like every shot.  It's really something to marvel at.  

The actors are all good, considering this fact especially, and I guess the biggest "thing" to state is that for some reason, they decided to make there be a comedic slant to this movie, having Cavor be comic relief at times.  It really, really doesn't work.  Kate and Bedford have a romance angle which is also quite clumsy, but luckily it isn't focused on that much with so much else going on.  

The whole interaction in the tunnels of the moon is very compelling, but oh my god is it slow sometimes.  This movie, really fucking slow.  Snail's pace at times.  There's so much standing around talking about things, and slow downs in the plot.  The stuff with the aliens is all really cool and fun to watch.  They are creepy as hell, and given that we never learn their true motivation, they're an excellent antagonist.

This movie could have used a little editing for the modern sense, but it is a product of it's time.  I think probably 20 minutes of the hour 45 could have been cut, but it's still good.  I give it 4 stars, it's a great sci fi classic.