First Men in the Moon: steampunk astronauts (full movie).
Gather round, dear readers of SFcrowsnest, for a tale of lunar conquest that predates the actual moon landing by a mere five years. First Men in the Moon, a cinematic nugget from 1964, not only took audiences to our celestial neighbour but did so with a flair that only the British can muster. With the dynamic duo of producer Charles H. Schneer and director Nathan Juran at the helm, and starring the likes of Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, and Lionel Jeffries, this film promised a jolly good lunar romp.
The plot? Oh, it’s a cracker! Picture this: the United Nations, thinking they’re about to make history with the first moon landing, find a Union Jack already planted on the lunar surface. Talk about a plot twist! The flag, accompanied by a note claiming the moon for Queen Victoria, leads them to Arnold Bedford, an elderly chap living in a nursing home who’s been ranting about his lunar adventures much to the amusement of the staff who think he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Bedford, once a young man with a penchant for financial peril and a keen interest in his neighbor Joseph Cavor‘s inventions, tells a tale that unfolds like a steampunk dream. Cavor, a genius with a casual approach to property damage, invents Cavorite, a substance that defies gravity. With the promise of lunar gold, Bedford and his fiancée, Kate, find themselves aboard a spherical spaceship, decked out with green velvet and electric lights, because why not add a touch of interior design to space travel?
Their lunar escapades involve sardine diets, encounters with insectoid Selenites and giant caterpillar-like “Moon Cows,” and, of course, a large-brained entity known as the Grand Lunar. It’s a story filled with ambition, betrayal, and a bit of old-fashioned British resolve.
The real star of the show, however, is Ray Harryhausen‘s stop-motion animation. Before CGI became the go-to for fantastical effects, Harryhausen was the wizard of the craft, bringing to life the Selenites, Moon Cows, and the Grand Lunar with such detail that one might believe they truly existed on the dark side of the moon.
First Men in the Moon stands as a testament to a time when space was the final frontier and imagination knew no bounds. Harryhausen’s creations added a layer of wonder that, even by today’s standards, offers a charming respite from the pixel-perfect renderings we’ve grown accustomed to.
As we sit back and enjoy the film from the comfort of our space-age technology, let’s tip our astronaut helmets to the pioneers of cinematic space exploration. They didn’t have the Hubble Telescope or Mars rovers, but they had Cavorite and a good dose of British ingenuity, proving once and for all that you don’t need to leave Earth to capture the wonder of the cosmos.
