IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 43 minutes, rated 6.7 by 4497 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy
Verdict: Cavorite about! Be careful.
In 1968 when astronauts at last land on the moon, they find a Union Jack in a Victorian bottle. ‘Huh?’ is the scientific reaction. The political reaction is to slap D-Notices on the news.
H. G. Wells got there first with cavor! Ingenious. It is an anti-gravity paste whipped up in a motor and pestle. Belt up. Get set. Slather it on. Go!
Professor Cavor recruits his neighbour who wishes to escape debt collectors with his obliging girlfriend who wants a honeyMoon. She got it.
They bundle into his garden shed and off they go …’to the Moon, Alice!’
The green cheese is full of holes and they go into the moon, per the title: ‘In’ the moon.
In the cheese they find toiling beetles, not mice, who speak English and are not cooperative.
They escape to return, but keep it all secret for script reasons.
There is good humour, mannered turn-of-the-century charm, and a lot of special imagery from the masterful Ray Harryhausen. Lionel Jeffries as Cavor steals the show with his plucky determination and courageous conscience. Eye candy Martha Hyer is mostly locked away in the Victorian tradition, though she too is in the moon, despite that title. The screen play is from the golden typewriter of Nigel Kneale but….not his best work.
Well, I found it boring. Most of Wells’s social commentary was deleted. It seemed aimed at children which Wells’s story certainly was not. Nor was there any mystery in the flashbacks, perhaps because the pace is so slow.
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