First Men in the Moon (1964)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

• "This is Dynamation" featurette
  
• "The Harryhausen Chronicles" featurette
  
• Theatrical Trailers
  

It's the 1960s and the United Nations has just led an international expedition to put the first man on the moon. When they get there, however, they are shocked to find a tattered Union Jack with a note proclaiming the moon in the name of Queen Victoria of England in 1899! The names on the note are quickly radioed back to mission control and a U.N. team quickly go on the search for any of these mysterious people. When they discover that one of them is still alive, the seek him out and have him recount his story about his visit to the moon some sixty years earlier. His story recounts the horrors that awaited them when they got there, among other things...

This is a great story, it's just a shame that it wasn't made into a better movie. It's not the special effects that I have a problem with; I know that they were cutting edge at a time (and who can resist Harryhausen stop motion). No, for this film, it's the poor direction and shallow acting of a horrible script. Every last actor is simply going through the motions of this supposedly fantastic journey. When you get right down to it, it looks and feels like almost every "B" sci-fi movie that came out during this era, which I guess is not really all that surprising when you consider it's directed by the man who brought us Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

The DVD, however, is a different story. It is actually quite good. There is a period featurette about Dynavision. Unfortunately, the featurette doesn't really go into detail as to what the heck Dynavision actually is, other than a super-swell new way to make films. Golly Gee! When you get past that, though, you get to the real meat of the bonus material. There is a wonderful featurette about the life and work of special effects genius Ray Harryhausen. It is narrated by Leonard Nimoy and is chocked full of interviews with Harryhausen himself and some of his contemporaries. There's also a wealth of information about stop-motion photography in here. I'm glad that this type of feature exists and even more glad that it's now on DVD. The rest of the bonus material is fairly commonplace now; photo galleries and trailers (which may not be much on a normal release, but on something like this, I'm glad they are saved for posterity).

So, if you are looking for a good film to do your own version of MST3K one night, you could do worse (better?) than to rent this film. Just make sure you take a second to watch the featurette on Harryhausen and thank him for what he did for technological advancements in movie making.