What movie did YOU just FINISH watching?
Aug 15, 2019 7:22:43 GMT
mszanadu, Chalice_Of_Evil, and 1 more like this
Post by teleadm on Aug 15, 2019 7:22:43 GMT
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver 1960, directed by Jack Sher, based on a novel by Jonathan Swift, starring Kerwin Mathews, Jo Morrow, June Thorburn, Lee Patterson, Grégoire Aslan, Basil Sydney, Charles Lloyd Pack, Martin Benson, Mary Ellis, Marian Spencer, Peter Bull and others, though the real star is Ray Harryhousen's special effects, her called Super-Dynamation.
Adventure. Doctor Gulliver (Matthews) is poor, so nothing - not even his charming fiancée Elisabeth (Thorburn) - keeps him in the town he lives. He signs on to a ship to India, but in a storm he's washed off the ship and ends up on an island, which is inhibitated by very tiny people, the Lillibuts. After leaving the Lilliputs, Gulliver is once again washed ashore on an island, this time he is a lilliput, on the island of giants.
Jonathan Swift's book was satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre, but has over the years become more and more watered down to a harmless family friendly adventure saga for children of all ages. This movie keeps a bit of the satire of human nature and it's attraction towards vanity, by making most actors acting a bit over the top, to make them less harmless and suited for family friendly entertainment.
The real star in this movie is not the actors, but offcourse Ray Harryhausen's special effects, by today's standards, some are great and some are too obvious and not so, but that is part of the charm in these older movies.
The music for this movie was composer Bernard Herrmann's own favourite among the scores he wrote for Harryhausen and producer Schneer, and it is great.
Sadly there is a few things that drags it down, some silly songs written by George Duning and Ned Washington, and the vanity of the royalties of both islands just becomes to much bickering that becomes tiresome in length.
Whatever Gulliver does to help both populations on the islands, there is always new problems, and he leaves them in the middle of chaos, and that is part of the satire of human nature, always invent new problems to compalin about.
The ending also seems like a strange hurried wrapup, and felt very unsatisfactory.
Not a bullseye, but good enough for an old-fashioned matine Sunday.
Adventure. Doctor Gulliver (Matthews) is poor, so nothing - not even his charming fiancée Elisabeth (Thorburn) - keeps him in the town he lives. He signs on to a ship to India, but in a storm he's washed off the ship and ends up on an island, which is inhibitated by very tiny people, the Lillibuts. After leaving the Lilliputs, Gulliver is once again washed ashore on an island, this time he is a lilliput, on the island of giants.
Jonathan Swift's book was satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre, but has over the years become more and more watered down to a harmless family friendly adventure saga for children of all ages. This movie keeps a bit of the satire of human nature and it's attraction towards vanity, by making most actors acting a bit over the top, to make them less harmless and suited for family friendly entertainment.
The real star in this movie is not the actors, but offcourse Ray Harryhausen's special effects, by today's standards, some are great and some are too obvious and not so, but that is part of the charm in these older movies.
The music for this movie was composer Bernard Herrmann's own favourite among the scores he wrote for Harryhausen and producer Schneer, and it is great.
Sadly there is a few things that drags it down, some silly songs written by George Duning and Ned Washington, and the vanity of the royalties of both islands just becomes to much bickering that becomes tiresome in length.
Whatever Gulliver does to help both populations on the islands, there is always new problems, and he leaves them in the middle of chaos, and that is part of the satire of human nature, always invent new problems to compalin about.
The ending also seems like a strange hurried wrapup, and felt very unsatisfactory.
Not a bullseye, but good enough for an old-fashioned matine Sunday.