Vuelo del globo perdido

Sorry, but this comment from another reviewer is simply wrong. The movie takes place in the Victorian age. I'm sure that the Middle Eastern settings for some of the adventures led that reviewer to believe that this took place in medieval times.

This is a better movie than you might think. It was intended for Saturday matinees and is basically an excuse for adventures on the African continent. Most kids who saw it at the time of its initial release loved it.

If you get a chance to watch it, give it a try.

** out of *****

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed and Screenplay by Nathan Juran; Produced by Bernard Woolner, for Woolner Brothers Pictures. Photography by Jacques Marquette; Edited by Rex Lipton; Music by Hal Borne; Stop-Motion Animation by Jim Danforth. Starring: Mala Powers, Marshall Thompson; Douglas Kennedy, James Lanphier, Robert Gillette and Felippe Biriel.

Extremely poor science fiction adventure lifted from a Jules Verne story. Our heroes travel along the African continent in a balloon and have numerous scrapes with danger, against poorly processed stock footage.

I remember seeing this film on television multiple times in the early 1960s. It is roughly in the same style and genre of another Jules Verne story and film, "In Search of the Castaways" (1962), which was made into a film at almost the same time and was also shown multiple times on television around 1962-1964. As children, my sister and I were captivated by both these films, and we loved to re-watch both of them on television in those years whenever they were shown.

By today's standards the effects and acting are weak, but the film is still captivating, memorable, and fires the imagination. The film has a lot of particularly memorable imagery: a basket balloon, a castle-like fortress on a beach, chained gorillas in a dungeon, the lost treasure of Cleopatra, a very tall and eerie black man who can't speak because his tongue was torn out, a torture chamber with a stretching rack, a woman threatened with torture, a man jumping into a lake from the basket balloon, being chased by African natives with spears, cannibals, a shrunken head hanging on a rack, a fight with a medieval mace, a condor attack, having to dump priceless treasure overboard, and so on. Some scenes border on film mastery. For example, it is surprising how much tension could be put into a simple scene of a man gathering water at a river to take back to the balloon while the audience knows that cannibals are watching him from behind the coconut palms. The aerial photography is reasonably inspiring, although admittedly the filmed backdrop effects aren't high quality.

To clear up some common misperceptions: the basket balloon in the plot is actually a hydrogen balloon, not a hot air balloon. In the story, acid and water are carried on board to generate hydrogen, which is obviously dangerous and this fact figures into the plot since it is too dangerous for the balloon's occupants to fire the musket that they brought along, which leaves them largely at the mercy of attacking condors, spear-throwing African cannibals, and an unwanted guide. Also, the date of Friday, April 7, 1878 is shown at the beginning of this film, on the sign outside the lecture hall, so this is definitely not the medieval period.

The plot is solid and the imagery great. If only the acting and effects were improved, this could be an outstanding film.

When talking about movies, there are many movies that seem like b-movies, movies of much lower production values than most. What is an example of a b-movie? Well, "Flight of the Lost Balloon" might fit the description of a b movie better than any other movie that I've watched.

The best part about it is the story. A man goes on a journey across Africa, mostly in a balloon, in order to find an explorer who went missing during a voyage. However, one of the occupants of the balloon takes control of the balloon in order to find a treasure, the same treasure the explorer was looking for. This sound like the plot of an at least above average movie, but every other aspect of the movie brings it down by a lot.

The sets look cheap and confined, the costumes and props look like something from a town's local stage play, the script is cheesy, the acting is even cheesier, the music is meh, sound effects get reused over and over again, the characters make stupid decisions, and the worst part of the movie was the special effects, which may contain the worst blue screen I've seen in a film. The shots of the condors look straight out of birdemic, and you can see unedited parts of the blue screen.

Overall, it's not that good of a movie, but I guess it's not all terrible. 4/10.

I recently saw this film on a huge screen. And I was impressed by the imagery and the impressions.

I gave 8 stars, but from experience this Film would normally make 6.4 on ImdB. 4.6 is very underrated and I cannot believe what I see here therefore I give 8.

This is a typical 60s Film where there is a big focus on imagery. The play is average sixty like and if you had your youth in 60ties and 70ties you would know this is the kind of play you will find in many movies of that time.

I saw this movie when I was young but forgot most of it. So I was keen to see it again and I liked it. It does not fit in modern times at all. But it fits in the world of my childhood perfectly.

The underrating here is nothing more that this society lost empathy with what the creators of that time wanted to express. And I feel sad that this society lost these values. But on the other hand you will find hidden treasures you can take home not polished up in musea but in the dirt.

So if you want to relive, revive the 60ties and you are looking for great adventure style movies with nice imagery and happyness and loving feelings you used to have in the 60ties and 70ties, watch this and take it home. If you want to play battle and shoot games on your gaming computer you should do that instead.