Le grand départ vers la lune

There is nothing wrong with 'Blast Off", if you are willing to travel back to Victorian England, and enjoy the era. The era of scientific wonder and adventure, is depicted quite nicely. What is not depicted quite nicely is any kind of cohesive story. Vascillating between science fiction, farce, and romance, gradually scrambles the story to the point of bewilderment. While things start off with master showman P.T. Barnum and his miniature sidekick Tom Thumb trying to stage one of their spectacular "events", the movie eventually deteriorates into slapstick. "Blast Off" does have a few moments of dark comedy intertwined with all the nonsense. "Don't they usually give medals after the return trip?" - MERK

Here is a 1967 British movie that is unsure whether it wants to be a straightforward 1890s Jules Verne fantasy, a 1960s farce or a romantic comedy. It uses the Jules Verne story as a reflection of the 1960s anxiety about the space race and the decline of Empire.

"Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Time Machine" are great 1960s films that remain watchable classics today. This one doesn't fall into that category at all.

We see from the start that this is not just a send-up of Victorian science and engineering, but a parody of Victorian society in general. In the turbulent 1960s, the British Empire was in its death throes, and traditional British values and mannerisms were seen as fair game by movie makers.

Some of the great lines: "By Jove, what a corker", "You're a cad and a bounder", "It's because of the colonies!" "Oh Grundle, what beastly hard luck" and "By George, this is splendid" (said by Burl Ives, no less). These lines were all delivered with great relish.

However, the loving detail paid to these Victorian trappings adds a poignant air to it all. In the various elaborate scenes, they went to a lot of trouble to depict many different aspects of this British world in the 1890s. A British club, a Welsh village home, a picnic spread, local parades, and so on. The filmmakers seem to be saying, "Surely, it was a good thing while it lasted, even though we laugh at it now".

In addition to the British self-mockery, foreigners are treated with disdain. The Americans are hucksters and pretty-boy astronauts. The French are flighty and unfaithful (but look good). The Russian is an inept spy lurking in the bushes who tries to ruin everything. The German is a mad scientist. All this is pure 1960s.

Miscast Burl Ives isn't convincing as a fraudster; he plays himself: portly, amiable and handsome. Troy Donohue (at this point well into his personal and professional decline) delivers his lines with earnest woodenness. He wasn't gay, but it's hard not to snicker when Madeline cries out, "I love you, Gaylord…I love you, Henri". At points like this, the film becomes a "Carry On" farce.

British comedians Terry-Thomas and Lionel Jeffries were an amusing pair. Jeffries in particular -- playing a bitter, eccentric engineer -- gets to sink his teeth into some juicy lines. By the second half they had become the villains, and played it to the hilt.

It is somewhat of a rambling, disjointed movie that revolves around set-piece scenes rather than a coherent plot. There are quite a few scenes that add nothing to plot development. We spend a full five minutes, for example, watching a nervous 19th century British artillery crew prepare to fire a dangerous cannon. (Explosions gone wrong are an important theme in the movie.) Another five minutes was devoted to a chase scene involving a Frenchwoman on a penny farthing bicycle. (The filmmakers had a genuine "gas carriage" as a prop, so they made full use of it.)

"Rocket to the Moon" is a silly movie that has not stood the test of time. However, it is witty and fun at times. If you like this sort of thing, you might enjoy this one.

In the 1960s there was a new phenomenon in movie comedies: the comedy that included every known comic in the business, usually in some mad plot. America gave us IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD,THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!,and THE GREAT RACE. Britain gave us THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES and MONTE CARLO OR BUST. Both of those films dealt with speed contests (the 1910 London to Paris air contest, and the first Monte Carlo rally). Both had several comic actors in them (Terry-Thomas, Gert Frobe, Tony Hancock, Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke, Tony Curtis, Alberto Sordi). Then, in 1967, came THOSE FANTASTIC, FEARLESS, FLYING FOOLS (also known as ROCKET TO THE MOON). Like the other two films from England, it was a period piece, set in the 1870s. But the story is basically a transposed version of Jules Verne's FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. The original novel was set in Florida (oddly enough near modern day Cape Kennedy)after the American Civil War. In ROCKET TO THE MOON P.T. Barnum plans to build a "Columbiad" cannon inside a mountain in Wales, and have the moon capsule piloted by General Tom Thumb. Instead it becomes a British national issue, and a committee is formed headed by Dennis Price (the Duke of Barset - another literary borrowing, only from Anthony Trollope). Unfortunately Terry-Thomas and his business partner Lionel Jeffries are also involved in the committee, and they both see a chance to make money on this. Jeffries is the original capsule builder, but Barnum points out that Jeffries design only enables the capsule to go to the moon period. "Hold it laddy," intones Jeffries, "I was told to design a capsule to get a traveller to the moon...nobody said a word about getting him back." Jeffries is replaced. Subsequently Price discovers that Terry-Thomas has been gambling away the committee's money, and he is fired. Facing financial ruin, both men decide to sabotage the project.

Gert Frobe, the inventor of the new explosive to use to send the vehicle to the moon, is a totally mad German scientist. His best moment in the film is a whimsical one. He has designed vocal semaphore devices that you speak through. This enables the two people who are communicating not to be heard and understood by anyone else, for the machines break down the words to syllables that are hard to understand. The other person, using the other semaphore (but winding it backwards)is supposed to reattach the syllables into an understandable set of words. Unfortunately, as Frobe discovers, the device does not quite work. "I can't understand a word he's saying.", a doubtful Frobe says.

Actually Burl Ives and Terry Thomas have choice moments too. Ives accidentally stumbles on the site where some of Frobe's explosive is being tested, and desperately tries to break the fuse with a rock and his cane. Terry Thomas has designed an early automobile that runs on "gas" - meaning "neon" from street-lamps. Jeffries says that the whole nature of the vehicle is immoral - it runs on stolen gas! "That's not the point!", says Terry-Thomas, "It's very economical!"

It is not a bad film, and can be a little enjoyable in its whimsy.

This is a very underrated film. In Halliwell's Film Guide it gets no stars at all, and when it was shown recently on TV, the reviewer in the listings magazine I buy each week made no secret of how little he liked it.

However, this 'comedy fantasy' has a huge amount going for it. Although it is rarely hilarious, it is often funny and it is usually fun. The cast is terrific. The costumes and cinematography are also excellent, and the period feel is surprisingly good: we really feel that we are in the late 19th century. This is impressive given that many films with bigger budgets than this are not as successful in recreating a period atmosphere.

Maybe the title misled people into thinking that it was going to be an exciting science-fiction adventure, and so their expectations were raised too high. However, with slightly lower expectations, it can be enjoyed rather a lot.

This comedy features a delightful array of well-known British character actors of the 1960's, including the lovely Terry-Thomas (well to the fore in this picture), the eccentric Lionel Jeffries, and the diminutive comic Jimmy Clitheroe.

Terry-Thomas is best remembered for his villainous roles in the films 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' and 'Monte Carlo or Bust', two of the finest comedies of the period, in which his comic villain stole both pictures.

'Rocket to the Moon' is a film in a very similar vein. Terry-Thomas is once again playing a dastardly villain, who is frightfully English, don't-you-know? The plot is likewise a madcap costume romp, set decades earlier. And, like the other two pictures, it trades on the period charm of its historical setting - at one point the villainous Sir Harry (played by Terry-Thomas), refuels his gas-driven jalopy by stealing the gas from a Victorian street lamp.

The plan to send a rocket to the moon, in the name of Queen Victoria, manned by diminutive comic Jimmy Clitheroe, is entirely in keeping with the equally mad idea of flying an aeroplane from London to Paris in the earlier film, in which Terry-Thomas also played a dastardly, scheming and titled bounder.

'Rocket to the Moon' takes a step forward, as this time an American comedian is included in the cast, in the person of Burl Ives, as a scheming Yankee showman who wants only to make a fast buck out of the whole enterprise. This gives him rather an advantage over Tony Curtis, who had to play the role that he was given in 'Monte Carlo or Bust', as the sole American star, mostly straight, as romantic lead and chief fall-guy.

The first snag in the plan is that Lionel Jeffries' design for the moon rocket is an obvious damp squib. So Dennis Price kicks him off the project, and he teams up with the dastardly Sir Harry, in order to sabotage it. Sabotage is Terry-Thomas's main activity in both the other pictures, so he's well in character here.

As in both the other pictures, too, Gert Frobe appears in character, as the mad Prussian. This time he's invented a new explosive, one which he reckons will be capable of hurling the rocket up to the moon. But he and his assistants may perish in the attempt to test-fire it.

This is gentle comedy, with a whimsical edge. It's great fun, but it depends on an appreciation of the links between this picture and the other two - and on a liking for whimsical Sixties comedy.

A picture with the main aim of recruiting a tiny astronaut, because all that can be built is a tiny rocketship, is guaranteed to be fairly whimsical. Variety star Jimmy Clitheroe, best remembered today from his radio series 'The Clitheroe Kid', gives a splendidly comic performance as General Tom Thumb, an innocent who Burl Ives intends to "con" into the job of the astronaut.

This is a great film, drawing laughs equally from the slightly mad but lovable characters, the running gags with the two related pictures, and the snags that bedevil the moonship scheme itself. A picture featuring a character as eccentric as Jimmy Clitheroe the Kid Himself - how can it fail. Don't some mothers 'ave 'em?

Stephen Poppitt & Sandra Skuse