Production: Columbia

Director: Nathan Juran

Starring: Edward Judd, Martha Hyer, Lionel Jeffries

Screenwriter: Nigel Kneale, Jan Read

Based on The First Men in the Moon (1901) by H.G. Wells

103 minutes; Color

This watered-down version of Wells' classic novel is for the most part low farce, with too much random slaughtering of Selenite aliens, but still contrives to be entertaining. An eccentric Victorian inventor who has developed an antigravity materials flies to the Moon in a spherical "spaceship". He and his companions are captured by insect-like Moon people but eventually escape, inadvertently leaving behind cold-germs which destroy the Moon population. Ray Harryhausen's Moon creatures are rather good, as are the sets.

A previous version of First Men in the Moon was made in 1919 by British Gaumont, directed by J.V. Leigh.