H.G. Wells and Ray Harryhausen,how can that fail? In more ways than you can imagine. Even if you can buy into the ridiculous scenario that gets them to the moon,the movie quickly falls apart. I was really expecting it to get good when they got there but it got much worse. The bad guys are bugs that are sometimes people in bad bug suits and sometimes dolls that aren't really there.Very disappointing for Harryhausen. And they don't hurry up getting to the moon.It starts with some reporters in present day and then they find an old man who tells a very long story about the past. When it is interesting,it doesn't make much sense. Watch this if you like Harryhausen(that's why I watched) but don't be expecting a mind blowing epic.

One of Harryhausen's most undersung productions. This movie is perfect in so many ways, it's a shame the fantastic stop-motion selenites are let down by their mis-matched live action counterparts. The stop-motion is top notch as usual; if there's a disappointment it's that there isn't more of it. But not fatal to the film. It's one of the Harryhausen films that's very well made on its own terms, and not overly dependent on animation sequences strung together with padding in between. Nicely complemented by bookend sequences that tie in to the space race.Loved every minute!

No? Well, then, 6 is the best I can do as an average.We had 9 minutes of excerpts from this film on 8mm when I was a kid, and we loved it. It was all the best stuff from the moon, none of the Earth-bound early scenes. The Earth scenes provide necessary exposition and set up the story, as well as introduce us to the characters. Unfortunately, the two halves of the film seem almost to have been directed by two different people, or perhaps the same director with some sort of bipolar disorder.The first half is loud, broad slapstick. The second half is filled with adventure, mystery, and extraordinary special effects. Quite honestly, if I hadn't been so sure the film would get much better because I remembered the moon part so vividly, I might not have made it through 20 minutes of Lionel Jeffries screaming "Gibbs! GIBBS!" at the top of his lungs and running about like a maniac. That was just painful.But once the adventurers make it to the moon, it's worth the wait. The interior-of-the-moon effects, as I've already noted, are quite wonderful. The excerpts we had in the 60's were in black-and-white, so all the color was new to me this time through and added a great deal. I've always loved the head-butting giant caterpillars, the enormous perpetual-motion wheel, the Harryhausen-animated Selenites (the ones in rubber costumes are laughable; watch for the creepy stop-motion animated ones). Fabulous! The score is marvelous. First time I've ever watched a whole movie, then re-watched the opening titles just to listen to the overture again.First half 3, second half 8.5. Fast-forward through Jeffries' Three-Stooges behavior at the beginning if you can't stand it anymore, but don't give up... the scenes on and in the moon are well worth the trouble to get there.

FMITM can't be compared to Ray Harryhausen's best films like Jason And The Argonauts or Mysterious Island, but this version of H.G. Wells' ingenious novel, while simplifying much of the story, is an engaging little sci-fi fantasy in the main: the sort of fantasy movie they used to make before Star Wars came out! It concerns, of course, Lionel Jeffries' eccentric Professor Cavor and his anti-gravity substance Cavorite. Falling in with Edward Judd's rascally Bedford and his accidentally along for the ride fiancée Kate (Martha Hyer), Cavor undertakes a trip to the moon, discovering an alien race of insects named The Selenites, who seem to behave perfectly reasonably towards the invaders considering numbers of them are pushed into caverns or shot!Indeed, the irony of this is surely unintended: we are meant to look upon the intrepid adventurers as heroes! Most of the time the Selenites are played by child actors in insect costumes, slightly reminiscent of screen-writer Nigel Kneale's Martians from Quatermass; however the leader-insects are superbly rendered by Harryhausen's stop-motion genius.In truth, the performances of the actors are irritating, particularly - and surprisingly given his talent - Jeffries. But the movie looks good, provides Disney-style entertainment, and never outstays it's welcome. It's a good family movie, with enough cheese to cover the surface of the moon!