The Fallen Idol (1948) at Wonders in the Dark

Bobby Henrey in The Fallen Idol (1948).

Sometimes as adults, we forget how lonely and confusing childhood can be. Produced in England in 1948, The Fallen Idol (1948) resonates long after its final scene for its moving central depiction of vulnerability and helplessness.

Fade in on Bobby Henrey as Phillipe, an inquisitive-looking boy peering through a second-floor railing, watching the clockwork precision of the embassy staff below. Everyone has a job to do but him. In his privileged position as the diplomat’s son, Phillipe is simply an observer, like a child in a movie theater (or, more pessimistically, like a prisoner behind bars). Being so young, nine-years-old at the most, he watches intently but probably understands only a fraction of what he sees.

The essay continues at Wonders in the Dark…

I contributed this piece to the Childhood Films Countdown at Wonders in the Dark. Wonders ringleader and mastermind Sam Juliano has organized dozens of his knowledgeable film-buff friends to write in-depth essays on 80 great films that explore childhood and adolescence. It is an honor to be participating!

Skip on over to Wonders in the Dark to read my whole piece on Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol (1948). Meanwhile, here at 21 Essays, I’ll just tease with some tasty images from the film, a favorite of mine for many years.

"... a panic-stricken Phillipe dashes down deserted city alleys..." And
a friendly policeman finally calms the child down. The Fallen Idol
displayed director Carol Reed's skill at capturing the ominous
atmosphere of the city at night.

Director Carol Reed liked using Dutch angles where he tilted the camera
to suggest a world out-of-balance. This image shows a tense scene
between Bobby Henrey and Sonia Dresdel. In his next movie,
The Third Man (1949), Reed's use of Dutch angles hit an all-time high
as he filmed the streets and sewers of post-war Vienna.

© 2015 Lee Price

Mary Anning's Icthyosaur

London blogging:

Essay 2 of 10 on
ten artifacts 

that I saw 

while on vacation

in London 

in summer 2015.

Drawing by Everard Home for the Royal Society depicting the
Icthyosaurus skull found by Mary and Joseph Anning in 1811.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Mary Anning (1799-1847).
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

There aren’t many testaments to the achievements of 19th century women in the British Museum.  In those days, the British Royal Society and its offshoots acted as gatekeepers for recognizing scientific achievement, with their memberships strictly closed to women and lower-class riff-raff.  Science and exploration were activities reserved for gentlemen.

So who let Mary Anning in?

In gender-suppressing, class-conscious early 19th century England, Mary Anning forced her way into the museums and science books by sheer genius of observation.  Better-educated men trolled the countryside for fossils, but lower-class, under-educated Mary ran circles around them.  She was so good they eventually had to take notice.

The Mary Anning display case
at the British Museum.

While preparing for our London vacation, a friend had advised me to check out the rather drably titled Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum.  It’s where the museum displays many of the original collections gathered during its early years, imposingly displayed in the King’s Library (which really WAS home to the King’s Library, being George III’s collection donated to the British Museum by George IV).  Row after row of display cases stand as silent testimony to England’s greatest scientists and explorers when the Empire was at its peak.

I settled in to pay my respects at the Mary Anning display case.  Raised in a poor family that earned a little extra cash each summer by selling fossils to tourists visiting Lyme Regis, Mary was just 12 years old when she and her brother Joseph made their first great discovery—a remarkably intact fossilized icthyosaur skeleton from the long-ago Jurassic world.  At a time when would-be amateur geologists and paleontologists were scouring England for prize specimens, Mary Anning nurtured a talent for finding the very finest pieces.  Although lacking formal education, she intuitively grasped the biology of the strange animals that she discovered along the limestone and shale cliffs that lined the Lyme Regis coast.

The Blue Lias cliffs at Lyme Regis where Mary Anning
made her great discoveries.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On long-time loan from the Natural History Museum, London, the little sampling of icthyosaur bones in the British Museum display cabinet came from a later 1821 discovery, when Anning was slowly gaining a reputation for being uncommonly knowledgeable and talented.  As the label in the display cabinet describes:  “Her knowledge and expertise were sought by the most important geologists of the day.”

Mary Anning tribute at the
Natural History Museum, London.

Several days later at the Natural History Museum, I enjoyed seeing fossils associated with prominent and respected Victorian scientists such as Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, and Sir Richard Owen, but their antique fossil discoveries didn’t thrill me a tenth as much as stumbling upon more Mary Anning tributes, including a complete Plesiosaurus skeleton discovered by Anning when she was 25.

If, as Martin Luther King Jr. observed, the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice, then Mary Anning is now justly receiving her due in 21st century British museums.

History vindicates.  Mary Anning rules.

The Mary Anning plaque at the Natural History Museum, London,
with one of her discoveries: a Rhomaleosaurus.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier.

After we returned home and shared pictures of our trip on Facebook, a friend of my wife’s inquired if we knew about Remarkable Creatures, a recent novel by Tracy Chevalier, best-selling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring.  Well, I’ve been reading about Mary Anning all my life, starting with my earliest dinosaur picture books, so I couldn’t resist.  Remarkable Creatures is a fine addition to the Mary Anning legend and a fitting tribute to one of the 19th century’s most remarkable pioneers, who fearlessly ventured back into time along the rocky ledges of her little tourist town.

© 2015 Lee Price

Beowulf as a Read-Aloud

London blogging:

Essay 1 of 10 on
ten artifacts 

that I saw 

while on vacation

in London 

in summer 2015.

Once upon a time, I read Beowulf as a bedtime read-aloud to my son.  I read it in the Seamus Heaney translation, but in retrospect maybe it would have been more fun (for me, at least) to do it in the Old English, starting with a firm:

Hwæt!

Hwæt is an appropriate word to begin a read-aloud because—at least according to many scholars—it means something like, “Shut up, pay attention, this is important!” succinctly reduced to a single exclamatory command:  Hwæt!

It could be argued that English literature was launched with that one word.  Once it was uttered, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Keats, Dickens, and Beowulf-scholar Tolkien would inevitably follow.

First page of Beowulf in the Cotton MS Vitellius
A XV manuscript at the British Library.

On my second day in London, I’m standing in front of the first leaf of the only existing manuscript of Beowulf, poised behind glass in the Sir John Ritblat Treasures of the British Library Gallery, the word Hwæt large in the left corner.  The penmanship was the work of some anonymous scribe, toiling in the late Anglo-Saxon world circa 1000 A.D., give or take a half-century either direction.  Beowulf probably felt ancient even then, a mysterious relic of a marauding foreign mode of life.

Today no one knows exactly what “Hwæt” means, the word apparently having dropped out of common usage as language shifted toward Middle English under the Norman occupation.  By the time of Chaucer, no one was saying, “Hwæt,” not even the Wife of Bath.

In the introduction to his magisterial Beowulf translation, poet Seamus Heaney wrote:

Conventional renderings of Hwæt, the first word of the poem, tend towards the archaic literary, with ‘lo,’ ‘hark,’ ‘behold,’ ‘attend,’ and—more colloquially—‘listen’ being some of the solutions offered previously.

Heaney settled on the word “So,” with a period following it to signify its separate function from the words that follow.  First, you demand attention and then you begin the story:

Hwæt we Gar-Dena in gear-daum

becomes in Heaney’s translation:

So.  The Spear-Danes in days gone by…

But I prefer to think that something was lost as the poem moved from a tale told in a mead-hall to an epic transcribed in a scriptorium.  “In gear-daum” (in days gone by) doesn’t sound right to me, at least from the perspective of a bedtime read-aloud.  I prefer:

So.  Once upon a time, the Spear-Danes

And the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness…

Of course, that would never have been the way the Beowulf poet would have declaimed it in in formal company, where certain poetic rules had to be observed.  No, it’s the first draft that he improvised by the bed of his son, sharing a tale of Grendel beasts and dragons as the sun set and the shadows grew long.

This entry is dedicated to Amy Heuer, my colleague at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, both because she loves Beowulf and also because she just graciously redesigned my 21 Essays banner, beautifully fine-tuning my beloved Leonardo da Vinci dragon!

© 2015 Lee Price

Ray Harryhausen Goes to Heaven

Selenite-blogging, essay 5 of 5 blog entries

on First Men in the Moon (1964)

Ray Harryhausen Goes to Heaven

Joseph Cavor (Lionel Jeffries) approaches the lunar staircase
in First Men in the Moon (1964).

“I had always intended the meeting with the Grand Lunar to be a spectacular scene and decided that a huge, almost never-ending staircase would give the scene a grandeur that would only be rivaled by A Matter of Life and Death (1946) in the history of film.”

Ray Harryhausen

An Animated Life

The celestial staircase in A Matter
of Life and Death (1946).

As the praise from Harryhausen would indicate, the production design of A Matter of Life and Death—particularly the celestial staircase—is sublime.  In A Matter of Life and Death, the moving staircase is the connecting link between the worlds of life and death.  It is a vast escalator in constant stately motion, lined by the statues of famous men.  In the film’s design, where the afterlife is black-and-white and the earthly scenes are in Technicolor, the stairs are black-and-white when ascending and color when descending.  Thus, this Jacob’s Ladder exists on the cusp of life and death.

Harryhausen’s challenge to himself was to create a lunar staircase for First Men in the Moon to rival the grand design that legendary producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger brought to A Matter of Life and Death.  The result is formidable—Harryhausen’s lunar staircase is not as ethereal as the Life and Death staircase but entirely appropriate for an alien monarchy.  Lined by impressive lunar crystals, the moon’s staircase proceeds upward in a series of four flights, cleverly combining miniatures and tricks of perspective to make the scale look enormous.

Lionel Jeffries as the brilliant Victorian scientist Joseph Cavor ascends the stairs alone, his character so delightfully delineated by the actor that he completely anchors the scene.  From beginning to end, Jeffries’ performance is witty and unpredictable.  His phrasing is deliciously staccato, swinging wildly between loveable insecurity and manic explosions.  And it’s not just a verbal performance but a physical one, too, that allows Jeffries to use the awkwardness of his gangly frame to eccentric advantage.

Cavor (Lionel Jeffries) inside the sphere in First Men in the Moon.

As the movie proceeds, it gradually becomes apparent that Cavor is our real hero.  He’s the heart and soul of the movie.

Above: Lionel Jeffries as
Joseph Cavor in First Men in the
Moon.  Below: Ray Harryhausen.

So let’s look at him.  His bald head disguises his real age, which is surprisingly young—Jeffries was 38 in 1964, two years younger than Martha Hyer who was playing the heroine.  His smiles and guffaws are contagious, his delight expressed in unsuppressable childlike glee.  He radiates eccentric amiability, quirky and British to the core.

Did it occur to anyone during casting that this prematurely balding actor looks a bit like Ray Harryhausen?  They share the long forehead, the narrow face, and the intense gaze of the consummate professional practicing his craft.  And there’s something childlike about both of them, too, as if they’ve somehow managed to retain the enthusiasm of their youths.  Why, Jeffries is the British doppelganger of the beloved animator!

When Cavor ascends the staircase in First Men in the Moon, he is surrounded by one of the richest of Harryhausen’s dream landscapes, a Neverland of the artist’s imagination fueled by memories of the staircase to heaven in A Matter of Life and Death.  Now squint at the screen, look sideways, out of the corner of your eye, and discreetly replace Cavor with Harryhausen, ascending to sublimity surrounded by an awe-inspiring world of his imagination.

The look on Cavor’s face, dazzled and humbled and awestruck, reminds me of the recurring looks of wonderment in the movies of Steven Spielberg that filmmaker and critic Kevin B. Lee celebrated in his video essay The Spielberg Face.

In the video, the Spielberg Face is described as:

“Eyes open, staring in wordless wonder, in a moment where time stands still, but above all a childlike surrender in the act of watching, both theirs and ours.”

Kevin Lee

The Spielberg Face

When you’re climbing the staircase of unfettered imagination, it is the only appropriate face.  The Spielberg Face is the Cavor Face is the Harryhausen Face.

The moment exceeds every expectation.  Freeze frame on the Harryhausen Face.

Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and
Lionel Jeffries in First Men in the Moon.

OR…

Picture Ray on the grand staircase, ascending higher and higher, until he at last arrives at the celestial courtroom where he will be judged by a jury of his peers, among them Georges Melies, Wladyslaw Starewicz, John P. Fulton, Les Bowie, George Pal, Carlo Rambaldi, Stan Winston, Peter Ellenshaw, and Marcel Delgado.  As he enters, the deafening applause washes across heaven like waves as his friends and fans stand to welcome him.  Ray Bradbury smiles.  And his old friend and mentor Willis O’Brien, animator of King Kong, rushes forward to greet him.

The courtroom travels to earth via the celestial
staircase in A Matter of Life and Death.

Reference Sources

Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

© 2015 Lee Price

The Music Behind the Harryhausen Movies

Selenite-blogging, essay 4 of 5 blog entries
on First Men in the Moon (1964)

Part One: A Salute to Laurie Johnson

The great movie composers inevitably seem to get associated with one particular score—the one that would play behind them when they accept a Lifetime Achievement Award or receive an MBE from the Queen.

For Max Steiner, it would be Gone With the Wind (1939).  For Victor Young, The Quiet Man (1952).  For Bernard Herrmann, Psycho (1960).

Composer of the wonderful score of First Men in the Moon (1964), Laurie Johnson is forever tagged as the composer of The Avengers TV theme, the music that must have played behind him when he was awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to music in 2014.  It’s one of the great TV themes.

But there’s much more to Laurie Johnson than just The Avengers, case in point being his very fine score for First Men in the Moon.  As the film moves from Victoriana to the weirdness of life insider the moon’s caverns, the music grows increasingly strange.  In this first clip, the Selenites are introduced with a blast of dissonance which drops into a syncopation at the 26 second mark, effectively suggesting the movement of the Selenites along the cave passageways.  Then a piercing high-pitched Selenite theme abruptly appears, eerily meshing keyboard with strings.  Staccato brass echo the melody.  From this point, whenever the Selenites approach, the theme returns.

Surprisingly, First Men in the Moon only contains one traditional Harryhausen monster scene.  The giant mooncalf provides this one opportunity for a chase and attack.  Naturally, the mooncalf gets his own theme, both ponderous and relentless, echoing the beast’s size and threat.

In one of the film’s most visually opulent scenes, designed by Harryhausen to suggest the magnificent sets of She (1935) and A Matter of Life and Death (1945), the scientist Joseph Cavor mounts a seemingly endless staircase that leads upward toward the throne of the Selenite ruler, the Grand Lunar.  In this clip, Johnson’s staircase theme begins at 1:26, striking an almost religious note that appropriately reflects the look of awe on Cavor’s face.

Now 88 years old, Laurie Johnson is one of the few members of the First Men in the Moon crew still with us.  Over the years, he has scored more than 400 films and television episodes.  Classically trained, he enjoyed adding experimental new sounds (like the synthesized Selenite theme) to traditional orchestral arrangements.  You can hear his adventurousness in First Men in the Moon as he moves from Gustav Holst-style themes for Victorian England to a discreet background of electronica ever-murmuring behind the Selenites.  It’s a magnificent piece of work.

Part Two:  My Three Favorite Scores to Harryhausen Movies

Captain Nemo (Herbert Lom) at the organ in Mysterious Island (1961).

Considering how the Charles Schneer/Ray Harryhausen movies tend to coast on second-tier directors and actors, I’m always amazed that they so often invested in the very finest music composers.  In return, Schneer and Harryhausen received scores that amplified the production values and technical effects, making the evocation of their fantasy worlds both more believable and dramatic.  A great score helps a lot!

For my three favorites scores to Harryhausen movies, it may appear that I’m picking one score apiece from three composers in order to avoid simply picking three Bernard Herrmann scores.  After all, Herrmann’s musical reputation is stellar and ever-growing, and I have four excellent Herrmann scores to choose from (The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, and Jason and the Argonauts).  Also, I could be criticized for leaving out a fourth major composer—Miklos Rosza—who worked on the Harryhausen movie The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.  But my selections really are my personal three favorites—the other Herrmann-scored movies would be in fourth through sixth place and, as for the Rosza score, I think it’s far from his best.

My favorite of the Bernard Herrmann scores is his wonderfully varied work on Mysterious Island.  It’s got swirling hurricane-evoking action music to launch the adventure, a set of moody quiet themes for the mysterious island, and quirky set pieces for each of the monsters.  This selection—Elena/The Shadow/The Bird—begins with a delicate character piece for the young heroine, followed by some very Vertigo-esque forebodings, then (best of all) simultaneously comic and threatening music to accompany the attack of a giant flightless bird.

The film composer Jerome Moross is justifiably most famous for his classic western score to The Big Country (1958).  But—perhaps because I heard it first—my heart belongs to his music for The Valley of Gwangi, Harryhausen’s grand dino-western.  This clip begins with introductory themes and then hits its stride at the 1:20 mark with one of the finest of all expansive western melodies.  It’s everything I want a western score to be.

And third favorite?  Why that’s First Men in the Moon, of course!  Composer Laurie Johnson, a friend and occasional assistant to Bernard Herrmann, seized the opportunity to do his own variation on a Herrmann-type score and he did the master proud.

Reference Sources

Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

© 2015 Lee Price

First Men in the Moon: History Repeats

21 Essays is a proud participant in

For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon,

May 13-17, 2015

LET'S RAISE SOME MONEY!!!

If you like this blog...  

if you like science fiction...

if you support the cause of film preservation...

then please follow this link to make a donation to the National Film Preservation Foundation to support our effort to restore, score, and stream Cupid in Quarantine (1918), a one-reel silent comedy starring Elinor Field and Cullen Landis.

Through this year’s science-fiction-themed blogathon, we’re trying to raise $10,000 and it's going to take many generous small (and large!) donations to get there.  With great appreciation for your generosity, THANK YOU!

Selenite-blogging, 
essay 3 of 5 blog entries

Part One:  Titanic Similarities

A drawing is discovered in a safe deep below the ocean in Titanic (1997).

A team of scientific explorers discover a surprising artifact.  Who did it belong to?  Could the owner possibly still be alive?  “But (s)he’d be at least 90 years old now!”  However, the owner is alive.  And the owner has a tale to share.  Now listen closely.  “Once upon a time…”

Arnold Bedford examines the
British flag found on the moon
in First Men in the Moon (1964).

In First Men in the Moon (1964), explorers discover a British flag on the moon, along with a note claiming the moon in the name of Queen Victoria.  Old Arnold Bedford is discovered in a nursing home and he relates his tale of adventure and romance.

In Titanic (1997), explorers discover a drawing of a nude woman locked inside a safe inside the submerged wreck of the Titanic.  An elderly woman comes forward claiming that the picture is of her.  She relates her tale of adventure and romance.

Coincidence?  Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that writer-director James Cameron cribbed from established science fiction authors… or from Ray Harryhausen movies, for that matter.  Maybe I should let Cameron confess:

“The creations in my movies are really Ray’s illegitimate grandchildren.  The Terminator owes its roots to the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts, which I saw when I was seven years old.  It blew my mind and I wanted to do that, whatever ‘that’ was.”

James Cameron

Testimonial from the book jacket of

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life

If Cameron was six for Jason, he would have been seven for First Men in the Moon and my guess is that he was already furiously scribbling notes for future screenplays.

In all fairness, Nigel Kneale’s flashback plot structure for First Men in the Moon IS ingenious and Cameron deserves credit for borrowing from the best.  The plot device works very well in Titanic.  And Cameron’s stripped-down Terminator T-800 Model 101 was a nice twist on Harryhausen’s fighting skeletons, too.

As the famous paraphrase of Isaac Newton states:

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Old Bedford in First Men in the Moon and old Rose in Titanic
examine their documents.

Part Two:  The Unintended Metaphor

Bedford on the attack, swinging his gun, in First Men in the Moon.

I could play off James Cameron with this next observation, too, by suggesting that the plot of Cameron’s Avatar (2009) expands on a central metaphor in First Men in the Moon.  But I really don’t think that’s the case, not even subconsciously.

In fact, I don’t think the particular metaphor that I'd like to discuss was ever intentionally placed into First Men in the Moon.  It was just an unplanned accident of plot.  But once you see it, it’s hard to ignore.

Kate Calender (Martha Hyer) brings
a gun to the moon despite Cavor's
dismissal of the idea: "Madam,
the chances of bagging an elephant
on the moon are remote."  But the
gun is ultimately used by both Kate
and Arnold Beckford (Edward Judd)
as they threaten and shoot at
the moon's native inhabitants.

The movie First Men in the Moon functions as a frighteningly plausible metaphor for the European settlement of the Americas.  Arnold Bedford, well played by Edward Judd, represents the European explorer/soldier.  His ethics are highly suspect, he’s prone to violence, and his primary incentive to explore is the promise of gold.  Cavor, magnificently played by Lionel Jeffries, is the scientist/technician who unwittingly makes the invasion possible.

But there’s only one Bedford against a whole civilization of Selenites.  How can a single Bedford possibly win in this battle for empire?  Unfortunately, the answer is simple on both sides of the metaphor.  Carried from a distant land, disease wipes out the civilization.  The Europeans can now move in with relative ease, planting their flag of conquest.

The disease angle was not in the original H. G. Wells novel, and I seriously doubt that screenwriter Nigel Kneale considered the potential historic parallels when he borrowed the idea from Wells’ The War of the Worlds.  But it unexpectedly hooked into the existing imperialist satire that really was lying dormant in Wells’ novel The First Men in the Moon, accidentally creating a scenario that is eerily resonant.

Wells’ novel is surprisingly complex and nuanced.  As in the movie, the character of Bedford (who provides first-hand narration for most of the book) is presented as the typical adventure hero.  His acknowledged faults of avarice and violent temper are minimized and/or justified.  But then, in a very surprising twist late in the book, Cavor’s communications from the moon are presented intact and they paint a very different picture of Bedford:

“On the moon his (Bedford’s) character seemed to deteriorate.  He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome…

“We came to a difficult passage with them (the Selenites), and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of theirs… gave way to a panic violence.  He ran amuck, killed three, and perforce I had to flee with him after the outrage.”

Apparently, Bedford has been an unreliable narrator all along, suggesting that Wells’ novel was never intended as a simple science romance for boys.  We’ve received the heroic adventure story from the viewpoint of the villain.

Cavor's cry of despair as he realizes that Bedford
is indiscriminately killing Selenites in
First Men in the Moon.

The screenplay—sometimes jarringly—retains the nastier elements of Bedford’s personality.  Under the veneer of Victorian charm, we see Cavor’s ever-increasing distress at Bedford’s actions, with Cavor finally screaming in despair that Bedford is ruining everything.  Personally, I think the resulting dissonance between the promise of a light-hearted space romp and Cavor’s heartfelt pain may have been behind the movie’s financial failure.  Ultimately, First Men in the Moon doesn’t deliver on the feel-good vibe that’s promised.

When Wells’ theme of European imperialism collides with the disease subplot, the resulting implications are depressingly familiar.  The Selenites are the Native Americans.  Just sixty years after the first ship arrives, their world is in ruins.  As Bedford says at the close of the movie, “Poor Cavor!  He did have such a terrible cold.”  The flag has been planted and the moon will now belong to the Earth.  The aliens have invaded.

The British flag on the moon in First Men in the Moon.

Reference Sources
Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

© 2015 Lee Price

Selenites and Skeletons

21 Essays is a proud participant in

For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon,

May 13-17, 2015

LET'S RAISE SOME MONEY!!!

If you like this blog...  

if you like science fiction...

if you support the cause of film preservation...

then please follow this link to make a donation to the National Film Preservation Foundation to support our effort to restore, score, and stream Cupid in Quarantine (1918), a one-reel silent comedy starring Elinor Field and Cullen Landis.

Through this year’s science-fiction-themed blogathon, we’re trying to raise $10,000 and it's going to take many generous small (and large!) donations to get there.  With great appreciation for your generosity, THANK YOU!

Selenite-blogging, 
essay 2 of 5 blog entries

Part One:  Insectoids Everywhere!

“The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill…”

The First Men in the Moon

By H. G. Wells

In his 1901 science fiction novel The First Men in the Moon, H. G. Wells repeatedly describes the moon’s Selenite inhabitants as insect-like:

“He (the Selenite) presented himself, therefore, as a compact, bristling creature, having much the quality of a complicated insect…”

For his 1964 movie of First Men in the Moon, visual effects master Ray Harryhausen designed remarkable models of insect-like Selenites to bring to life through his inimitable stop motion animation.  While departing from Wells in some particulars, they retain the weird half-human/half-arthropod weirdness in Wells’ descriptions:

“The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost like the short joints in the leg of a crab.”

A Selenite Gallery:  Profile, rear (with termite wings), and full frontal.

Inspecting the insectoid
alien remains from
Quatermass and the Pit.

Both Ray Harryhausen and screenwriter Nigel Kneale were fans of the science fiction novels of H. G. Wells.  The concept of upright insectoids in The First Men in the Moon appears to have particularly appealed to them.  Several years before First Men in the Moon, Kneale placed an eerie insectoid alien invasion at the center of the plot of his TV series classic Quatermass and the Pit, first broadcast in 1958.

Near the end of his career, Harryhausen cribbed from his Selenite design to create a trio of insectoid ghouls, complete with little horns reminiscent of the demon insects of Quatermass and the Pit.  Designed for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), the ghouls are skeletal rather than segmented, but the faces possess a familiar creepy insect-like impassivity, like animated mantises.

The insectoid ghouls from Harryhausen's
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

Intelligent alien insects remain a popular subject in science fiction, turning up everywhere from Star Trek to Starship Troopers.  H. G. Wells basically invented the trope, as he also appears to have been the first to play with an alien hive concept, where intelligence is centralized in a highly ordered society.  This probably relates in some way to the socialism that Wells later advocated, but as of 1901, it’s easier to see the lunar society as a satire of political ideas rather than either a utopia or a dystopia.  The scientist Cavor is content to live in the moon’s great ant-hill but the prospect appears to have much less appeal to the other two humans along for the trip.

Cavor (Lionel Jeffries) surrounded by Selenites in First Men in the Moon.

Part Two:  The Resurrected Skeleton

Here’s Martha Hyer as Kate Callender receiving a full body scan from Lunar Homeland Security.

Martha Hyer gets x-rayed in First Men in the Moon.

Martha Hyer.

For this First Men in the Moon scene, Hyer’s body double was a warrior skeleton model left over from Jason and the Argonauts, pulled off the shelf by master animator Ray Harryhausen.  The shot opens with Hyer fully exposed in naked skeleton mode, making demands to her interrogators as they study her bones.  Then she leaves the scanner area and emerges screen left with her skin and clothes neatly in place.

Whoever would have guessed that Martha Hyer had the frame of a Greek warrior?

And… retroactively applying logic… wouldn’t this suggest that we can see Hyer—that ever-dependable chameleon of an actress—among the skeleton defenders of the Golden Fleece?

Why, I’d recognize that skeleton anywhere!

I think that's Hyer's skeletal frame second from left.

Hyer gracefully parries a sword thrust.

She's a little more graceful than the other skeletons, don't you think?
Personally, I'm rooting for Hyer.

This is how Greek tragedy inevitably ends. 

It just goes to show that we’re all the same under the skin.

Enjoy the video!

Reference Sources

Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale by Andy Murray

Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks by Mike Hankin

Film Fantasy Scrapbook by Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton

The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

... and a special thank you to the hosts of For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon: Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod, and Wonders in the Dark.

© 2015 Lee Price