From the Earth to the Moon (1958)

Now I have never read the Jules Vern novel of the same name on which this movie is based, but surely, unlike this movie, it has a point to it. This movie, which I assume was made at least in part to capitalize off of the success of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, made four years before, has no point to it, and is insidiously dull, a criticism that has been leveled against the earlier Disney film, but even as a child I found that movie to be quite engaging. Anyway the film makers do try to do a few things right with this, like casting Joseph Cotten and George Sanders, there both usually good, but here they are just waisted. In addition Don Dubbins and Debra Paget are added for a love subplot, that in keeping with the seeming ethos of the movie is flat and doesn't go anywhere, 20,000 Leagues notably didn't bother with a love sub plot.

The actual plot of the movie seems like it should be strait forward, but the title is misleading, we never get a scene on the moon. Now again I haven't read the original Jules Vern novel so I can't attested to exactly how closely this film follows or differs from the original story, but I hope a novel called From the Earth to the Moon actually involves a landing on the moon. The stories two central characters are Victor Barbicane (Joseph Cotten) a Florida based manufacturer of explosives, and Nicholle (Geroge Sanders) a presumably Virginia based maker of shell casing. Now these two have had a falling out, it seems Barbicanes explosives proved to powerfull for Nicholls shell casing and the latter blames the former for a lions share of the responsibility for Confederate defeat in the recently concluded Civil War (this movie starts in 1868 by the way).

At the beginning of the film Barbicane invites a group of wealthy munitions makers from around the world to his Florida estate to announce that he has discovered a new, ultra powerful explosive he calls "Power X" which he claims is capable of propelling a shell hundreds, even thousands of miles distant. Barbicane, and here's the writers trying to be Cold War current, proposes uniting with his piers and selling these Power X super weapons to every nation on earth, thus solving the problem of war through the threat of mutually assured destruction. When Nicholl hears about this he makes it his personal mission to prevent Barbicane from destroying the world. The Barbicane character by the way is never that consistent, at times it seems he is willing to unleash Power X on the world just to make money, at other times he comes across as an idealists just trying to prevent war, a strange thing for a munitions maker to be concernded about. However neither of those two outcomes will be accomplished when after a secret heart to heart with President Grant (odd choice given this Barbicanes supposed to have been a supporter of the Confedercy) Mr. B  becomes convinced that the world is just not yet ready for the destructive power of his Power X.

Then Barbicane gets a new idea about what to do with his supper bom-bom powder, how about a trip to the moon, that should unit humanity, right? But who to make the rocket ship? Why Nicholl of course, with a little help from the brilliant Barbicane he should be able to make a metal strong enough to cope with the power of Power X. During construction of the rocket Nicholls daughter (Debra Paget) falls in love with Barbicanes chief assistant (Don Dubbins) and subsequently sneaks onto the ship with the three men. Nicholl is horrified when he learns this, because he has rigged the ship to blow up before reaching the moon, thus keeping Barbicanes secret of Power X from an unready world and saving humanity, for now.

I'm not going to bother with the ending except to say that of course Paget and Dubbins survive, though Cotten and Sanders die, presumably, though we never get to see them after the ship is segmented. This is a pointless, painfully dull waste of a movie, The First Men in the Moon is a roughly period movie along a similar subject line that is infinitely better, and even that is little hooky, but hooky's fine, pointless and dull isn't. I was pretty pissed off by how pointless this movie proved to be. *