1962 - THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, big family movie fantasy in Cinerama

 MGM and the Cinerama corporation produced this widescreen film as a follow up to the Cinerama spectacular How The West Was Won. George Pal produced and directed the fantasy segments while Henry Levin shot the rather boring story of the brothers Grimm played by Laurence Harvey and Karl Bohm who are struggling to find acceptance as chroniclers of traditional German fairy tales.

This is a Cinerama film in every way with the usual gimmicks of enveloping the viewer's vision with shots of carriages racing down roads, tumbling down mountains and dizzying views of canyons making the viewer think he/she was about to fall into one.

Frankly the story is not so hot and George Pal has actually made better films but this is certainly an amazing viewing experience especially in the restored Blu-Ray version being released by Warner Brothers.

 

The film has a great cast, it just doesn't give them much of a story to tie the admittedly charming and entertaining fantasy sequences together.  The first sequence with the dancing princess has the athletic Russ Tamblyn and the beautiful Yvette Mimieux in a large scale musical number.  Tamblyn is a great dancer and acrobat, Yvette Mimieux is easy on the eyes but not so hot as a dancer.

The 2nd sequence is probably the best with George Pal's Puppetoons and the 3rd fantasy story has Terry Thomas and Buddy Hackett battling a dragon and Hackett battling a very poor English accent.

 

Overall this is an enjoyable film, however it could have been a better one .

 

Written by Charles Beaumont, William Roberts and David P. Harmon.  The running time is 135 minutes.

The new Blu Ray presentation is very impressive.

1960 - THE TIME MACHINE, a good George Pal film.

Considering the modest budget that George Pal had to work with, The Time Machine is a pretty impressive film.  This film looks good, the sets, photography and special effects have a real charm to them.  Most importantly the time machine itself is one cool looking prop.

The film has a small but interesting group of actors.  Character actors such as Whit Bissell, Alan Young, Sebastian Cabot and Tom Helmore are fun to see.   Rod Taylor is perfectly cast as the scientist who can jump into action when the Morlocks are ready to start chomping on his pretty Eloi girlfriend played by the very pretty Yvette Mimieux. 

This was a film that made a big impression on me when I was a kid and it still holds up pretty well.  A good cast and story can carry a film a long way and make for a very entertaining viewing experience.

103 minutes.

1961- ATLANTIS, THE LOST CONTINENT George Pal's entertaining fantasy for adolescent boys.

The legendary science fiction/fantasy producer George Pal occasionally tried directing films as well.  This has to be one of his goofiest efforts, even more ridiculous than his final film Doc Savage The Man of Bronze. 

The writer of this opus  Daniel Mainwaring, had actually written good films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Phenix City Story and Out of the Past.

Here we go.  A princess from the lost continent of Atlantis which is stuck in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean washes up in Greece where she is rescued by a handsome Greek fisherman.  She persuades him to take her back to Atlantis where he is forced to become a slave.  He witnesses the superior technology and strange scientific experiments turning men in to half man half pigs that go on in Atlantis.  He faces off in mortal combat with a really big bulky guy in the test of  "Fire and Water" which is some kind of glorified barbecue pit that turns into a swimming pool.

The head guy of Atlantis wants to take over the world with some wacky crystal ray gun, the bad guy is played by John Dall who was one of the homosexual killers in Hitchock's Rope.  Speaking for the voice of reason in Atlantis is Edward Platt as the high priest.  Platt was the chief of Control on Get Smart, which is hard to get past when you watch him in this film.

George Pal was known for his special effects and for an early 60's film which involves miniatures they aren't that bad.  Pal was criticized for sticking a lot of stock footage into Atlantis The Lost Continent, and the scenes from Quo Vadis are pretty noticeable.  But really, who was going to give Pal a lot of money for what is really a juvenile fantasy film which in 1961 had a limited fan base, today it would be a different story.
 

For all the silliness involved in this film and there is a lot of silliness.  Atlantis The Lost Continent,  does have an entertaining narrative drive to it.  There is not a dull moment in the entire 90 minutes of the film.  George Pal knows his audience and knows what they want, lots of cool action, a giant ray gun and stuff blowing up. 

I have to believe all of the scenes and situations were carefully worked out to achieve the effect Pal was looking for, an entertaining fantasy film.

90 entertaining minutes.