This film was made primarily for children and
I admit to yawning off a few times but still it has some very nice Ray Harryhausen
touches throughout. It also retains much of the satire of the Jonathan Swift
novel written in the 1700's. Swift was not so much intent on writing a fantasy
book but one that skewers the human condition, royalty, institutions and
nationalism. A lot of that comes through here in ways that I expect a child
would get though clearly not being able to relate it to 18th century England.
The film is based on the best known of Gulliver's
four travels - to the land of the Lilliputians and then the land of Brobdingnag
where the giants lived. There were two other voyages that Gulliver took -
to Laputa where arts flourished, Balnibarbi where scientists invented things
of no practical purpose, Glubbdubdrib where he could talk to the ghosts of
great men in the past, Luggnagg where people are immortal but age till they
are wizened and crippled but never die and then Japan. On his fourth journey
he travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms where the talking horses are intelligent
and rule over the Yahoos - deformed men. Gulliver returns home after
that to live in isolation because he can't stand being around humans - Yahoo's
in his estimation.
Gulliver played by Kerwin Mathews (The Seventh
Voyage of Sinbad) is a doctor in a small village in England. He is in love
with Elizabeth (June Thorburn) but too poor to marry her. So, he joins a
shipping expedition to the East Indies to strike it rich. Instead, a wave
knocks him overboard and he lands in Lilliput where the people are six inches
tall. After being first tied up and then released, he becomes a hero of the
land able to capture mounds of fish and to end the threat of a war with a
nearby island - the main reason of dispute is over which end of the egg you
crack. But they want him to wipe them out and he refuses and the King turns
against him and he has to escape.
Only to land in Brobdingnag where he is
the tiny human. The King keeps him and Elizabeth - somehow she was also washed
overboard and ended up here - for his entertainment. But when Gulliver beats
him at chess and cures his wife's stomachache, he turns him over to his sorcerer
to prove Gulliver is a witch. Most of Harryhausen's special effects are creating
the illusion of the difference in sizes - but Gulliver in tiny form has to
battle against an alligator (in stop-motion) and is dragged by a squirrel
in stop-motion. But besides the special effects this is too simplistic for
adults I expect.
