I have
been on a Jules Verne film kick these past few days and was looking for another.
I passed on the Jackie Chan Around the World in Eighty Days because Jackie
has already humiliated himself enough in his obedience to the Communist Party
and I had already seen both versions of The Mysterious Island. Same with
In Search of the Castaways. But in the back of my cupboard, I found this
one. Neither the film nor the book it is based on were known to me. The film
as it turned out for good reason. The book was a big hit for Verne and has
little resemblance to the film. He could sue if he came back to life. Verne
wrote over sixty novels and only a handful are known to most people.
The film isn't so much terrible as just astonishingly bland. It is directed
by Irwin Allen before his days of disaster films and this feels like an Afternoon
Special for Children. Root for Imperialism. Root against Muslims. Slave Traders
are not all bad.
As soon as the opening credits began to
roll, I knew I was in trouble. The first names that fly by are Red Buttons,
Fabian and Barbara Eden. There was actually a time in movies when Red Buttons
was the leading romantic man? And singers like Fabian, Anka and Avalon were
big stars. What a world to grow up in. Thank you, Beatles. The other names
in the credits are more welcome though they must have had to exhume a graveyard
to get them - Cedric Hardwicke who was considered one of the great stage
actors a few decades earlier, Herbert Marshall, Billy Gilbert, Reginald Owen,
Mike Mazurki and Henry Daniel all in cameos. Then best is Peter Lorre
who keeps showing up in these Verne adaptations. He plays the cuddly grumpy
slave trader.
Hardwicke has invented a new type of balloon
that can go long distances and land and rise easily. His engineer is Fabian.
Their plan is to fly over east Africa mapping it. That is about as far as
they get in tracking the book. Verne basically wrote a travelogue and descriptor
of Africa with a few adventures thrown in. Verne of course had never been
to Africa but then neither had he gone to the moon or under the sea. He was
an avid researcher and had a wide circle of friends to get information from.
Hardwicke is told that for financing he also has to take along a young man
who is related to a newspaper publisher. Red Buttons plays a spoiled bon
vivant who is often in trouble with the law. His family just wants him far
away.
But our happy balloon family is not yet
complete. When they meet up with Buttons in Zanzibar, he is escaping with
a slave that he freed. Who just happens to be the hot BarBara Luna. Who immediately
has eyes for Fabian. Who can blame her. He is cute and plays the concertina
as he sings. Along also is a military man played by Richard Haydn who made
a film career looking like a snobbish twit. The British Prime Minister asks
Hardwicke to change his plans - instead please go to west Africa and plant
the British flag before slavers claim it. We need to save those people. England,
always looking out for the best interests of the locals. Apparently, planting
a flag first is all you need. No wonder they had such a huge Empire. Great
flag planters. Sure, people already lived there but no doubt are happy to
join the Raj. Along the way they also pick up Lorre who is a sad buffoon
of a slave trader who had just sold Barbara Eden to a Sultan. She joins them
too. And let's not forget the chimp who hops aboard. It is like Union Station
up there. None of that is in the book. It is 90-minutes and you won't lose
any brain cells - but you may want that time back in your life. You could
have been watching a Jungle Jim film where the chimps are even smarter.
