Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon

Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon
A poster bearing the film poster bearing one of the films alternative titles: Blast Off
Directed by	Don Sharp
Produced by	Harry Alan Towers
Written by	Dave Freeman Harry Alan Towers
Narrated by	Maurice Denham
Starring	Burl Ives Troy Donahue Gert Fröbe Hermione Gingold Lionel Jeffries Dennis Price
Music by	John Scott
Cinematography	Reginald H. Wyer
Editing by	Ann Chegwidden
Studio	Jules Verne Films
Distributed by	Momentum Pictures
Release date(s)	1967
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (aka Rocket to the Moon,Blast Off) is a 1967 British science fiction comedy film directed by Don Sharp and produced by Harry Alan Towers. It was released in the United States as Those Fantastic Flying Fools.

Towers (as "Peter Welbeck") devised the story, very loosely based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, and the script was by Dave Freeman. Burl Ives plays showman Phineas T. Barnum in a race to become the first man to reach the Moon. The comic style is in the vein of other star-studded caper movies of the era, such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). As such it has some clever moments. Lionel Jeffries as an engineer named Sir Charles Dillworthy shows a model of the machine to take the astronaut to the Moon. He is asked how it will bring him back. Jeffries, with a slight look of disapproval at the question says, "The project was to get a man to the moon. Nobody said a word about getting him back!" Terry-Thomas in another of his unscrupulous businessmen or scoundrel roles, drives Jeffries around in an early prototype of an automobile, but when it runs down he takes out a rubber tube and pumps gas out of a gas streetlamp into the engine. A horified Jeffries comments, "The whole concept of this car is immoral. It runs on stolen gas!". Unimpressed, Terry-Thomas replies, "You miss the point. It is very economical!"

Cast

• Burl Ives as Phineas T. Barnum
• Troy Donahue as Gaylord Sullivan
• Gert Fröbe as Professor Siegfried von Bulow
• Hermione Gingold as Angelica
• Lionel Jeffries as Sir Charles Dillworthy
• Dennis Price as The Duke of Barset
• Daliah Lavi as Madelaine
• Stratford Johns as Warrant Officer
• Graham Stark as Bertram Grundle
• Terry-Thomas as Captain Sir Harry Washington-Smythe
• Renate von Holt as Anna Lindstrom
• Jimmy Clitheroe as General Tom Thumb
• Judy Cornwell as Lady Electra
• Joachim Teege as Joachim Bulgeroff
• Edward de Souza as Henri
• Joan Sterndale-Bennett as Queen Victoria
• Allan Cuthbertson as Colonel Scuttling
• Derek Francis as Puddleby
• Anthony Woodruff as Announcer

External links

• Rocket to the Moon at the Internet Movie Database