The transition of these movies is an odd mix to observe. Let's begin with Around The World In 80 Days, decently done. Then Journey to the Center of the Earth, also decently done, and the comedy relief goose is killed.

From here, there are other movies, based on H.G. Wells or Jules Verne, and maybe even ERB.

Yes, Lionel Jeffries in the '64 Earth To the Moon is very good (rewatched it just this past weekend, after Chicken Run).

So where did the glitch emerge? Let's say Mad World ('63),said to be a spoof of the silent movie escapades, triggered it, but it wasn't in the Victorian era.

From here, we get efforts like The Great Race, Daring Men In Their Jaunty Jalopies, all which kind of miss and reflect more an idea of the '60s, namely parodying half a century earlier (for some odd reason).

What I can best say about this effort is Verne's book actually did not have the characters reach the moon and engage in adventures, so clearly someone thought this allowed space to fill.

Unfortunately, we receive these incredibly dull love interests.

The movie begins with some idea of Tom Thumb going up, and that is dropped very early on. Why include it then?

There will be plot changes throughout the entire film like this.

Many figures and characters are astonishingly unnecessary, such as the Hermione Gingold bit.

What makes this scornful dismissal so difficult was the intriguing bit of refueling a car by siphoning gas from a street lamp and a family's chandelier, and the automatic bullhorn that didn't work at all.

In the end, the movie doesn't stand as novel recreation, or a colorful depiction of a past era and is instead a head-scratcher about what was going on in the '60s in regards to the turn of the 19th century.

Terry Thomas played a caddish villain in 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' and 'Monte Carlo or Bust' both big hits with an all star cast.

Rocket to the Moon sees Thomas again playing the bounder. Based very loosely on the Jules Verne novel, its another madcap romp with wacky inventions. This time building a moonship to go to the moon in the Victorian era with little Jimmy Clitheroe being the unlucky pilot. Burl Ives turns up as the money scheming PT Barnum, there is a French damsel following one of her two boyfriends to England. Gert Frobe plays a madcap explosives expert.

Whereas Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines was frenetic fun with many amusing vignettes. This is an unfunny badly written drivel, overlong, scenes padded out so much it tries your patience, poor acting from one of the leads (Troy Donahue, I assume James Fox was not available,) implausible scenarios such as the chase scene between the car and a penny farthing (where incidentally you see some geese being run over.)

I could not wait for this film to finish it really tried my patience as it was one overlong, padded and stupid scene after another, wasting the talents of some good actors. Thankfully Terry Thomas and Graham Stark lift it from a total bomb rating. I recently re-watched Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and in comparison that film is vintage champagne with this being vinegar.

From exploitation writer-producer Harry Alan Towers comes this curiously upmarket but essentially lowbrow comic adaptation of the Jules Verne adventure "From The Earth To The Moon" – already filmed straight under that title in 1958, and which I also own recorded off TCM U.K. For what it's worth, both versions managed to attract notable actors to the fold: in this case, it's Burl Ives (as real-life showman P.T. Barnum – apparently, the role had first been offered to Bing Crosby!),Gert Frobe (amusing as a German explosives expert),Dennis Price, Lionel Jeffries (as a flustered engineer – basically a variation on his role in the superior FIRST MEN IN THE MOON [1964]),Terry-Thomas (as a vindictive financier and Jeffries' shady partner),not forgetting Troy Donahue (unconvincing as an American scientist and made to don a silly astro-nautical outfit more attuned to dystopian allegories!),Daliah Lavi and Edward de Souza who supply the obligatory (and bland) romantic triangle.

Whilst readily conceding that it doesn't have much of a reputation to begin with, the film itself proved a bit of a let-down for me – especially since, unlike the earlier version, we never even get to go in outer-space!! Besides, the pace is inordinately slow for this type of film; director Sharp was clearly more adept at deploying atmosphere and suspense than at he was at comedy timing. That said, the first half is undeniably pleasant with the amusing trial-and-error experiments of the various people involved (often witnessed by a perpetually unperturbed Queen Victoria) and, later, Frobe's disastrous attempts to find the correct amount of Bulovite (his own invention) to fire the rocket (Donahue's design of which is favored over that of the more experienced, and consequently inflamed, Jeffries) all the way to the moon! Alas, the film's latter stages – involving Jeffries and Terry-Thomas' attempts to sabotage the launching, Lavi's determination (after being abducted by them and escaping) to reach Donahue and alert him of their nefarious plan, and which also needlessly throw in a number of other characters (including even more romantic complications!) – tend to fall flat; the finale, though, as the rocket actually does go off with Jeffries, Terry-Tomas and, unbeknownst to them, a Russian spy inside (and which rather than land on the moon as intended takes them all the way to Siberia!),is quite nicely done.

A measure of the film's overall failure can be gleaned from the fact that it was released in several quarters under a multitude of different titles, including THOSE FANTASTIC FLYING FOOLS in the U.S. where it was marketed as a would-be follow-up to the highly successful epic spoof THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES (1965) which had also starred Terry-Thomas and Gert Frobe. Unfortunately, my viewing of the film was somewhat compromised by the faulty copy I acquired, with the audio being ever so slightly off, while the picture froze – though not the soundtrack! – for about 10 seconds half-way through!!