The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)

Me-oh-my! - You know, it sure takes watching a 1960 Fantasy/Adventure picture just like this one to really make one realize just how totally spoiled we all are by today's CG imagery. Yep. We sure are.And, if the creaky, old-school visual effects here weren't hokey enough as it is - Unfortunately - This picture's story-line was also a really irksome affair like nothing you could ever imagine.It sure seemed to me that no matter which world Gulliver travelled to - Be it the big or the small - Everyone was forever bickering and complaining and finding yet another lame excuse for going to war with one another.... Sheesh! - Give me break, already!.... I can't begin to tell you how fed-up I got with all of this utter nonsense.I mean, had the story been an interesting one, then, yes, I could have easily forgiven its laughable special effects - But, between the plot and the visuals it was all just second-rate entertainment from start to finish.

In my senior year of high school, I took a class on children's literature and one of the books we were assigned to read was "Gulliver's Travels". At the time to me, it was very slow reading and I quickly lost interest. I knew the story from abbreviated versions of the novel and did not pick up on the political ramifications of the story. Almost 35 years later, the book remains a far- off memory. However, in studying cinema and watching this fetching looking version, the things that I missed are now as clear as crystal. Difference in appearances, being more popular than royal leaders and the ability to solve issues easier than those in charge makes him enemy of the state. He is Gulliver, a friendly giants from England visit who has landed on the island of Lilliput, of little people the size of his finger. They first think that he is some sort of monster, but his abilities to do things for them it which they couldn't imagine being done making popular, for the moment. The underlying meanings hidden inside the plot are still very potent today, and even if you don't pick those up on your initial reading or viewing of any of the Gulliver's Travels movies, you can still enjoy the movie for the fun fantasy that it is.As with several other Ray Harryhausen movies, the special effects use the best of stop motion. Kerwin Mathews is an excellent hero. Some tidbits of minor characters make you think that there will be a few subplots but they pretty much disappear with the rainstorm that Gulliver blows away. The film switched gears half way through when Gulliver finds himself in a world full of giants which gives the reminder that we are all small fish on a large planet and our differences are not meant that I divide us but make us closer.

The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver I first saw on the big screen, and in color, and later saw it a few times on television, but not for a quarter century or so. So, I had to rewatch the 100 minute film. Kerwin Matthews, from The Seven Voyages Of Sinbad, does a surprisingly good job as the semi-zomboid, but buff, Dr. Lemuel Gulliver. He plays Gulliver as a real guy his genuineness makes up for his sometimes wooden reactions. June Thorburn plays his fiancée (then wife) Elizabeth. She's sufficient eye candy, and that alone is reason enough to justify her sweet insertion into the tale (she is not in Swift's novel). Gotta love her silly 'Don't ever wanna lay eyes on you again moment' after Gulliver objects to her naïve-te regarding the purchase of an old shack. None of the other actors who play any of the other characters leaves that great an impression, although the girl who plays Glumdalclitch (Sherry Alberoni, a child star on the original The Mickey Mouse Club on television) does a solid job with the little she's given. Her petulance and warmth make her the only semi-realistic character in all of Lilliput (land of the tint people) or Brobdingnag (land of the giants).This film features less of the stop motion photography Harryhausen was noted for, and more visual tricks involving split screens and traveling mattes, to make use of forced perspective in portraying Gulliver against his smaller and larger costars. Cinematographer Wilkie Cooper is credited in the film, but, realistically, he was, in effect, just a cameraman for Harryhausen.The story is a simplified version of the Swift novel. Gulliver reluctantly aids the King of Lilliput in his war against the rival state of Blefescu. The war is over which is the proper end of an egg to be opened. After Gulliver steals the Blefescuan Navy ships, the King is still not satisfied, and orders Gulliver to commit genocide on Blefescu. As a doctor and man of honor, he refuses, and is accused of treason. He then flees, and washes up on the shores of Brobdingnag, where Glumdalclitch finds him. The King of Brobdingnag offers to barter for him, then accepts the girl as his protector. Fortuitously, Elizabeth ended up there when she stowed aboard Gulliver's ship. He had been washed overboard to Lilliput, and the ship later destroyed. She seems to have been the lone survivor. The King's doctor accuses Gulliver of witchcraft after he saves the Queen's life with modern medicine, and the two lovers (married by the King) are persecuted. While the Lilliputians and Blefescuans are small in mind regarding politics, the Brobdingnagians are backwards regarding science and medicine. Glumdalclitch therefore rescues the couple, tosses them into a basket, and throws them down a river which washes out to the sea, where the two end up back in England at film's fade. Yes, there's some petty philosophizing by Gulliver, but it works in a campy way. Even the ending which questions whether or not the adventures were all a dream- while trite, is not too big a deal because the film handles everything in a lighthearted way. Had the film been more sober in its claims and portrayal, such an ending would have bombed, especially since it veers so far from the original.

This pleasant yet dated little 1960 family movie arrives is part of Columbia TriStar's "Ray Harryhausen Signature Collection." However, unlike Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and 20 Million Miles to Earth, there's not much here to thrill the average Harryhausen fan. Other than a quick battle with a giant alligator and a dino-sized squirrel that's more mirthful than menacing, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver doesn't depend on Harryhausen's famed stop-motion monsters to menace our hero. Instead, it features cinematic effects that make seafarer Dr. Lemuel Gulliver (7th Voyage's Sinbad, Kerwin Mathews) a skyscraper-tall behemoth on the isle of Lilliput and a doll-sized castaway "witch" in the court of Brobdingnag. The script is just a wire hanger for the "giant/tiny" effects scenes, but the story moves briskly (even a pair of treacly song-breaks don't get much in the way), and it should particularly appeal to the under-10 set who haven't yet become jaundiced to anything pre-dating modern CGI gloss. Mathews is plenty wholeseome and likable in a role first offered to Danny Kaye and (no kidding) Jack Lemmon. And Gulliver's fiancé/wife (June Thorburn) is perfunctory but not too much of a drip. Look for Peter Bull, Dr. Strangelove's Russian ambassador, in a small role. Of course the script is loosely based on the first half of Jonathan Swift's ribald 1726 novel, Gulliver's Travels. While the book remains one of the hardest-biting social satires ever to draw blood from the pompous and the political, few of those teeth remain in this truncated adaptation. Nonetheless, the Lilliputian social order and its Emperor's single-minded war against a neighboring island - fought over an absurdly trivial matter inflated to genocidal levels by unbending ideological fervor - are still recognizable targets. Visually, Harryhausen's tall/small effects are well done, though a viewer accustomed to more recent breakthroughs should expect to see the seams showing and hear the floorboards creaking. For a good number of fans, Bernard Herrmann's fine score is the chief appeal here.