After being upset, Kate (the fancy lady) decides to help, by gathering useful foraging supplies for the moon expedition. These supplies include:

* live chickens (for fresh food)
* a giant elephant gun

In her defense, if you asked a 19th century person what supplies people would need for a moon expedition most of them would probably include "live chickens" and "giant guns" on that list. At least she's not handing him a Maxim gun to shoot the moon natives.

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"Dear Reddit, all British dudes all want to fly to the moon in a sphere their neighbour built, right? That's a normal 'British Dude' thing, right? "

#Monsterdon

G E E S E

I N

S P A C E

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Steampunks are squirming at the "scientific" props in this movie

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Can we add some more brass gears and steam pipes?
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Characters so far:

Playwright - fancy guy, has aristocratic debts, early adopter of car technology
The Girl (tm) - fancy lady, pragmatic salesperson, hospitable, has giant hat
Science Mustache - a respectable eccentric
Future Astronauts (irrelevant)
Future British People (also irrelevant)

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he's mansplaining gravity to a research scientist. #monsterdon

reach in, and pull out The Glaive ! #monsterdon

Okay, so the fancy boy explains that he might have to sell his nice cottage because debts, which makes the fancy girl he's engaged too mildly worried.

We then encounter our third character, a bald mustached scientist who arrives, as all scientists do, on a cross country bicycle. I guess this is the guy who they find in an attic later.

Displaying hospitality, the fancy lady makes the scientist tea; he offers to buy the cottage so he can have a secret research lab.

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is that guy in the bad wig Hitchcock?!?

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Chekovs gun above the fireplace there....

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The pacing of this movie matches that of Devil Girl from Mars. #monsterdon

She's going to start singing "Cheer up, Charlie" any minute now

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"I lost my money on a self produced, self written play....and whores"

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Of all the Moon, they land on the bit which the Brits had landed on already...

#Monsterdon

There's a lot to unpack—some of it from Victorian-era writing, some of it from 1960s-era propaganda, but I do think it's interesting to see astronauts from the US, UK, and USSR on the same moon mission. That was a resounding message of hope for 1964.

Thanks so much to @Taweret for hosting, @Cherizilla for #MonsterdonBingo, and to all of you for making it fun!

Here are a few images I took last week while at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville.

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@bstacey @ramsey @Louisa fair play to the amount of Worldbuilding HG Wells did for his stories #Monsterdon #HGWells #Worldbuilding

Did H.G. Wells write anything good?

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Syphilis?

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So… what happened with the boots?

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Wow, the reporters are pretty rough with the old nurse

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Meanwhile, on the space television, the present astronauts have found the Selenite city, which seems to be abandoned and now lies in ruin.

We conclude that the astronauts from Earth may have brought an infection to the moon, which killed all the moon people in a case of accidental genocide. Oops. Or maybe the moon people left for another planet. This is left for the audience to decide.

#monsterdon

🦖#MONSTERDON 🎞️

This is the only time that you will see a Ray Harryhausen film in this wide format. I think he used the extra space well.

they did an HOUR of characterization and setting up the plot with kate and the guy and then they did absolutely nothing with it, not even a nod at the end #monsterdon

In a Shocking Plot Twist, while Kate and Bedford prepare to leave, Cavor says "nah, I'm going to stay here, there's stuff to learn here, I'll explain later." and goes off to chill with the Selenites.

Which is kind of cool; I guess he wants to do more space anthropology and maybe stop earthlings from invading the Moon.

We learn the old guy they found in an attic was Bedford the whole time, and we fast forward to the present.

#monsterdon

Tell me of the wars of your homeworld, Usul.

#Monsterdon #FirstMenInTheMoon1964

Do not let these Human's escape, we're bastards.

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So far the Selenites seem actually rather chill about the alien visitors from Earth. They take them to their city, learn how to talk to them and then just... kind of let them wander around unsupervised.

Like the worst they've done is dismantle their spaceship a little bit.. but they don't really treat the astronauts as enemies really, at least not yet?

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The Brain Alien's voice is very ASMR...

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Turns out the sun down was just an eclipse, after which the machine turns back on and the Selenites wake up.

In a bit of foreshadowing, we see a lens directing the sunlight to the machine.

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Selenite nap time. So they haven't invented batteries yet. That seems like a thing solar powered people would come up with for emergencies.
#Monsterdon #FirstMenintheMoon

So it's...perpetual motion, but solar-powered?

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Having played X-Com before, the moon people know that reverse engineering alien technology is a good way to deal with invaders and so are melting the cavorite to try to figure out how to synthesize it.

They also freeze some of their workers when their jobs are done, by putting them into some kind of cocoon that Cavor rudely messes with. He thinks this is a good way of handling unemployment, while Kate points out that they might freeze them later also, which scares her.

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And I do want to know how this is different from the normal day/night cycle

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Do the Selenites not have batteries?

The whole place goes dark during an Eclipse?

Did they not see that one coming? Eclipses can be predicted without needing calculators or anything.

Perhaps they're really strict on work breaks?

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They were doing so well with the vocal f/x and then they screwed it up

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that moment felt very what his name playing the neoconfederate in National Treasure.

Ed Harris!

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Aliens speak English!

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They talk like more polite Darleks.

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I think gen alpha should start saying "It's absolutely imperial."

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The aliens and vocal f/x are almost worth the first hour of Brit stupidity

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They've already figured out our most innovative technology and how we speak.....Humanity is fucked.

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The symbolism of giant space insects is embarrassingly Freudian

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Is that a skeleton of one of those caterpillers?

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So I also like this interior moon cave set with the weird mushrooms and weird crystals. That seems appropriately unearthly to me.

I also like the giant stop motion caterpillar that chases them... it's not a modern special effect and is chopped into the scene oddly but it is a very detailed looking monster.

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As the boys start wandering through a tunnel, we cut to the space orb, which the moon people have dragged into a cave and are crawling over it and trying to open it like a giant puzzle box. Kate is scared by this and so grabs the elephant gun and tries to deter them by shooting it.

This noise alerts the boys, who start moving toward the orb through a fields of crystals and cave mushrooms, whence they are ambushed by a giant stop motion caterpillar.

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MOONTHRA! MOONTHRA! MOONTHRA!

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#Monsterdon The selenites closely resemble Greedo from #StarWars

I also like the shot of the earth over the mountainous lunar landscape in this movie. That was pretty cool.

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Those fake crystals were unavoidable in 1960s England

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So we manage to find our helmet, but then we also find some moon people, which we call "Selenites" because that sounds more scientific than "moon people".

They look like little bug eyed green guys with horns and kind of an elephant nose, sort of like a cross between Greedo from Star Wars A New Hope and a goblin.

#monsterdon

Believable: antigravity paint, moon sphincter, fly people
Unbelievable: another named female character

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is this like our third movie where it turns out moon caves have air?

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For the Queen! Screw her and her cursed bloodline.
#Monsterdon #FirstMenintheMoon

#Monsterdon uh… your skin on your hands would be where the rest of your body would squish through on its way to pressure equilibrium with nothing but space.

A bow and arrow would work in vacuum but a gun would not......

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Roll for initiative!

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#Monsterdon HG Wells on 4/20. It’s downright poetic.

Where is the toilet in this capsule?
Do they shit in a bag like Apollo?

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So while Kate is pouting in her cottage waiting for the playwright to come back, she is visited by the bank that reports that they actually own the cottage, which angers her.

Her boyfriend has apparently chosen lunar wealth over love, and is chilling with Cavor in the space orb.

Cavor is more thoughtful and frees his geese before going on a moon mission.

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@ricci oh wait, opening the blinds somehow controls it, of course!

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He starts the car by turning the crank. She just gets in and drives away

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Obviously you wear tweed for going into Space.....

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After passive aggressively handing him thoughtful moon supplies (chickens and guns, the machinery of life and death, respectively), Kate decides to give the playwright an ultimatum where she can either go with the science weirdo and probably die or stay with her.

So, you can have either love or cool moon adventures, but not both!

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I have bad news for these people about the importance of a water cycle in getting you good mineral veins.

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Women always leavin’ the door to the lab open… amirite?
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*he* doesn't close the door either #monsterdon

please take the geese to the moon

I wanna see moon geese

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We're just going to accept that they're calling that thing a "sphere"?

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A watched furnace never boils. Wait, who’s watching the furnace?

#Monsterdon #FirstMenInTheMoon1964

Zephram Cochrane there only wanting to make money from the new wonder device......

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Oh, the old anti-gravity paste cooked up by a sweaty British eccentric in a bucolic cottage trope

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"Anti-gravity shielding" does sound like some cool Space Opera technology though.

could do without the comedy brass music though, is that an integral part of it?

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This could have been a voice over. I want creatures!
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...what do you mean this movie is in cooperation with NASA?

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So his family owns but he's behind on the rent and tuba solo

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@Terencio

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Can you really sell a house as easily as that?

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The masculine urge to buy out your neighbours' homes to isolate yourself #Monsterdon

This exposition is Boer-ing

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Tuba solo. You don't hear many of those anymore

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Why does he have to sell a place he's renting?

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Okay, so after Terf Island is excited that its on the map again for a doing a moon landing in 1899, they find an old mustached guy in an attic and he's like "yeah i was in the moon, it was 1899... I was involved in a failed business venture let me tell you about it." and then we flashback to 1899 where a lady in a gigantic hat is driving an infernal contraption, which most boomers would call a "car", to meet her fancy fiancee who is writing a play in a fancy house I think.

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uh -oh, comedy brass music...

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This needs more Peter Cushing
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Aight so we get a mystery as our modern astronauts are wandering the moon and then they find a British flag, a glove and a plaque from 1899 claiming the moon for Queen Victoria or something.

Realistically, the modern cosmonaut is like "bro the kremlin aint gonna believe this bro", but back on the earth orb, the British people are very excited because it means they did a thing they can say "neener neener we did a moon landing first!" at the rest of the world.

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Director: “Now that you’ve had 2 minutes of moon activity… strap in for 10 minutes of British office paperwork action!”

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Landed in just the right spot to find that flag. It's uncanny. #monsterdon

I wish there were a "UN Space Agency", that wild 60s Star Trek idealism....

Instead we've got some supervillain filling our skies with crap....btw, has anything happened in this movie since the Moon?

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Enough talking to British people, we know nothing....

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See that spaceship around the Moon with people on it?

The next one to the Moon will be Chinese....

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First moon in the men

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Recursive moon in the moon #monsterdon

This one is a movie I saw countless times on TV, and had the comic adaptation memorized growing up.

So, It's good to see it again through everybody's comments here.

#Monsterdon #FirstMenintheMoon

🦖#MONSTERDON 🎞️

Regarding the Killer Katerpillar with bones. There is not really a problem here. On Earth, it has no bones. On the moon, another species, with bones, developed the same morphology via Parallel Evolution.

Look it up if it will help you sleep.

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This concludes my #monsterdon thread. Thanks to @Taweret for hosting! Check her profile later for the forthcoming poll for the next monsterdon movie experience!"

@floatybirb Ignoring the fact that he had no idea how he was going to eat, or sleep, or go to the bathroom, we can be sure he died an agonizing death. As his head cold infected the bugs and they all died bit by bit, he had a choice: eat dead bug people, or starve to death. Either way, the Professor's end was pretty gruesome. Maybe a few bug people figured out who gave them the plague and managed to kill him as thanks before they died. #monsterdon

I still theorize that the chickens were dismembered and strewn about the cabin during that violent landing.

At best, the Selenites took 'em when they were dismantling the space dodecahedron.

#Monsterdon #FirstMenintheMoon

Thanks for the fun, @Taweret!

This was my favorite Monsterdon so far! It's so good we collectively invest our Sunday nights in these...uh....cultural gems...or something....anyway it's good is the thing

#Monsterdon #FirstMenInTheMoon