Starring Kerwin Mathews, Jo Morrow, June Thorburn, Lee Patterson, Gregoire Aslan
Directed by Jack Sher
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
Dr. Lemuel Gulliver sets off to earn fame and fortune as a ship's physician, but falls overboard and ends up on islands inhabited by races of tiny people and tremendous giants.
Ray Harryhausen provides the special effects for this adaptation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, but it's a very condensed version of the novel, omitting all but Gulliver's first two voyages, and adding story elements missing from Swift, although some of the famed author's satire is preserved. There's only two stop-motion animated creatures in the film from Harryhausen, a ravenous alligator and a squirrel, who menace Gulliver in the land of the giants, but the combination of rear projection, oversized and undersized props, and other effects, are very finely done as well to create the illusion of a giant Gulliver in Lilliput and a tiny one in Brobdingnag. Mathews, returning for his second Harryhausen film after The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad, is just fine as Gulliver, he's supported by a fine roster of distinguished players, and Bernard Herrmann's score is most welcome. However, the picture drags a bit from time to time, and could have used more of Harryhausen's fantastic creatures.
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