Matka maan keskipisteeseen

I can attest to the feelings expressed by the last couple commentators about 1959's "Journey To The Center Of The Earth." This is a wonderful family film from the bygone Eisenhower-era of the 1950s. Even though I've been watching it on TV since I was a kid in the sixties, I'd only seen pan&scan versions, and it wasn't until I got it letterboxed on laserdisc that I finally saw what a big-screen entertainment this movie was meant to be. It has wonderful scope and a score by Bernard Herrmann that takes you right down into the bowels of the earth. Listen to it and you'll notice what I mean, as the movie progresses the music keeps going into a lower and lower register. Five organs were used, including one meant for a Cathedral. (The complete original recordings of the score are available on CD from Varese Sarabande.) This movie also has the great James Mason in it, so you know it's got to be good. Sure it's long in the telling and takes a while to get you down that extinct volcano in Iceland, but it's fun all the way with great special effects work by L.B. Abbott and matte paintings by Emil Kosa Jr. The only way to watch this movie is in wide-screen and it's long past due that 20th Century Fox puts this out on DVD in a letterboxed anamorphic transfer. Let's hope that they do it soon.