Robert J. Maxwell Jonathan Swift's novel, "Gulliver's Travels," is a classic satire from 1726. I once managed to get around to reading his "A Modest Proposal", in which -- apparently in all sincerity -- he suggests that the problem of overpopulation and malnutrition in his native Ireland can be cured simply by having the Irish eat their own children.Well, that's what satire is, I guess. A send up of current social issues with an element of viciousness that's usually absent from a mere parody. Swift must have found the mores of his time easy targets, just by reducing their characteristics to the absurd. Are the Irish causing you problems? Get rid of them.In "The 3 Worlds of Gulliver" the problems dealt with are (1) the causes of war among the tiny Lilliputians, and (2) science versus religion among the giant Brobdingnagians. I think some other adventures were deleted. I seem to remember Yahoos and Houyhnhnms and maybe one or two others. But the elisions are okay. Just two of the strange worlds Gulliver visits are enough for one movie. (The third world of the title is his home in England.) I don't know that this story has the same impact as it originally did. Maybe you need some kind of Skeleton Key to pick up the more arcane references, as with "Finnegans Wake," "Alice in Wonderland," or "The Master and Margarita." However, the broader points of the satire should be clear enough to everyone except the kids, who will be tickled by it because it's such a colorful fairy tale.Kerwin Mathews is an idealistic English doctor, Lemuel Gulliver who is washed overboard at sea and finds himself on an island inhabited by tiny people, the vaguely Arabic Lilliputians. Once the little people get over their astonishment -- because compared to them Gulliver is really HUGE -- they try to talk him into using his immense strength to destroy their enemies on a neighboring island. Man, are the Lilliputians petty, especially the sputtering king. "I have abiding faith in the trustworthiness and reliability of any man that I can kill," he announces. He's dying to go to war and kill his enemies because they open their eggs from the big side rather than the small side, as civilized Lilliputians do. The perceptive adults in the audience are, at this point, permitted to explain to the children that sometimes wars are fought for silly reasons. He wants a warmonger for a Prime Minister, although, "I don't need a Prime Minister to fight a war. I need one to blame if it goes wrong." Here, please explain to the children the meaning of the phrase, "The buck stops there." Gulliver promises to end the war and he does, by stealing the enemy's fleet so they can never attack Lilliput. This doesn't satisfy the king because it wasn't a proper war. How can you have a war without sacrifice and heroism? And besides, since Gulliver robbed the enemy of their fleet, we now have no need for Admirals and everybody in the Navy is now out of a job.A disgusted Gulliver finally manages to get off Lilliput but then lands on Brobdingnagia, a land of superstitious giants living a Medieval life style. (J. B. S. Haldane once wrote a famous essay explaining why giant humans were physically impossible.) At first they treat him well, an amusing toy for one of their gentle children, a pretty young girl named Glumdalclitch. But soon, after he beats the self-important king in a game of chess, and exposes the court magician as an ignoramus, he falls out of favor. He's smarter than they are. After all, he's a doctor and knows chemistry and science. The Brobdingnagians believe in witches and some of the stunts pulled by Gulliver -- treating the Queen's upset stomach with a mixture of opium and paragoric -- smack not just of elitism but of witchcraft. Besides, there is still that damme chess game. Who but a witch could check mate the King? So the Royal Court tries to burn him. Glumdalclitch makes it possible for him to escape.Gulliver barely makes it back to England. We see him on the beach with his bride, who was swept up in his adventures. It's not a happy ending. Nobody finds satisfaction right in his own back yard, like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz." His wife asks what will happen to the Lilliputians and the benighted Brobdingnagians. "They'll always be with us," he admits with chagrin. "And what of Glumdalclitch", the truly benign and compassionate kid who looked after them? "Waiting to be born," answers Gulliver solemnly. I don't think Dean Swift would have been surprised to find that 280 years later, she's still waiting. Maybe, as I age, my emotional apparatus is becoming more primitive or something, but I found that final exchange rather moving.There are many special visual effects but only two instances of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animals, one a squirrel and the other a crocodile. This isn't a monster movie. Bernard Hermann's score doesn't sound much like that of a monster movie either -- no galumphing BROOP broop, BROOP broop. It echoes the light-hearted quality of the story itself and the composer only rarely lapses into his usual effects. I think it's the best score Hermann wrote for any of his fantasies.

Spikeopath The Three Worlds of Gulliver is produced out of Columbia Pictures and is directed by Jack Sher. It stars Kerwin Matthews as Lemuel Gulliver, June Thorburn as his fiancée Elizabeth, with support coming from Basil Sydney (The Emperor of Lilliput), Grégoire Aslan (King Brob), Mary Ellis (Queen), Charles Lloyd Pack (Prime Minister Makovan) & child actor Sherry Alberoni as Glumdalclitch. Filmed in England and Spain, it features stop-motion animation and special visual effects by Superdynamation genius Ray Harryhausen. Sher & Arthur Ross adapt for the screen with a loose reworking of the 18th-century English novel Gulliver's Travels written by Jonathan Swift. And music maestro Bernard Herrmann provides the score.Swift's biting satirical novel has been watered down and given a romantic edge for the family market. That said, as the kids are enjoying the froth and tickle, the adults will note that there's just enough caustic comment in the piece to get the message across. This adaptation has slimmed down the four parts of Swift's work to just the two; Lilliput land of the little people and Brobdingnag land of the giants. With our intrepid normal sized hero Gulliver and his stowaway fiancée Elizabeth under threat either way.While the script has its pleasing moments it is still only serving as a bridging work for Harryhausen's effects to be shown. Be it the giant and tiny people sequences or the perils that come to our undersized protagonists courtesy of a Gator and a Squirrel, it's these that the children will find beguiling. This, however, can not be said for Harryhausen aficionados or adults more accustomed to more modern advancements. For this is bottom rung for Harryhausen, not bad at all, yet although there's a charm here, and no one should ever dismiss the painstaking amount of time it took him to weave it together, the work is creaky and lacking the dynamism so befitting his best work.Major bonus' come with the swirling and pounding score from Herrmann and the vibrant performance of Matthews. The role of Gulliver was first offered to Danny Kaye, which naturally makes sense given Kaye's previous work on Hans Christian Andersen some years earlier. That it was also offered to Jack Lemmon, tho, makes no sense at all. Anyway, Matthews got the gig, and following on from his fine work in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, he laid down a marker in the fantasy adventure genre that secured him fondness from legions of fans throughout the years. A safe, colourful and pleasant enough piece if ultimately not one for most fantasy adventure fans to revisit often. 6/10

whpratt1 Never viewed this 1960 film dealing with Gulliver's travels and found it very enjoyable to view along with excellent photography. The story starts out with Dr. Lemuel Gulliver, (Kerwin Williams) having a fight with his girlfriend, Elizabeth, (June Thorburn) about his wanting to go aboard a ship as a doctor and she does not want him to leave. The ship sails and becomes shipwrecked and Gulliver finds himself in a completely different land where there are miniature people and he appears to them as a huge giant who must be captured and tied up. The rest of the story will hold your interest from the very beginning to the end and I almost forgot, a war was almost started over cutting an egg on the top and other people who cut their eggs on the bottom of the shell. Enjoy.

Sergeiii Frankly, I didn't even expect a serious treatment of the novel - I thought it would do to Swift what other movies were doing to Verne and Wells at the time. And I could have lived with that perfectly. Unfortunately, "The 3 Worlds of Gulliver" does not achieve this level of entertainment. First of all, the actor playing Gulliver is a bore. Well, he probably would have gotten away with it hadn't his part been so badly written. The Gulliver character is not discovering anything in this movie - he is a patronizing and moralistic missionary man; basically just out there to explain the achievements of his 'modern' culture to the primitives. So, don't expect adventure, expect sermons.Secondly, the jokes aren't funny. They are all about how stupid foreign cultures are and how much they need a lesson in democracy. The only really funny character is a young gothic girl who has a short appearance towards the end of the movie (and the actress is not even credited!). Thirdly, the production values are poor. Ray Harryhausen worked on this - and it hardly shows. The cheesy special effects are OK with me, but the whole doesn't even look attractive in a nostalgic sort of way.Check this out if you must, maybe your kids will like it. But if you have respect for your children, show them the Max Fleischer cartoon. It's ten times funnier and far less pretentious.