Flight of the Lost Balloon (1961) **

Fantasy enjoys considerable leeway if its fantastical elements make up for lack of character development and narrative scope. This Jules Verne rip-off – it appeared a few months before Five Weeks in a Balloon – hardly even qualifies as a travelog given the background is simply superimposed and the various locales simplistic in the extreme. And not much point employing condors as a tool of attack unless you’ve got Ray Harryhausen to hand. Even with gorillas and cannibals on the loose and villains putting the heroine on the rack it still falls short of the requirements of a standard Saturday matinee.

Explorer Sir Hubert Warrington (Douglas Kennedy) is imprisoned in darkest Africa for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of the fabled Cleopatra treasure. News of his misfortune reaches London courtesy of a character known only as the Hindu (James Lanphier) who hitches a ride back on a balloon navigated by scientist Dr Joseph Faraday (Marshall Thompson) and carrying as passenger Warrington’s fiancée Ellen (Mala Powers) daughter of financier Sir Adam Burton (Robert Gillette).

Since Ellen is closer in years to Joseph than her fiancé and they are going to be thrown together through trial and tribulation you can assume come journey’s end there might be a tussle among the men for her affections. The Hindu has no intention of helping rescue Warrington since he has been behind his imprisonment. Instead, the Hindu reckons Warrington will spill the beans if he sees his fiancée tortured.

Warrington laughs out loud at such presumption and claims he only romanced Ellen to get backing from her father. But, of course, you reckon, he would say that. Except when she is captured and tortured he doesn’t bat an eyelid. Luckily, this is the kind of picture where guards are easily overcome and escape is a foregone conclusion. Plus, since aforementioned fiancé has proved himself unworthy, the way is clear for a Joseph-Ellen match.

Writer-director Nathan Juran, an Oscar-winner for art direction, has done much better than this.  Siege of the Saxons (1963), First Men on the Moon (1964) and East of Sudan (1964) are all vast improvements on his debut so clearly he learned some lessons. What he needed to brush up on was obvious, better locales, more interesting characters, and more intriguing narrative rather than stock versions of all three.

There’s not much Mala Powers (Fear No More, 1961) or Marshall Thompson (Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion, 1965) can bring to such cliché under-written roles and the Culturally Inappropriate Police would be on the case of James Lanphier.

And, unfortunately, it doesn’t even have enough going for it to earn a place in the much-prized so-bad-it’s-good category.

I watched it so you don’t have to.