A low-budget effort in the cycle, Master of the World attempts to combine, in pretty much even doses, the comic approach of the Around the World in 80 Days with the more serious line of attack used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The end result confirms, at least in my mind, the conventional wisdom of emphasizing one aspect or the other and making the final product either fish or fowl. This is a much better film than From the Earth to the Moon, I suppose, but still a big disappointment.

It all sounded very promising on paper, I’m sure: Vincent Price in a Captain Nemo-type role, budding action star Charles Bronson as the hero, a thoughtful screenplay by Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, House of Usher, The Devil Rides Out). The film had plenty of other things going for it, as well. The production crew, for example (including designer Daniel Haller and costumer Marjorie Corso), is pretty much the same one that was making AIP’s wonderful Edgar Allen Poe films during this period. In fact, this movie feels a bit like one of the Poe films; so much so that it’s often mistakenly attributed to director Roger Corman (who was not involved with Master at all). The man who did make the film was William Witney, a great action director who was responsible for the best of the Republic Studios cliffhangers. Unfortunately, this script had no action. And the elaborate miniatures, crafted by Wah Chang, Tim Barr, Gene Warren, and the rest of the gang at Projects Unlimited, are so badly photographed that all their hard work comes to naught. This is pretty much the way things seem to have gone on Master of the World—tons of great elements on hand, but nothing managed to jell properly for some reason.

The story line is a fusion of several Verne books, including 1886's Robur the Conqueror, 1896’s Clipper of the Clouds, and 1904's Master of the World. After a mysterious booming voice sounds over Pennsylvania's Great Eyrie (it was North Carolina in the book) government agent Bronson hires aeronaut Henry Hull to help him investigate. While sailing over the crater in one of his hot air balloons, the investigators are shot down and taken prisoner by the enigmatic Robur (Price) and held captive, 20,000 Leagues style, aboard his futuristic airship the Albatross.

While some careless reviewers have described this film as a thinly disguised, low-rent remake of the earlier Disney movie, most of Master of the World’s similarities to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are attributable to Verne himself. Though the great success of Disney’s film undoubtedly helped get this one made, the Robur stories were, in reality, harmless examples of Jules Verne plagiarizing himself late in his career. One scene in particular illustrates what’s wrong with Master of the World. At one point, Charles Bronson and another fellow find themselves dangling precariously beneath the airship on ropes, thousands of feet above the open sea. This ought to have been a thrilling moment (and even as it stands it’s probably the most memorable scene in the film). Inexplicably however, the sequence is played for laughs rather than for thrills. The (somewhat bogus) aerial footage is intercut with the zany antics of ethnic comedian Vito Scotti, bumbling in the kitchen. Now, the 20,000 Leagues approach would have segregated all of the funny business into designated comic relief sequences, and the Around the World methodology would have given the entire picture a light, comic tone, so that the clowning wouldn’t have stuck out so bad. As it is, we end up with a Fireside picture too silly to be taken seriously and too somber to be funny.

Composer Les Baxter seems to have realized this difficulty because he did his darnedest to make up for it in the music. Wildly epic in spots, the score nevertheless shifts into a Victor Young Around the World voice in many places—hoping, perhaps, to remind us of the more successful blend of whimsy and adventure we responded to there. Yet I think the challenge was a bit too much even for Baxter, and the unevenness of the movie is reflected in the score. Still, it’s a bravura piece of work and it’s probably the most enduring aspect of this ultimately unsuccessful film. (The recent video release of Master restores a long-missing theatrical prologue—a pre-credits sequence of “wacky” silent-movie flying machines that apes the original Edward R. Murrow opening to Around the World. This is just one more clue as to where the AIP filmmakers were getting their inspiration).

Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff would help to revive the Fireside genre in the 1970s with the The Land That Time Forgot, first in a series of Edgar Rice Burroughs adventures. And AIP’s Poe unit would take another stab at Victorian SF four years later with War Gods of the Deep. Up to this point though, I’m afraid their efforts showed more promise than results. Master of the World has its admirers and I guess any vintage trip to Jules Verne-land has its pleasures these days…but I rate it a misfire myself.