Master Of The World (1961)

In the 1880s, an inventor (Vincent Price) of a flying airship takes it upon himself to rid the world of war by demanding governments abandon all vessels and instruments of war. He plans to accomplish this by dropping bombs from the air on the vessels and weapons below. On his maiden voyage however, he finds himself saddled with four unwilling passengers. Loosely based on two novels, ROBUR THE CONQUEROR and MASTER OF THE WORLD by Jules Verne with a screenplay by Richard Matheson and directed by William Witney. This ambitious adventure film by the low budget American International pictures attempts to emulate prior and highly successful film versions of Verne novels, notably AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS in its visuals and 20,000 LEAGUES UDNER THE SEA in Price's character, a stand in for Captain Nemo. It's a handsome looking film and the ship itself (the production designer and art director is Daniel Haller) is a beauty. But the film also uses a lot of stock footage which doesn't match very well with the rest of the film and some of the special effects are pretty cheesy. Still, the film doesn't demand too much from the viewer and it's simplistically entertaining. The best thing about it is a sensational underscore by Les Baxter. With Charles Bronson, Henry Hull, Mary Webster (THE TIN STAR), David Frankham and Richard Harrison who would shortly go to Italy where he became a big sword and sandal star.