Don’t Make Me Do It without My Fez On

Sometimes you just want to watch a silly Irwin Allen adventure, so I queued up Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). It fit the bill.

It stars Cedric Hardwicke as a Victorian inventor and aeronaut. He has invented a balloon that can fly without dropping ballast or releasing gas. The Jules Verne novel this is based on probably goes into a little more detail. With his pilot Fabian, he plans to fly across Africa, from Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. To get funding from a newspaper publisher, he agrees to take along the publishers playboy nephew, Red Buttons. Before they leave, the government asks them to plant the British flag at a spot on the Volta, to keep it out of the hands of slavers. They are required to take along a bumptious general, Richard Haydn.

In Zanzibar, Buttons frees a slave girl, BarBara Luna, which leads to them beating a hasty bon voyage. They pick up a chimp somewhere as well. Then they land in an imaginary kingdom where Billy Gilbert is Sultan. In case you don’t remember Gilbert, he was an old-time character actor whose signature bit was the extended sneeze (!). He is in no way African. Which is funny, because our aeronautics also run into Peter Lorre as an Arab slave trader, who is selling American schoolteacher Barbara Eden. Of course, they wind up with Eden and Lorre.

Now, we have Luna, who owes her life to Buttons, but is making goo-goo eyes at Fabian. Eden seems to be getting on well with Buttons. But nobody else is, because he keeps screwing things up. When they try to decide what to do with him, Lorre is always behind his back making throat cutting and hanging motions. Really, the best part of the movie.

No one will be surprised if I report that this is a deeply racist and generally fucked up movie. Ostensibly anti-slave trade, they don’t seem to mind Luna deciding the Buttons owns her because he saved her from slavery (?). There are very few black extras and not one with a speaking role (“Ungawah” doesn’t count). Also, the jungle is particularly unconvincing, and the stock footage boring.

On the other hand, the whole adventure thing is pretty well carried out. The balloon, with it’s ornate boat-like gondola and steam-punk hydrogen generator, is fun. I’m not sure how you feel about character actors, but we enjoyed Gilbert, incongruous as his role was. And Lorre was a hoot.

And finally, I got to watch this wearing my fez, which I put on for any movie that gives me the excuse. And that was all I needed.