When my brother and I were kids we saw a strange movie. He’s obsessed with finding out the name of it, but neither of us has had any luck. I want to surprise him by giving him a copy of it for Christmas. People on this board seem to know a LOT, so I’m turning to you for help.
The movie is about two children who are granted a wish by a computer. They wish to go to the moon. The computer says they have to give it a gift - something “as beautiful as the earth to a returning astronaut.” They bring it a kaleidoscope. The computer then tells them if they go to the moon, they can’t come back, because they didn’t wish for a round trip. So they watch the rocket launch without them.
There are a lot of odd things in this movie. At one point the children get thrown into prison, which frightened me. I also vaguely remember them running through a marketplace, and someone throwing tomatoes.
We saw this in the early 1970’s. My brother thinks it may have been a foreign film. It wasn’t an obscure film at the time. It was advertised on television.
It would certainly help if you could name at least one actor or actress… Then you can just go over to http://www.imdb.com and look at each movie they were in.
I think you’re not remembering the plot of the film accurately. Talk with your brother again and see if you can get a more accurate and complete description of the film. (You know, this could be a very confused description of the film Santa Claus Conquerors the Martians.)
This sounds more like a made-for-tv-movie more (or one of those After School Movies) than a theatrical-release-type movie, IMHO. Maybe that would explain the obscurity and the difficulty finding it.
I checked Wendell’s link, doing two searches: “moon” and “computer”. I didn’t look through every listing, just scanned for likely titles and dates in the early 70s. Didn’t find anything. Might be there, but I just didn’t see it; or it could be an After School Special episode.
I came across an Indian film made in 1967 called “Trip to the Moon.” On IMDB it does have a listing, though it only lists the director and actors. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a plot synopsis, so I can’t tell if this is the film you saw.
Do you remember if the film was color or B&W?
Were the actors foreign?
Were there subtitles or was it dubbed?
I’ve tried several search engines, but came up empty-handed. If you do find the title, please post it. Now I’m really curious to see what it’s called.
Wendell - I’ve seen Santa Claus Conquers The Martians and it’s not the movie I’m looking for.
The movie I saw was set on earth. Except for the talking computer and the moon rocket, everything was very un-science fiction-y. The dialog was all in English, but I think it might have been a foreign film because the town and marketplace looked strange and unfamiliar. From what I remember the rocket launch was probably standard NASA stock footage.
I saw this at the Malco Theater in Hot Springs, Arkansas. If I still lived there I could go through the newspaper micro-film at the library, looking at all the movie listings for the early 70’s. Or I could get a life.