Stars: Kerwin Mathews, Jo Morrow, June Thorburn

Director: Jack Sher

Summary: This live-action adaptation of Jonathan Swift's 1726 classic is a lively take on the oft-told tale. The swashbuckling Doctor Gulliver (Kerwin Matthews) sets sail for fame and fortune, but finds adventure, romance and danger instead in the lands of Brobdingnag and Lilliput, places where the inhabitants are very large and very small, respectively. The special effects were created by Ray Harryhausen who utilizes his Superdynamation photographic process.

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The 1960 children's feature The Three Worlds of Gulliverbrings to life the first two sections of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travelsin a version which, while sanitised for youngsters, retains some of the satire and intelligence of the original. It also boasts excellent-for-the-time special effects by Ray Harryhausen, though the effects wizard keeps his trademark stop-motion animation to a minimum, featuring it only when Gulliver (Kerwin Mathews from 1958's The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad), has problems with an outsized crocodile and a foraging squirrel. Instead, Harryhausen concentrates on portraying the miniature Lilliputians and the giant Brobdingnagians, and the results still impress over 40 years on.

This is a colourful, witty, charming film, though it is also heavily Americanised, the dialogue anachronistic and some of the accents decidedly trans-Atlantic. Mathews is a little stiff in the role of a British doctor, but English actress June Thorburn makes a spirited and beautiful Elizabeth, Gulliver's fiancée who in this version comes along for the journey. While the 1996 TV mini-series Gulliver's Travelscomes much closer to Swift's intentions Harryhausen's version will delight younger viewers and has the advantage of a beguiling score from the great Bernard Herrmann. Some viewers may be startled to learn that in the 17th century there were Spanish mountains just outside London, and that Wapping was just a minute's walk from the beach.

On the DVD:The Three Worlds of Gulliveron disc has good mono sound while the picture, which is anamorphically enhanced and presented at 1.77:1, is of variable quality. There are very distracting fleck marks where the emulsion has been damaged on the print in many shots featuring Gulliver against a bright blue sky. These really should have been restored before transfer to DVD.

Although the packaging refers to "The Ray Harryhausen Chronicles" featurette, this is actually the same superb 57-minute TV documentary which has appeared on other Harryhausen titles. Everyone should have it in their collection once. "This is Dynamation" is a three-minute special effects promo for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Also included is a five-minute original "making of" featurette and trailers for The Three Worlds of Gulliver(1.70:1 letterboxed), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad(4:3) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger(1.77:1 anamorphic), as well as basic filmographies of Jack Sher, Arthur Ross, Ray Harryhausen and Kerwin Mathews. --Gary S Dalkin

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	This Is Dynamation Featurette, 3 Worlds Of Gulliver Featurette, The Harryhausen Chronicles, Filmographies, Trailers
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1960
Release Date:	April 22, 2002
Runtime:	94 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C D R 10195
Keywords:	Family, Worlds, General, Wide, Screen, Three, Gulliver, Childrens
Genre:	Childrens