to rework Kneale's script. According to Kneale: "They wanted to jazz it up, make it funnier than I had imagined". He says this inspired the casting of Lionel Jeffries. Kneale said in the book, Judd's character "was a blundering creature and it seemed important to keep that". The writer says he knew that a country would get to the Moon relatively soon and discover there were no Selenites. This is why he added to the script that the Selenites were wiped out by a cold virus carried to the Moon by the professor, an idea Kneale says he took directly from The War of the Worlds. Director This was the third collaboration between producer Charles Schneer and director Nathan Juran. Schneer said Juran "was an excellent man for what he did, but he wasn't an actor's director. Many of our actors were used to more help from a director than he gave them. They felt a little adrift when they were expected to get on with their work without any great directorial assist. Jerry wasn't very patient with actors. He couldn't tolerate actors who wanted to know what their character's motivation was. He wanted to get on with the job he was hired to do". Casting Schneer cast Judd from his performance in The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961). Edward Judd was under contract to Columbia Pictures. "I had never done anything like that at the time, so I thought it would be fun", Judd said. "Since Lionel was already a great chum of mine, I knew we would have laughs on the set". Martha Hyer's character was not in the original drafts of the scripts but was introduced later. Designs Ray Harryhausen used NASA blueprints as inspiration for the UN's lunar lander when he was designing the film's sets. Sculptor Bryan Kneale constructed the Selenites from Harryhausen's designs. Spacesuits used The spacesuit type worn by the film's UN Astronauts is actually the Windak high-altitude pressure suit, developed for the Royal Air Force. Each was fitted with a 1960s-type aqualung cylinder worn as a backpack. These pressure suits would also be used in two Doctor Who stories: William Hartnell's final story "The Tenth Planet" (1966) and the Patrick Troughton-era "The Wheel in Space" (1968). They also appear in the original Star Wars trilogy as the costumes for Bossk and Bo Shek. Shooting Filming began on 1 October 1963. Schneer