Too slow a build to too little a payoff... (Spoilers)

The film spent 45 minutes on character introduction and plot setup before getting to the moon. Afterward, it began a slow build and gradually introduced the world of the Selenites. That'd be fine except that the action was delayed an additional 15 minutes by an unnecessary pre-introduction sequence set in the present.

Since the Selenites were on a different sphere throughout much of the movie, there were no teasers or tension building scenes that accompanied other sci-fi movies; no 5 second glimpse of the giant octopus or police officers investigating mysterious cattle disappearances. The moon creatures really only had an impact in the last third of the film. By the time they finally showed up, I was already growing impatient for the film to be over.

They really should have left out the contemporary sequences and just started things off in 1899. A 90 minute runtime would have been just fine for this type of film. I still enjoyed the world of wonder they created, but it just came too late in the picture.