Fantastic Voyage

Fantastic Voyage boasted great special effects for its day. It also is a neat fantasy thriller being a race against the clock with a saboteur on board.

Agent Charles Grant (Stephen Boyd) has been bought in fo a secret mission. Jan Benes is a scientist who has been injured while escaping from Russia. He has a blood clot on the brain.

In order to save Benes life. American scientists will miniaturize a nuclear submarine, inject it into Benes' body and fix the clot. They have 60 minutes to do this before the submarine returns to its normal size.

Grant is warned that the surgeon Dr Duval might also be an assassin. Once they get inside the body, it is a bumpy ride and nothing seems to go according to plan.

Director Richard Fleischer manages to stay on the right side of camp. The film takes a while to get going but once inside the body, it is a nicely crafted and well paced movie with lots of suspense.

Raquel Welch is suitable eye candy. The special effects as the submarine goes through the bloodstream has a psychedelic touch. It is just a shame that the villain is a little too obvious.

To answer everyone's question about how did Issac Asimov resolve the Proteus issue at the end of the movie; in his novelization of the film (which is a very good sci-fi book on its own), the sub comes out with everyone else in the teardrop along with "a very surprised white blood cell." The scene with Donald Pleasance gave me chills when I saw it as a child and having recently seen it again, it still is creepy. I think this is due to Pleasance's performance more than anything else. I do have to say that seeing Stephen Boyd being driven around the LA Sports Center (subbing for the top secret research center; they had to have everything removed by 5:30 in the afternoon the week they filmed there because sporting events were going on at night) in a golf cart seemed a bit silly but I guess that showed how important he was. With these kinds of films, one has to ignore all certain types of questions about how come this did or didn't happen when the scientists did this and just relax and enjoy it.

Back in 1966, long, long before the world was turned upside down and inside out on Sept. 11, the world was a very different place. The movies were quite different and science fiction pictures depended more on good writing and less on special effects. Partly because the phrase "computer generated" was years away. In 1966, 20th Century Fox released a very clever, well-written and innovative movie called, "Fantastic Voyage". The on-screen foreword informed the viewers that they were going to be taken to a place that no one had been before, and see things that had been, until that point in time, never been seen by human beings. I'm sure that this film had its fair share of technical advisors putting in a lot more than their 2 cents worth to make sure that the film accurately depicted human anatomy. The plot... A scientist, Jan Benes, has defected from behind the Iron Curtain, has, with the help of Grant, one of our top CIA operatives. Benes has decided to give his expertise with Miniaturization to the US. The "other side" has no choice but to try to kill him before he can breathe a word of it. The assassination attempt is made, but Benes barely survives, falling into a coma. After the movie's credits finish rolling, Grant is brought to a secret, gov't location. There, he meets Gen. Carter, who is in charge of the CMDF - Combined Miniature Deterent Forces. They can shrink anything; cars, planes, tanks, people way down in size, thus enabling them to become unseen military weapons. The problem: both sides have this capability. Another problem is... there is a time limit. They can only stay miniaturized for 60 minutes. After that the object or person automatically starts to grow. Benes had the answer to this problem, but he will need special medical treatment to regain consciousness. That's where Grant and a special team of doctors, technicians and such will have to go into action. After Grant meets the rest of the team, the surgeons in charge, Dr. Duvall and Dr. Michaels go over their plan to remove the blood clot in Benes' brain. They will board a special Navy submarine, called The Proteus, be miniaturized and injected into Benes' body by hypodermic needle. Naturally, the crew runs into Murphy's Law and a job that was expected to take 10 to 15 minutes takes much, much longer. The ending in the movie differs quite a bit from the book written by Isaac Azimov (I know because I read it... twice), and there are a number sub-plot twists that made me shake my head, but seeing Ms. Welch in that wet suit made it more than worth while. I consider this movie to be one of my very favorite sci-fi/fantasy flicks from the '60s. If you haven't seen it yet, for whatever reason, I can suggest you spend the 100 minutes with some very fine actors, some of whom are no longer with us, such as Stephen Boyd (Grant), Edmund O'Brien (Gen. Carter) and Arthur O'Connell who was in charge of the medical team, and others like Arthur Kennedy (Dr. Duvall), Donald Pleasence (Dr. Michaels) and last but not least, the ever-beautiful, Raquel Welch as Cora Peterson, Dr. Duval's technical assistant. One last thought.... if this movie was remade with present-day technology, i.e. computer generated imaging and the like, there's no telling how it would dazzle the viewers' eye.

"Fantastic Voyage" follows a surgical team of three scientists: Dr Peter Duval, the top brain surgeon in the country (Arthur Kennedy); Cora Peterson, his technical assistant (Raquel Welch); Dr Michaels, chief of the medical mission (Donald Pleasance), plus the skipper of the ship (William Redfield) and Grant (Stephen Boyd) the security agent for security purposes...

The sealed vessel—The Proteus—is reduced down by a secret branch called CMDF (Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces) and injected into one artery of a defecting Russian scientist who has suffered brain injury and he's in a coma from an assassination attempt... The crew must navigate to the scientist's brain (within exactly 60 minutes) where Dr Duval will attempt to dissolve the coagulum with a laser beam… After that everything starts growing back to its original size…

"Fantastic Voyage" is a film of authentic wonder: An ocean of life, the corpuscles, the heart, the lungs of the human body through which the crew move are exquisitely designed in great detail with artistic quality...

The plot creates unceasing moments of suspense as the ship and its crew are continually threatened by the scientist's natural defenses: white corpuscles, reticular fibers, antibodies and other factors… Leonard Rosenman's futuristic score nicely complements the adventure on screen with the strange sound of the human blood rushing through arteries, veins, rhythmical muscular movements, and of course, the sabotage occurred on board…

With two Oscar Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Art Direction, 'Fatastic Voyage' is certainly the most unusual journey into the human body, where the 'medieval philosophers were right. Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity, between outer and inner space. And there's no limit to either.'

An important diplomat is dying, Scientists hatch a plan to miniaturise a submarine team, and send them inside to attempt to carry out a life saving procedure.

I had all but forgotten about this film, and haven't seen it for years, as I watch it, it's almost sixty years old, it truly was original, ambitious, and way ahead of so many films at the time, and many more that followed.

There is plenty of wonderful, incomprehensible gobbledegook throughout, all of it is said with absolute sincerity, equally crazy and zany are the wonderfully trippy special effects.

It's still an impressive looking film, and I don't just mean the special effects, but the sets and costumes are all quite elaborate, credit to the production team for being so bold and creative.

Fans of Raquel Welch will enjoy seeing her here I'm sure, I came here because of Donald Pleasance, one of those actors I could watch in anything.

Definitely worth a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.

8/10.