Fantastic Voyage (1966)

the audience applauded

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

An Exercise In Nonsense

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

As a child I was given chores to do around the house. My least favorite chore was pulling weeds in my backyard. I would complain to my Father who would answer me this way. "See how much you can get done in an hour!" How much can one get done in an hour? When it comes to sci-fi movies, Twentieth Century Fox has it's share of Sci-Fi classic films. The Lost World, Poseidon Adventure, Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and Avatar just to name a few. Fantastic Voyage which could mean anything just by it's title alone. Could be a movie about the fifteenth century explorer's (Columbus) with his three ships floating to the new world? Maybe the movie is about the migration of the settlers in the mid Nineteenth century America? Maybe it's a film about a lost dog seeking out his or her owner? My imagination wasn't even close. Fantastic Voyage is a movie about shrinking 4 scientists to microscopic size in a submarine. Then injecting them inside a human body and do inverted brain surgery to remove a blood clot. I'm there! The concept is so fresh and out of the ordinary, just the thought of looking inside the most complex equipment ever produced by the big bang theory has my curiosity racing. Man is the center of the universe as stated by the submarine's surgeon Dr. Duvall (Arthur Kennedy). But lets backup and set up the scenario. The U.S. and Soviet Union have developed a method that can shrink matter. The power to miniaturize anything, but for only a short while. Professor Benes pronounced Banash (our injured scientist) who escaped to the west has the formula to extend the miniature process for an indefinite time. An assassination attempt and a car crash causes the elderly scientist to bang his head causing him to fall into a coma. Benes is rushed off to an underground secret complex C.M.D.F.(Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces). Grant (Stephen Boyd) was hired and briefed by General Carter (Edmund O'Brien) and Colonel Reid (Arthur O'Connell) to find out which one of the crew members will sabotage the voyage/surgery. Grant was hired as the communications officer and will handle the wireless. The Ship itself is a cute curvy vessel . Reminds of the board game called TROUBLE with the Pop O' Matic bubble which protrudes at the top of the submarine piloted by Captain Bill Owens (William Redfield). The curvaceous Raquel Welch (Cora Peterson) will handle the laser gun with Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy) earlier mentioned, and rounding out the crew is Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasence) as an expert in the anatomy. The miniaturization process is a sight to behold as the special effects take center stage. The fearless crew travels from the bowels of the arteriosclerosis fistula to detour through the heart to cause cardiac arrest to the patient. Many obstacles in this journey through the human anatomy with one hour to get the job done before our crew begins to grow back to normal size. One of the most imaginative stories ever seen on the big screen. It's no wonder this movie won an Academy Award for special effects in 1966. I was 9 when I first watched this movie. The next day, as was the case in those days, when using ones own imagination rather then electronic devises to pass the time away. My friends and I would rein-act the movie. My younger sister Lori wanted to play the part of Miss Peterson and in retrospect Lori's acting job was far superior than Raquel Welch's. Watch out for the white corpuscles Sis!. We used my Father's Station wagon with the glass roof as "The Proteus". We would go as far as using Johnny Weinz's pool for scenes but what I remember most was when we finished playing out the movie my friend George turned to me and started shaking my hands and congratulating me just like the scientist at the conclusion of the movie. It just broke me up! So much accomplished in ONE HOUR!

A scientist is nearly assassinated. In order to save him, a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into his blood stream with a small crew. Problems arise almost as soon as they enter the bloodstream.This film is pretty well known, with most people who have seen it or at least heard of it. It has also been largely influential. Obviously, it returned as "Innerspace" and Disney used to have a ride called "Body Wars" that was no doubt a spin on this. Heck, even video games like "Life Force" owe a debt.Some of the effects are silly, but it seems intentional. They make a point of saying that what we normally see as red can look different close up. I suppose there is some truth to that. Raquel Welch is here... not fighting dinosaurs. And Donald Pleasance, as well... not fighting pure evil.

Greetings! The Fantastic Voyage (in-case you didn't read the description) is a movie about a team of people being shrunken down inside a nuclear sub to then be injected inside someones bloodstream to remove a clot of the brain. The movie is definitely far-fetched and doesn't go into much detail about where the shrink-ray* came from, how it was developed, or why its effects are not permanent. Anyways, the point is this movie doesn't have a lot of depth to it in plot but it has an interesting story.Now anyways the movie was released in 1966 which was way WAY before I was born and I understand the effects weren't great back then but this movie actually surprised me. I don't think any of the scenes to me looked like a cheesy old 60's movie. Maybe it had something to do with me watching an HD copy but the actual scenes looked pretty good. The sets were interesting and the special effects looked great.Now back to the story... so your in a sub travelling inside the human body... most movies nowadays would just show a journey and the destination but not the exact parts of the journey. This movie actually described where they were in the human body, what certain parts and conditions were called (assuming anything said was remotely accurate), and what function a lot of the parts of the body did. The movie was very educational* (again assuming anything said was accurate) and entertaining to watch! I never thought that the space between our blood cells would have another fluid... I always thought our blood was made up of cells moving all together at once which made it look like a fluid not the cells themselves suspended in a fluid called plasma.Anyways, the movie like all movies has some bad parts to it BUT I'd say like 95% of the movie has good parts to it. The movie also isn't all educational it is entertaining I'd say very different to watch. This is definitely a movie for someone who wants to kick back, relax, and watch something different. Something that isn't like your standard movie nowadays. I only wish we could have more movies like this... the only thing I didn't like is how it ended so briefly. Essentially they went in and then they went out. It didn't really explain much after that which leaves you as the viewer with a lot of unanswered questions.Overall I'd say 7/10 for effects, 5/10 for plot deepness, 9/10 for originality, and 8/10 for entertaining bringing my total score to 7.25/10.

This movie was released in 1966 when I was a junior in college. I was 20 and I remember it, though vaguely. I remembered the basic premise but watching it today, on 'Movies' channel, filled in all the gaps from almost 50 years.This was a cutting edge premise back then, to miniaturize a small submarine with a doctor and scientists inside, to be injected into the body of an injured diplomat to find the blood clot in his brain and save him. Now, in the 21st century we are on the verge of doing just that, but in a different way. Very small surgical instruments can be injected into the body, the eye for example, and controlled with magnets and exacting instruments perform medical procedures from inside.So in this movie which is sort of an odyssey inside a human body, the group encounter a number of obstacles, each time needing to invent a solution. But the fun is in seeing the various depictions of systems inside thew body. I will mention only one of the cast, Raquel Welch who was about 25 during filming, as Cora. Now it isn't totally clear to me why her character was essential, but she provided much-needed "scenery." Of course Welch went on to a good film career as a sex symbol, but at 25 she was about as gorgeous as she would ever be.