Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 science fiction adventure film about a submarine shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of comatose man with valuable secrets.
Most of us have a bucket list of movies we want to see before we shed our mortal coil. No doubt a bunch are classics made decades before we even got our start. For any science fiction fan, near or at the top of that list is (or should be) Richard Fleischer‘s highly-influential Fantastic Voyage. It’s a cinematic masterpiece of effects, story, and direction that is packed with cool gadgets, even cooler visual effects and a submarine full of intrigue and suspense. Let’s dive.
Set at the peak of the Cold War, the United States and the then Soviet Union are in a high stakes game of geopolitical rough housing, each determined to show the other that they are the superior world power without ever actually duking it out. Thank goodness. If there is any benefit, it’s rapid scientific advancements on both sides, pushing mankind into all new horizons of exploration. As such, in this timeline, researchers on their side and ours have developed startling new technologies, including the ability to miniaturize anything down to the atomic size, though with one caveat … it only lasts an hour.
That is until Dr. Jan Benes (Jean Del Val), a Soviet scientist, cracks the code and figures out how to make the process last, completely changing the game. Fortunately, he’s not willing to share it with his Communists keepers and with the help of American intelligence, manages to escape to the United States. However, a harrowing chase and shootout with assassins strike the good doctor and leave him in a coma, a blood clot damaging his brain.
With no time to spare, and desperate for the secret to sustained miniaturization, the Americans swing into action. They place intelligence agent Grant (Stephen Boyd), pilot Captain Bill Owens (William Redfield), Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasence), surgeon Dr. Peter Duval (Arthur Kennedy), and his assistant Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch) inside a small Naval deep sea research submarine named the Proteus and shrink them down to microscopic size. Then then inject them into the Soviet scientist with the mission to save his life and remove the clot. Oh, and they must do so in less than an hour. Needless to say, it’s … a fantastic voyage.
Right away, what separates this production (and many of its time) from modern movie going experiences is its patience. Think of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was still two years away from this movie, and you get the idea. While today, theaters are jammed with hyper fast, rapid-cut, blink or you’ll miss chaos, movies like Fantastic Voyage revel in their excess, spending many long minutes of uninterrupted footage of every delicious detail they could cram on screen.
For example, the sequence of reducing the sub to fit in a syringe and injecting it into the neck of Benes is more than twenty minutes long. Twenty minutes. That’s a quarter of the film’s runtime, something that would be unheard of nowadays. The procedure is a lengthy, slow moving, carefully constructed step-by-step walkthrough with no music and almost no dialogue, a scene that for most current movie fans raised in the age superhero films and The Fast and the Furious, would seem unbearable. Image if Marvel spent twenty full, uninterrupted minutes on just showing the process of shrinking Ant-Man. Or if Dominic Toretto walked us through how he made his muscle car go faster (and furiouser). For twenty minutes. With no music.
And yet … it’s undeniably compelling. The silence and meticulous attention to detail are truly inspiring. Whereas moviemakers today might take a moment like this and flash it up with a raygun type zap and loads of spectacular CGI effects, here it is a process that works hard to feel as legit as possible, even as it soaks itself in the absurd. It’s fun to watch the sub transition from full sized to microbe. Not to mention the people, one of who has a moment of panic and nearly wrecks the whole deal.
The miniaturizing stuff aside, the movie is definitely dated, with themes that are out of whack, with a military commander outraged that gasp a woman is on the team, this no place for girls. Naturally, the future poster pin-up darling of the late 60s and early 70s, Welch is positioned in weaker light, but all things considered, she is not sexualized nearly as much as her future career would greatly spotlight. Fortunately, the film sticks to its sci-fi premise with extreme rigidity and is the better for it, letting the exploration of Benes’ inside be the real draw.
Winning two Academy Awards, including Best Special Effects and Art Direction, the film was a Box Office success and a critical favorite, to this day considered a forerunner in the genre. Sitting through it recently, it holds up very well, the film showcasing some great performances, especially from Pleasance. There’s also a terrific score (from Leonard Rosenman) that kicks in after the team are injected.
While two decades later, Steven Spielberg and director Joe Dante would give the premise a comedic spin with the Martin Short thriller Innerspace, and perhaps dozens of other films can claim influence from it, for many I’m guessing, Fantastic Voyage remains unseen, one of those ‘classic movies’ that sit on lists never to get time for. Do yourself a favor and bump this up. It’s a trip well worth taking.