Fantastic Voyage (1966)

 

Fantastic Voyage tracks the attempts of a crew in a miniaturized submarine to repair a blood clot in the brain of an internationally renowned scientist who has been injured in an assassination attempt on his life. That premise already sounds somewhat ridiculous, perhaps, but genuine tension gets created by the crew having a limited time to complete the medical procedure and by the possibility that one of the members might be working to ensure the death of the scientist, who has figured out how to maintain miniaturized status for longer than the current 60 minute restriction. This film is a product of the Cold War era, and the fears of Russian dominance serve as a backdrop for the action. As you might expect, the journey through the comatose scientist’s body to the brain doesn’t occur without incident. Fantastic Voyage is a sort of predecessor to films like Speed, where one event after another keeps complicating the plot. The crew includes Stephen Boyd, an intelligence agent who is hired as security to ensure that the procedure goes as planned; Arthur Kennedy as Dr. Peter Duval, repeatedly described as the world’s best brain surgeon; Raquel Welch as Cora Peterson, the doctor’s assistant; Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels, who is overseeing the entire procedure; and William Redfield as the submarine pilot. Edmund O’ Brien and Arthur O’Connell play a couple of military types who have to sweat it out while the tiny sub makes its way through the patient’s body; they’re the closest thing to comic relief that the film has a times. Fantastic Voyage doesn’t really represent good science (or even particularly plausible science fiction at times), and I’m not even sure it truly represents good anatomy. The journey takes the crew through the blood vessels, the heart, the lungs, the lymph nodes, the inner ear canal, the tear ducts, a variety of body parts that are not obviously all connected to each other. Still, the film is quite stunning visually and was rewarded appropriately for its visual style. At times, the backgrounds through which the sub travels look like the inside of lava lamps of different colors. At other times, they look remarkably like an undersea fantasy world of algae and spiderwebs. (Fantastic Voyage also predates the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you can see the possible influence the earlier film had on that science fiction masterpiece.) Boyd and Welch were, no doubt, hired to up the attractiveness quotient of the cast. However, the way they are treated differently reveals the typical Hollywood double standard of the time. For the most part, Boyd stays fully clothed even though the suits are, to be blunt, quite snug. Welch, however, has to suffer the indignity of having three of the four men in the sub pawing over her breasts after Cora is attacked by antibodies. It’s shameful, really, and it detracts from the film’s overall appeal.

Oscar Wins: Best Color Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Special Visual Effects

Other Nominations: Best Color Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Effects