1966
DIRECTOR: RICHARD FLEISCHER PRODUCER: SAUL DAVID SCREENPLAY: HARRY KLEINER, BASED ON A STORY BY JEROME BIXBY AND OTTO KLEMENT; ADAPTATION BY DAVID DUNCAN STARRING: STEPHEN BOYD (GRANT), RAQUEL WELCH (CORA), EDMOND O’BRIEN (GENERAL CARTER), DONALD PLEASENCE (DR. MICHAELS), ARTHUR O’CONNELL (COLONEL DONALD REID), WILLIAM REDFIELD (CAPTAIN BILL OWENS), ARTHUR KENNEDY (DR. DUVAL), JEAN DEL VAL (JAN BENES)
Fantastic Voyage
TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX • COLOR, 100 MINUTES
A crew of medical experts is shrunk and injected into the body of an injured scientist to remove a blood clot.
When Twentieth Century-Fox poured $6.5 million into Fantastic Voyage in 1965, the studio took a great leap into the unknown. At that time, Hollywood no longer considered science fiction a marketable genre. Strides made toward intelligent sci-fi in the 1950s had degenerated into titles like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) and Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965), B movies tailored for kid-friendly matinees. Instead of an outer-space outing, Fox gambled on a new type of adventure: an exploration of inner space—inside the human body. The story of a miniaturized submarine and crew on a journey through the bloodstream to the brain, Fantastic Voyage was the most expensive and intricate sci-fi movie ever produced in its day.
Having helmed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Richard Fleischer was the ideal director to take the movies where they had never gone before: drifting in a sea of plasma through arteries and veins. “When I directed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea I thought I was traveling, but the human body contains 100,000 miles of blood vessels,” Fleischer told a reporter while shooting Fantastic Voyage. “Though this is a work of complete imagination, it’s based on reality…. We know what we run into in the human body: red blood cells, white corpuscles, antibodies.” These microscopic molecules appear immense when viewed from the inside. Lava-lamp globules of pink, blue, and sea-green are shown to resemble, in the words of Fleischer, “abstract art.” Artistically rendering the wonders of the human body was the primary goal of the filmmakers. They even hired surrealist icon Salvador Dalí to conceive the film’s poster art.
An Italian lobby card featuring Donald Pleasence
Stephen Boyd
Harper Goff, designer of the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues, surpassed his previous effort with the Proteus, the submarine-like craft that is shrunk and injected into the body of a wounded Czech scientist played by Jean Del Val. Sleekly designed with futuristic lines (the film is set in 1995), the Proteus was constructed as a practical, life-size vessel with fully appointed interiors. The ensemble cast—led by Stephen Boyd as the awed CIA agent and Donald Pleasence as the suspiciously panicky circulatory specialist—actually filmed their scenes inside the sub. In her first major film role, Raquel Welch is appropriately subdued as Cora the medical assistant. Welch, who later admitted that her part “amounted to little more than eye candy in a team of male researchers,” wears her wetsuit well and provides damsel-in-distress suspense when she is viciously attacked by swarming antibodies.
Just outside the operating room, tense CMDF (Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces) officers, played by familiar screen faces Edmond O’Brien and Arthur O’Connell, puff cigars and consume gallons of sugary coffee as everything that can go wrong does go wrong. An undetected fistula sends the Proteus in the wrong direction; the crew is forced to take a detour through the heart; they must refuel their oxygen supply from the lungs. The mission is even sabotaged from within, all while the clock is ticking. They have exactly sixty minutes to laser a blood clot in the brain before they return to normal size. Though the concept of miniaturization strains suspension of disbelief, the dazzling imagery makes the idea easier to swallow.
A wardrobe test for Raquel Welch
Art Cruickshank earned an Academy Award for the ingenious visual effects, all created using traditional techniques. Arteries, lungs, heart valves, and ear canals are transformed into realistic settings, thanks to exquisitely detailed matte paintings, miniature models, and early blue-screen technology. Antibodies, fibers, and corpuscles were crafted of plastic, spun fiberglass, and Vaseline in water. Actors were suspended from wires and filmed in slow-motion to provide the illusion of floating through fluid. Heightening the illusion is the dissonant, unsettling score by cutting-edge composer Leonard Rosenman. The overall effect is an astonishing illumination of the human anatomy.
Made in the waning days of the classic studio-system era, Fantastic Voyage was a successful experiment that—along with the 1966 debut of the TV series Star Trek—rekindled Hollywood’s interest in science fiction, paving the way for the next wave of big-budget sci-fi blockbusters like Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both released two years later. It also inspired Innerspace, a 1987 comedy with the similar premise of an aviator (Dennis Quaid) who is miniaturized and accidentally injected into a supermarket cashier (Martin Short). In 2016, director Guillermo del Toro and producer James Cameron announced plans for a multimillion-dollar Fantastic Voyage remake.
FAR-OUT FACTS
MIND-BLOWING MOMENT
KEEP WATCHING
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INNERSPACE (1987)