— RANKING: 85 —
RETURN OF THE BIG BUDGET: Following a decade during which the genre was mostly relegated to exploitation items, a major studio at last gave the green light to an ambitious undertaking with an all-star cast, including the young Raquel Welch (right). Courtesy: 20th Century-Fox.
CREDITS
Twentieth Century-Fox; Richard Fleischer, dir.; Harry Kleiner, David Duncan, Otto Klement, Jerome Bixby, scr.; Saul David, pro.; Leonard Rosenman, mus.; Ernest Laszlo, cin.; William B. Murphy, ed.; Dale Hennesy, Jack Martin Smith, art dir.; Stuart A. Reiss, Walter M. Scott, sets; Walter Rossi, Richard Sperber, special sound effects; Johnny Borgese, Greg C. Jensen, F/X; L. B. Abbott, Art Cruickshank, Emil Kosa Jr., special visual effects; Marcel Delgado, miniature artist; Harper Goff, Proteus conceptualization; 100 min.; Color; 2.35:1.
Stephen Boyd (Grant); Raquel Welch (Cora); Edmond O’Brien (Gen. Carter); Donald Pleasence (Dr. Michaels); Arthur O’Connell (Col. Donald Reid); William Redfield (Capt. Bill Owens); Arthur Kennedy (Dr. Duval); Jan Del Val (Jan Benes).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
We stand in the middle of infinity, between outer and inner space.
And there’s no limit to either.
DR. DUVAL
BACKGROUND
The vast contributions of Twentieth Century-Fox to the evolution of modern science-fiction/fantasy films have never been fully chronicled. During the 1950s, Fox had been the first “major” to create an A-budget genre entry, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). By the mid-1960s, studio executives were working to salvage sci-fi from its B-movie morass, and Fantastic Voyage represented their first major effort. Richard Fleischer (1916–2006) was chosen for this subcutaneous adventure largely because he had directed Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), while screenwriter David Duncan was selected because he had overseen the adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1960).
THE PLOT
At the height of the Cold War, a Soviet scientist, Jan Benes, escapes to the West. Both the Soviet Union and the United States have developed a miniaturization process for temporarily shrinking atoms, but Benes alone has perfected this technological wonder. During a failed assassination attempt by a Russian agent, Benes hits his head, and the resulting blood clot threatens to silence the genius forever. Our military and scientific experts devise a plan by which a miniaturized submarine, the Proteus, manned by a shrunken crew, will enter Benes’s blood stream and remove the clot. The crew must race against ticking clocks—Benes’s likely impending death and the brief time they will remain miniaturized—as well as battle the hostile microscopic forces in the human immune system. Making matters more difficult still, there is a saboteur on board.
THE FILM
Fox executives hoped to convince Oscar winner Charlton Heston to play Grant, which would have given the film cachet. They had to settle for his Ben-Hur co-star Stephen Boyd as Heston did not yet see the appeal of ambitious sci-fi, though that would shortly change. Two years later, following the success of Planet of the Apes (1968), he would become a loyal adherent of the genre, starring in both The Omega Man (Boris Sagal, 1971) and Soylent Green (1973), the latter directed by Fleischer.
While a college student, Fleischer—with virtually no hope of following his father, the legendary animator Max Fleischer, into the movie industry—had studied human anatomy. Perhaps fate somehow arranged such a life experience so that he would be knowledgeable about the material he confronted here. Fleischer insisted that Harper Goff, who had designed the Nautilus for Disney’s 20,000 Leagues, conceptualize the Proteus.
Composer Leonard Rosenman experimented with playing the first act in the military/scientific headquarters without music to suggest a deadly dullness. His wondrous score emerges as the voyage into “inner space” commences, enhancing the visual imagery via magical music. This score popularized the notion that atonal music is particularly appropriate for lavish sci-fi projects.
Jerome Bixby (1923–1998), who concocted the original story line, was a highly regarded pulp fiction writer. He wrote the original story, “It’s a Good Life,” which became a Twilight Zone classic episode with a teleplay by Rod Serling, and would write four of the original Star Trek episodes, including the short story on which the classic “Mirror, Mirror” was based. In that installment, Bixby popularized the idea of parallel universes, which would become a staple of science fiction in the following years.
THEME
Again, science fiction serves as an effective bridge for the twentieth-century public, which found itself caught in a bind between the demands of a scientific (and, in many ways, secular) age and an ongoing need to still believe in something greater and grander than the here and now. As the film reminds us, “The finite mind cannot comprehend infinity; and the soul, which comes from God, is infinite.”
TRIVIA
During the 1960s, any major film not based on a book would be “novelized” for a quick-sell paperback. These were knocked off by second-rate scribes and boasted no real value. Fantastic Voyage provides the one glaring exception. Producer Saul David (1921–1996), previously editor-in-chief at Bantam Books, called on Isaac Asimov (1920–1992), an esteemed sci-fi author whose works include I, Robot (1950), to expand on the film’s narrative, characters, and themes. Owing to production setbacks, Asimov’s novel (not a novelization) appeared six months before the film’s release rather than simultaneous with it. Many genre buffs came to believe the film was an adaptation of the Asimov work. In fact, the writer improved on the original screenplay by correcting numerous flaws. For example, in the screenplay, the laser gun and the submarine were left inside the patient’s body when the heroes escape; of course, they would have returned to normal size and torn him all to bits.