Fantastic Voyage (1966)

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Copyright 17 August 1966 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening simultaneously at Loew's State and the Festival: 7 September 1966. U.S. release: 24 August 1966. U.K. release: 14 October 1966. Sydney opening at the Regent. 9,044 feet. 100 minutes.SYNOPSIS: American agent Grant (Stephen Boyd) helps Czech scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) escape from behind the Iron Curtain. Benes suffers a brain injury when a last attempt is made on his life. CMDF (Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces) decides to repair the brain from within using a ruby laser. CMDF can shrink men and equipment to microbe size, but only for 60 minutes. The plan is to miniaturize the experimental submarine Proteus with its crew of scientists and doctors, inject them into Benes' bloodstream at the base of the neck and hope they can make their way to the brain for the operation. The crew of the Proteus includes Dr Duval (Arthur Kennedy), brain surgeon; Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch), his assistant; Dr Michaels (Donald Pleasence), navigator; Captain Bill Owen (William Redfield), sub pilot; and Grant. Dr Duval is suspected of being a traitor, but must go because of his special abilities. The Proteus is injected into Benes' bloodstream. An unexpected fistula sends the sub out of control, and precious minutes are wasted. A decision is made to take a more direct path through the heart. There are 32 minutes left before the sub and its occupants will start to grow back to full size inside Benes' body.NOTES: Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two: Best Color Art Direction, defeating Gambit, Juliet of the Spirits, The Oscar and The Sand Pebbles; Best Special Visual Effects — Cruickshank alone was cited — defeating Hawaii. Other Nominations (winners in brackets): Color Cinematography (A Man for All Seasons), Film Editing (Grand Prix), Sound Effects — Walter Rossi — (Grand Prix).COMMENT: Although it didn't make the top ten, "Fantastic Voyage" was included in the top thirty domestic money-makers of the 1965-66 season. The movie did equally good business overseas. Negative cost: $6½ million. After paying print, distribution and advertising expenses, the movie returned only a modest profit initially. Of course later sales to TV put the picture very firmly into the black — but by that time it was too late to think of a sequel or a follow- up or a spin-off — any of which (provided costs were contained) should have done well. The book-of-the-film novelization was undertaken by none other than Isaac Asimov and was still selling merrily in book shops (in fact it was easily Asimov's most popular title) twenty years later.The film's success was mostly due to its novel theme and great special effects. But a strong publicity campaign certainly helped — including this unusual endorsement from Darryl F. Zanuck: "I have just returned from the most fantastic voyage in my 36-year career in the motion picture industry. To make a motion picture that crosses a new frontier may seem impossible today. Outer space, the depths of the sea, the bowels of the earth, the past, the future — all have been subjects for the camera. Yet a film called "Fantastic Voyage" has broken through in an unsuspected direction to create an adventure of astonishing suspense and beauty. It has moved me, for the first time in my career, personally to endorse a motion picture in an advertisement. In "Fantastic Voyage", the imagination of Man and the magic of the camera are linked as never before, to offer stunning proof of my cherished belief that the motion picture medium is the most potent entertainment form ever devised — limitless in its power to go wherever the mind can reach, with credibility, emotional force and drama."Yes, this science fiction film has excellent gimmicks and very good special effects, but, unfortunately, a tired old plot with hoary characters spouting cliché-ridden dialogue. Despite these inadequacies, however, it does manage to generate a fair amount of suspense. And it certainly lives up to its advertised promise in showing us a new, unknown, unexplored (and dangerous) world. This it does very effectively.

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.

Fantastic Voyage has got to be one of the most unique, entertaining, and imaginative SyFy films ever produced in Hollywood during the 1960s.Fantastic Voyage is an amazing journey that travels to the deepest reaches of space - Inner space.A daring team of adventurers are subjected to the technology of miniaturization and together they travel in a high-tech mini-submarine inside the body of a leading scientist in order to destroy a life-threatening blood clot in his brain.Fantastic Voyage features some great set designs and, for its time, some pretty impressive visual effects.

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.