Fantastic Voyage

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

A Fantastic and Spectacular Voyage... Through the Human Body... Into the Brain.

In order to save an assassinated scientist, a submarine and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into his bloodstream.

Date of release
1966-08-24
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (526)
Runtime
1h 41m
Genres
Science Fiction, Adventure
Director
Richard Fleischer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $5.1M
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 5. Including: Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Color; Academy Award for Best Visual Effects

Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American science fiction adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The film is about a submarine crew which is shrunk to microscopic size and ventures into the body of injured scientist Dr. Jan Benes to repair damage to his brain. In adapting the story for his script, Kleiner added a Cold War element. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy.

Production

The film was the original idea of Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. They sold it to Fox, which announced the film would be "the most expensive science-fiction film ever made". Richard Fleischer was assigned to direct and Saul David to produce; both men had worked at the studio before. Fleischer had originally studied medicine and human anatomy in college before choosing to be a film director. Harry Kleiner was brought in to work on the script.

The budget was set at $5 million. The budget went up to $6 million, $3 million of which went on the sets, and $1 million on test footage.

The Proteus submarine was constructed as a full-size set piece 42 feet long, first seen in the "miniaturizer" room and later in scenes set outside the lung and inside the inner ear, when the cast was to be seen "swimming" (actually suspended by wires) outside the submarine.

The film starred Stephen Boyd, making his first Hollywood film in five years. It was the first role at Fox for Raquel Welch, who was put under contract to the studio after being spotted in a beauty contest by Saul David's wife.

For the technical and artistic elaboration of the subject, Fleischer asked for the collaboration of two people of the crew that he had worked with on the production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the film he directed for Walt Disney in 1954. The designer of the Nautilus from the Jules Verne adaptation, Harper Goff, also designed the Proteus; the same technical advisor, Fred Zendar, collaborated on both productions.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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