by Jason Sacks

It’s finally here! And it was worth the wait. Fantastic Voyage has reached the big screen, and it’s spectacular.

Fantastic Voyage may be the most advertised science fiction film ever made, with intriguing articles in Life and Look, a novelization published in The Saturday Evening Post and about a zillion articles in Famous Monsters in Filmland. And despite this endless campaign – or maybe because of it – I'm delighted to tell you this audacious film deserves its media ubiquity.

Fantastic Voyage starts like a super-spy film. Genius Eastern Bloc scientist Dr. Jan Benes defects to the United States, established in a dramatic scene of Benes landing on the tarmac of a Los Angeles-area airport. However, on the journey from a Los Angeles-area airport to a safe house, the scientist is attacked by a group never identified to us but who likely are agents from the same Eastern Bloc country. During the battle, Benes receives a near-fatal brain injury, and he is rushed to a secret military base. In the base, a top-secret and nearly impossible operation must be conducted to save Benes: a journey into his own bloodstream to destroy the cause of his injury.

That initial sequence took me by surprise. The first ten minutes of Fantastic Voyage contain no dialogue and no exposition. The viewer isn’t given any context around what is happening, and the events have a surprising absence of spy thriller heroism. This isn't James Bond battling SPECTRE in Thunderball. In fact, the film cuts away from a gun battle for us to follow the scientist to the secret base. This is an audacious decision by director Richard Fleischer which keeps viewers focused on the important aspects of the film, not the extraneous fluff which seems exciting but wouldn't add any necessary drama to the film’s events.

In a delightful bit of casting, our point of view character here (named Grant) is played by Stephen Boyd. In real life, Boyd was born in Ireland and apparently was a finalist for the role of James Bond in Doctor No. Boyd resembles Sean Connery, with his rugged facial features and strong chin. The resemblance makes the next sequence of this film more fun.

Grant himself is brought to the same secret government facility in which Dr. Benes is convalescing. As viewers soon discover, the facility is buzzing like a hornet’s nest, full to the brim with important-seeming people wandering to and fro in golf carts in order to do their jobs. This agency, the CMDF, has somehow developed the ability to shrink humans to the size of a cell, and is able to inject Grant and four explorers into Benes’s bloodstream to destroy the blood clot in his brain.

The CMDF is a clever inversion of the great work NASA is doing these days: yet another government institution devoted to exploring inner space rather than outer space. Of course, users have to suspend their disbelief to appreciate the CMDF, but there's plenty of suspension of disbelief required to enjoy this movie.

The group of explorers includes a noble doctor and his brave assistant (who, as you undoubtedly know, is played by the gorgeous Raquel Welch), a stalwart pilot, and a treacherous scientist played by Donald Pleasence. None of the characters are very subtle in this movie; all are cardboard in a way reminiscent of the worst Bond pastiches. For instance, Cora, portrayed by Welch, has a moment of feminism but soon becomes a traditional kind of weak female cliché. And anyone who doesn’t immediately suspect that Pleasence's character, Dr. Michaels, will turn Benedict Arnold on the crew is simply not paying close attention.

But this is not a character movie as much as an adventure movie. We don’t expect deep characters in a film like this one, and their characterization is secondary to all the other events we witness.

Fleischer takes pains to spell out the miniaturization process and the way the bloodstream submarine works. The multistage segment in which the sub is shrunk feels a bit laborious, though the scenario seems intentionally set to remind viewers of the way our beloved Mercury and Gemini rockets work.

Padding aside, I felt myself leaning forward in my seat at the Northgate Cinemas, anxious to see what would happen as the sub was injected into Benes's body. And of course, as the color spread in Look shows us, this is when the movie begins feeling truly full of splendor. The scenes of the submarine traversing veins, arteries and capillaries are perfect contemporary action scenes for a 1966 movie. Reportedly many of these scenes were filmed in giant soundstages, with a full-sized version of the submarine along with several miniatures.

This is where the big budget backing of 20^th Century Fox makes the film much stronger. The level of detail portrayed here is impressive, with the giant, almost prison-cell-like blood corpuscles feeling like an ever-present danger.

There’s a major sequence of the film in which the Boyd character gets lost in the scientist’s lungs. As I read several times in Famous Monsters, this sequence was actually filmed in two soundstages on the Fox lot. When Boyd pierces one of Benes's lungs, the breath flings Boyd a long distance. Viewers absolutely see and feel the distance Boyd is flung. This drama would have been impossible to simulate without the giant stage setting, giving viewers a strong sense of space.

As the explorers work their ways through the body, doctors and military men watch. It’s clever how sometimes the watchers are helpless – there’s a funny series of moments when the Arthur O’Connell character, Col. Donald Reid, drinks cup after cup of sugary coffee due to his stress.

Other times the observers are active participants in the drama, as when the explorers make their way to the scientist’s ear, which demands absolute silence. When one nurse accidentally drops a pair of scissors, real chaos ensues – and delivers one of the most thrilling moments of the film.

Though much of Fantastic Voyage is predictable, its special effects, coupled with the dramatic score by Leonard Rosenman, make the voyage  exciting and often thrilling. Director Fleischer, who directed the similar 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea back in 1954, has a steady hand and clearly understands how to keep the viewer engaged in the story he is telling.

Of course, not a bit of this film makes sense once you start to contemplate its ideas. Isaac Asimov’s adaptation of this movie in the February 26 and March 3 editions of The Saturday Evening Post fills in many of those gaps, and I just saw the collected version of Asimov's adaptation at my local Korvette’s. I highly recommend the novelization because Asimov addresses many issues — including naming Dr. Benes.

But logic and reason aren’t the reason to see a film like Fantastic Voyage. For sheer gosh-wow spectacle, presented in full CinemaScope glory, Fantastic Voyage is well worth your buck twenty-five admission.

Four stars.

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