By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Watch enough science fiction, and you’ll come across a few themes that every series ends up dabbling in, from the And Then There Were None murder mystery bottle episode to evil twins or parallel universes. Among those themes is the recently somewhat forgotten but once-popular idea of a miniature journey into the human body.
Long before Ms. Frizzle took the Magic School Bus into one of her students and the Futurama crew traveled into Fry’s bowels, Fantastic Voyage explored the inside of a Soviet defector. The movie won multiple awards, features a star-studded cast, and, to this day, has provided the visual language for every film or television show you’ve seen that goes inside the circulatory system.
Where No One Has Gone Before
Released in 1966, Fantastic Voyage is a technical marvel. The movie’s original trailer heralded it as “a new kind of moviegoing experience,” and for once, that wasn’t hyperbole. It was a fact.
In order to save the life of a Soviet defector named Dr. Benes, who has invented the science of miniaturization, a five-person crew boards the submarine Proteus. The sub and its crew are then shrunk to the size of a microbe (one-tenth the size of a human cell) and tasked with a mission to try and remove an inaccessible blood clot.
The journey to reach their destination takes them through an unknown universe inside the human body. It’s a place filled with things not seen before, and they only have one hour to survive.
The crew making the dive consists of brain surgeon Dr. Peter Duval (Arthur Kennedy), his assistant, Cora (Raquel Welch in her debut role), circulatory specialist Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasance), Captain Owens (William Redfield), the Proteus’ pilot, and finally, CIA Agent Charles Grant (Stephen Boyd). Grant was sent by the Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces (CMDF) of the United States to prevent another attempt on Dr. Benes’s life. Which, of course, is precisely what happens.
All you need to do is look at the cast, and you know exactly who the traitor is now, but this was one year before Donald Pleasance debuted as James Bond’s arch-enemy, Blofeld. At the time, it was a twist.
A Trippy Visual Showcase
A traitor on board the Proteus adds tension when acts of sabotage start to crop up, but the story could have been about saving a life without the Cold War subplot, and it would have been just as good. Fantastic Voyage is at its best when the crew is exploring the inside of Dr. Benes’s body, traveling through the circulatory system through the heart, which has to be stopped in order to allow them safe passage.
They journey into the lungs to collect oxygen, into the ear, and even through the nervous system. Each new body part is another amazing visual playground for the cast to explore, and while yes, the special effects are incredibly rudimentary compared to the VFX showcases of modern blockbusters, there’s a kitschy appeal in “antibodies” that are clearly thick patches of string being tossed by crew members from off-screen.
The backgrounds and visual effects of the Proteus traveling through the body were enough for Fantastic Voyage to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects and a second for Best Art Direction, which is now known as Best Production Design. It was a well-deserved win, and even with the special effects of the 60s, the creepy white blood cells look like monsters from deep space instead of a needed, functional part of the human body.
A Genre-Defining Must-Watch Film
As groundbreaking and revolutionary as Fantastic Voyage was visually, it’s the story, which finds conflict and danger out of the simple act of exploring, that helped it become a genre-defining film. Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time, wrote the novelization of the film, which came out before the movie. That led audiences to believe Fantastic Voyage was an adaptation when, in truth, the film was developed first.
Asimov was a little frustrated by some of the film’s science. While he honored it in the novel, he went on to write a sequel, Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain, that was more scientifically accurate.
Today, Fantastic Voyage stands out as a turning point in sci-fi movies by exploring a brand new setting that had never been done on this scale before. The story focused on exploration and discovery, something that Hollywood movies, even back then, had replaced with aliens and monsters. It’s a simple plot, but even if there was no external conflict, the ticking timer of only one hour to complete the mission added enough tension to make it compelling the whole way through.
You can stream Fantastic Voyage today through Video on Demand via Amazon Prime, AppleTV, Google Play, and Fandango at Home. It’s worth the trip.
