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VOYAGE MOVIE JAPANESE LASER DISC |
Updated: September 15, 2015
This is for "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"Movie!
Rare bilingual version, Japanese and English!
1961 - USA - 106 min. - Feature, Color
AMG Rating:
Director Irwin Allen
Genre/Type Science Fiction, Adventure Drama, Sea
Adventure, Sci-Fi Disaster Film
Flags Suitable for Children, Violence
MPAA Rating PG
Keywords crew, exploration, nuclear, submarine, Admiral,
space-exploration, radioactive
Themes Race Against Time, Obsessive Quests, Daring
Rescues, After the Apocalypse, Experiments Gone Awry
Tones Tense, Atmospheric, Menacing, Intimate, Paranoid
Color type De Luxe
Cinematic Process CinemaScope
Produced by 20th Century Fox
Released by 20th Century Fox
See Also DVD Release(s)
Walter Pidgeon is the nominal star of Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea, portraying Admiral Harriman Nelson,
the designer of the submarine Seaview, a glass-nosed
research submarine. The sub embarks on her shakedown
cruise under the polar ice cap as the movie begins. Upon
surfacing, however, the crew discovers that the entire
sky is on fire — the Van Allen radiation belt has been
ignited by a freak meteor shower, and the Earth is being
slowly burnt to a cinder. Nelson and his colleague,
Commodore Lucius Emery (Peter Lorre), devise a plan to
extinguish the belt using one of the Seaview's nuclear
missiles, but they are denounced at an emergency meeting
of the United Nations. Disregarding the UN vote against
him, Nelson decides to go forward with his plan before
the Earth is destroyed, hoping to get the approval of
the president of the United States while his ship races
from New York to the Marianas in the Pacific to launch
its missile on time and target, with the world's navies
hunting her down and communication with Washington
impossible because of the fire in the sky.
Nelson must combat not only the threats from other ships
but also the doubts of his own protégé, Commander Lee Crane
(Robert Sterling), the captain of the Seaview, about his
plan and his methods, and the growing suspicion — being
spread by Dr. Susan Hiller (Joan Fontaine), a psychiatrist
who was visiting the vessel — about his sanity, as well as
the growing discontent of the crew, who would like to see
their families before the end of the world, and the presence
of one religious fanatic (Michael Ansara) who thinks the fire
in the sky is God's will. Worse still, there appears to be a
saboteur — and possibly more than one — aboard.
The plot is episodic in pacing and features elements that were
clearly derived in inspiration from Disney's 1954 production of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, such as Nelson's
eccentricity and the "outlaw" status of his ship; but the
undersea maneuvers to tap the trans-Atlantic telephone cable
(in order to reach Washington), the battle with a giant squid,
a duel with an attack submarine, and a harrowing tangle with a
WWII mine field would become standard elements of the series of
the same name that followed this movie two years later.
Pidgeon brings dignity if not a huge amount of energy to the
role of the admiral, and Lorre, Fontaine, Ansara, and Henry
Daniell (playing Nelson's scientific nemesis) add some colorful
performances, and Barbara Eden, as Nelson's secretary, is pretty
to look at; and there are some excellent supporting performances
by Delbert Monroe (aka Del Monroe, who appeared later in the
series, as Kowalsky), Mark Slade, John Litel, Howard McNear, and
Robert Easton. The real "star" of the movie, however, is the
submarine Seaview and the special effects by L.B. Abbott, which,
to be fully appreciated, should be seen in a letterboxed
presentation of the movie.
Reviewing Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea isn't easy — it isn't
Forbidden Planet, with lots of profound ideas scattered around its script, or even The Fly, with a
story of human frailty at its core; nor is it even Journey to the
Center of the Earth, with its outsized special effects, score, and casting; rather, it
represents the fun side of science fiction cinema.
Producer/director Irwin Allen was a popular culture maven — if he
saw the potential to recycle an idea into something new and
profitable, and pitch it in a new or different way, he did it.
Thus, his production of The Big Circus was a B-movie (or "nervous
A"-movie) recycling of The Greatest Show on Earth, right down to
having Peter Lorre (as opposed to James Stewart) in clown makeup;
and Five Weeks in a Balloon was his more modest adaptation of a
Jules Verne tale, done after Around the World in 80 Days. And
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was Allen's attempt to retell
Disney's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in modern terms,
even getting Peter Lorre into the new movie; nuclear submarines
were still a source of wonder in 1961, and the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding Earth was still
a new discovery, thus giving the movie a topical edge that the
Disney film had lacked.
Allen's direction is a little flaccid by today's standards, but
the movie is great fun and paced perfectly, packing in about two
hours' worth of excitement into just over 100 minutes of screen
time, all of it looking sparklingly new and topical in its settings at that time. The finished film
emphasized the things that Allen cared about most: Adventure,
excitement, lots of undersea shots (Allen had a special fascination with undersea adventures, having
made the Oscar-winning documentary The Sea Around Us), and some
colorful star performances.
The special effects by L.B. Abbott are the real "star" of the movie,
but Walter Pidgeon brings a certain eccentric dignity to the
proceedings as the possibly "mad" Admiral Harriman Nelson
(a pop-culture re-imagining of real-life nuclear navy gadfly
Admiral Hyman Rickover), and the rest of the cast, down to the bit
players, brings a lot of color to the film.
The television series subsequently spawned by this movie used most
of the models and special effects designs as a jumping-off point,
and became what was the longest-running non-anthology network
science fiction series in history, lasting four seasons.
Walter Pidgeon - Adm. Harriman Nelson
Joan Fontaine - Dr. Susan Hiller
Barbara Eden - Cathy Connors
Peter Lorre - Cmdre. Lucius Emery
Robert Sterling - Capt. Lee Crane
Michael Ansara - Miguel Alvarez
Frankie Avalon - Chip Romano
Regis Toomey - Dr. Jamieson
John Litel - Adm. Crawford
Howard McNear - Congressman Parker
Henry Daniell - Dr. Zucco
Skip Ward - Member of Crew
Mark Slade - Smith
Charles Tannen - Gleason
Michael D. Ford - Crew Member
Robert Easton - Sparks
Jonathan Gilmore - Young
David McLean - Ned Thompson
Kendrick Huxham - UN Chairman
Art Baker - UN Commentator
Lawrence Gray - Dr. Newmar
Irwin Allen - Director / Producer / Story Author /
Screenwriter
Charles Bennett - Screenwriter
Winton Hoch - Cinematographer
Russell Faith - Songwriter
Bernard Herrmann - Composer (Music Score)
Paul Sawtell - Composer (Music Score)
Bert Shefter - Composer (Music Score)
George Boemler - Editor
Herman A. Blumenthal - Art Director
Jack Martin Smith - Art Director
Walter Scott - Set Designer
John Sturtevant - Set Designer
Paul Zastupnevich - Costume Designer
Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup
L.B. Abbott - Special Effects
Value: $200-Up.
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