FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966)

The last time I saw this movie was when it first came out; I was 10 years old, and I saw it at a special kids' matinee where admission was six Pespi bottle caps. Mostly, I remember being dazzled by the special effects and by Raquel Welch, who was quite a special effect herself. I'm sorry to say that, forty years later, the movie hasn't weathered well. The most interesting thing about it to me now is its formalism; most of the film is done in real time, and there is as little context as possible set up for the "voyage" itself, which means almost no character development and little substantive conflict, just the gimmick of miniaturized people jetting through a man's bloodstream. What little plot there is involves an important man from behind the Iron Curtain who has defected to the West. Just after he lands in the States, he is shot and seriously wounded, with an inoperable blood clot in the brain. As it happens, he has information that the military needs concerning a top-secret scientific project which involves miniaturizing people who could be used in wars, as soldiers, spies, etc. The CMDF (Combined Miniature Defense Forces--couldn't they have come up with a catchier acronym?) decides to shrink a team of doctors and officers (and a submarine-type vehicle, the Proteus), inject them into the scientist's bloodstream, and have them operate from the inside. The catch: they only have one hour before they will automatically return to normal size. The effects were probably quite effective in their day, but now the giant corpuscles and antibodies which provide most of the danger look like props created for a local TV kids' show, and the idea that our crew are actually submersed in blood is never pulled off very well. Once the barest bit of background exposition is dispensed with, the rest of the movie is given over to the voyage, and the film ends rather abruptly when our heroes return to normal size. The screenplay doesn't give the actors much to do. Stephen Boyd is the military leader who occasionally butts heads with Donald Pleaseance, the twitchy medical advisor who may or may not also be a Commie traitor out to sabotage the mission. Edmond O'Brien is the military man who stays behind and monitors the situation; his continuing battle with his coffee addiction may have been an inspiration for Robert Stack's various addictions in AIRPLANE. The attack of the gooey antibodies on Welch (in a tight white wetsuit) reminds me of some of the gooeyness of ALIEN. The movie is too serious to be campy fun, but not good enough to ever really get lost in. [FMC].