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44 facts about the movie fantastic voyage.

Written by Minny Towne

Modified & Updated: 05 Mar 2024

Reviewed by Jessica Corbett

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In 1966, the science fiction film "Fantastic Voyage" took audiences on an extraordinary journey into the human body, captivating them with its groundbreaking special effects and imaginative storytelling. As we delve into the fascinating world of "Fantastic Voyage," we'll uncover 44 intriguing facts that shed light on the movie's production, impact, and enduring legacy. From the visionary concept of miniaturized exploration to the remarkable behind-the-scenes innovations, this cinematic adventure continues to inspire and enthrall both science fiction enthusiasts and movie buffs alike. Join us as we embark on a remarkable voyage through the captivating universe of "Fantastic Voyage."

Key Takeaways:

“Fantastic Voyage” is a timeless classic that takes audiences on a thrilling journey into the human body, inspiring curiosity and wonder about science and the marvels of the human anatomy.
The film’s innovative storytelling and captivating premise have left an indelible mark on popular culture, sparking discussions about the intersection of science, adventure, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

The movie "Fantastic Voyage" was released in 1966.

This science fiction film, directed by Richard Fleischer, takes viewers on a mesmerizing journey into the human body, where a team of scientists and a submarine crew are miniaturized to microscopic size and injected into a dying man in a desperate attempt to save his life.

The film features an outstanding cast.

"Fantastic Voyage" stars renowned actors such as Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, and Donald Pleasence, who deliver captivating performances that bring the thrilling narrative to life.

The movie won two Academy Awards.

At the 39th Academy Awards, "Fantastic Voyage" received recognition for its exceptional visual effects, earning Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Special Effects.

The film's unique premise captivated audiences.

The concept of miniaturizing a submarine and its crew to navigate through the human body struck a chord with viewers, sparking their imagination and curiosity about the inner workings of the human anatomy.

The production of "Fantastic Voyage" was a technical marvel.

Crafting the intricate visual effects to depict the inner workings of the human body posed a significant challenge, but the filmmakers successfully brought this imaginative concept to the silver screen with stunning realism.

The movie's legacy endures.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" continues to captivate audiences and inspire discussions about the intersection of science, adventure, and the human body.

"Fantastic Voyage" has left an indelible mark on the science fiction genre.

The film's innovative storytelling and imaginative premise have solidified its place as a timeless classic in the realm of science fiction cinema.

The film's impact extended beyond the silver screen.

"Fantastic Voyage" sparked a renewed interest in science and medicine, prompting discussions about the potential for miniaturized technology to revolutionize medical treatments.

The movie's success led to novel adaptations.

The captivating narrative of "Fantastic Voyage" inspired literary adaptations, further expanding the reach of the film's compelling storyline and captivating characters.

The film's visual effects set a new standard for cinematic innovation.

The groundbreaking visual effects showcased in "Fantastic Voyage" pushed the boundaries of what was thought possible in filmmaking, earning accolades for its pioneering approach to storytelling.

"Fantastic Voyage" continues to inspire future generations of filmmakers.

The film's enduring legacy serves as a testament to its profound impact on the science fiction genre, influencing subsequent generations of filmmakers and storytellers.

The movie's compelling narrative resonates with audiences.

The gripping storyline of "Fantastic Voyage" continues to enthrall viewers, drawing them into a world of adventure, discovery, and the awe-inspiring wonders of the human body.

The film's success paved the way for future explorations of the human body in cinema.

"Fantastic Voyage" set a precedent for exploring the mysteries of human anatomy in cinema, inspiring subsequent films to delve into the intricacies of the human body with newfound creativity and imagination.

The movie's enduring popularity is a testament to its timeless appeal.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" remains a beloved classic, captivating audiences with its timeless tale of adventure, exploration, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

"Fantastic Voyage" continues to spark discussions about the intersection of science and storytelling.

The film's thought-provoking premise has ignited conversations about the fusion of scientific innovation and cinematic artistry, prompting audiences to ponder the limitless possibilities of storytelling within the realms of science fiction.

The film's impact on popular culture is undeniable.

"Fantastic Voyage" has left an indelible mark on popular culture, influencing various forms of media and inspiring creative endeavors that explore the wonders of the human body and the marvels of scientific exploration.

The movie's legacy lives on through its enduring influence on the science fiction genre.

"Fantastic Voyage" has solidified its place as a pioneering work in the realm of science fiction, leaving an indelible legacy that continues to inspire filmmakers, writers, and audiences alike.

The film's imaginative premise continues to capture the imagination of audiences worldwide.

"Fantastic Voyage" remains a source of wonder and fascination, inviting viewers to embark on an extraordinary journey into the microscopic world within the human body.

The movie's themes of discovery and exploration resonate with audiences of all ages.

"Fantastic Voyage" transcends generations, captivating audiences with its timeless themes of curiosity, bravery, and the unyielding human spirit in the face of extraordinary challenges.

The film's enduring appeal lies in its ability to transport audiences to a realm of scientific wonder and adventure.

"Fantastic Voyage" offers a captivating escape into a world of scientific marvels, inviting viewers to embark on a breathtaking expedition through the inner workings of the human body.

The movie's impact on the science fiction genre continues to reverberate through cinematic history.

"Fantastic Voyage" remains a touchstone of cinematic innovation, leaving an indelible imprint on the landscape of science fiction storytelling and inspiring future generations of filmmakers to push the boundaries of imagination and creativity.

The film's legacy is a testament to its timeless relevance and enduring impact.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" remains a beacon of cinematic excellence, captivating audiences with its visionary storytelling and groundbreaking exploration of the human body at a microscopic scale.

"Fantastic Voyage" has inspired a sense of awe and wonder in audiences worldwide.

The film's portrayal of the human body as a breathtaking landscape of scientific discovery has sparked the imagination of viewers, instilling a sense of wonder and appreciation for the marvels of biological intricacy.

The movie's innovative approach to storytelling has left an indelible mark on the history of cinema.

"Fantastic Voyage" stands as a testament to the boundless creativity and ingenuity of filmmakers, pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling and inspiring future generations to embrace bold, imaginative narratives.

The film's enduring popularity speaks to its universal resonance with audiences around the world.

"Fantastic Voyage" transcends cultural and geographical boundaries, captivating viewers of diverse backgrounds with its universal themes of exploration, courage, and the unyielding pursuit of scientific discovery.

The movie's impact extends beyond the realm of entertainment.

"Fantastic Voyage" has sparked a renewed interest in scientific exploration and medical innovation, prompting audiences to contemplate the remarkable potential for advancements in miniaturized technology and biomedical research.

The film's legacy continues to inspire curiosity and fascination with the wonders of the human body.

"Fantastic Voyage" serves as a source of inspiration for scientific curiosity, igniting a sense of wonder and appreciation for the intricate complexities that exist within the human body.

The movie's enduring legacy is a testament to its enduring relevance and impact on the science fiction genre.

Decades after its release, "Fantastic Voyage" remains a touchstone of cinematic excellence, leaving an indelible mark on the landscape of science fiction storytelling and inspiring future generations of filmmakers to push the boundaries of imagination and creativity.

The film's legacy endures.

"Fantastic Voyage" continues to captivate audiences with its timeless tale of adventure, exploration, and the boundless potential of the human spirit.

The film's impact on the science fiction genre continues to reverberate through cinematic history.

The movie's enduring legacy is a testament to its timeless relevance and enduring impact..

In conclusion, "Fantastic Voyage" has left an indelible mark on the science fiction genre, captivating audiences with its groundbreaking visual effects and imaginative storytelling. The movie's enduring legacy is a testament to the creativity and innovation of its creators, as well as the timeless appeal of its premise. With its awe-inspiring journey into the human body, "Fantastic Voyage" continues to inspire wonder and fascination, reminding us of the boundless potential of the human imagination.

What makes "Fantastic Voyage" a significant film in the science fiction genre? "Fantastic Voyage" is considered a significant film in the science fiction genre due to its pioneering special effects, compelling narrative, and innovative premise. The movie's exploration of the human body on a microscopic scale was groundbreaking for its time and continues to be revered for its imaginative storytelling.

How did "Fantastic Voyage" influence subsequent science fiction films and popular culture? "Fantastic Voyage" had a profound influence on subsequent science fiction films and popular culture by setting a high standard for visual effects and pushing the boundaries of imaginative storytelling. Its impact can be seen in the way it inspired filmmakers and storytellers to explore new frontiers in science fiction, leaving an enduring legacy in the genre.

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NUGGET REVIEWS

Sunday, February 24, 2019

On the set of "fantastic voyage" ( 1966 ).

3 comments:

Great amazing photos (and I don't mean just the ones of Ms. Welch)! FANTASTIC VOYAGE has become one of my favorite sci fi pictures. L.B. Abbott was in charge of 20th Century Fox's SFX back then and also worked on TV series like VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and LOST IN SPACE.

Wow! Keebler elves of medicine.

Is there an actual ‘making of’ book at all ? I’m watching the film now and want to know about the making of the escape from the antibodies on the ear.was all the ‘swimming’ clever blue screen and similar to the Batman type ‘wall walking ‘ ? I really would like to know as I have the 1/100 ‘Proteus’ model too.

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Fantastic Voyage

Where to watch.

Rent Fantastic Voyage on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

The special effects may be a bit dated today, but Fantastic Voyage still holds up well as an imaginative journey into the human body.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Richard Fleischer

Stephen Boyd

Raquel Welch

Cora Peterson

Edmond O'Brien

General Carter

Donald Pleasence

Dr. Michaels

Arthur O'Connell

Colonel Donald Reid

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Fantastic voyage.

1966 Directed by Richard Fleischer

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.

Stephen Boyd Raquel Welch Edmond O'Brien Donald Pleasence Arthur O'Connell William Redfield Arthur Kennedy Jean Del Val Barry Coe Ken Scott Shelby Grant James Brolin Brendan Fitzgerald Brendon Boone James Doohan Kenneth MacDonald Christopher Riordan

Director Director

Richard Fleischer

Producer Producer

Writers writers.

Otto Klement David Duncan Jerome Bixby Harry Kleiner

Editor Editor

William B. Murphy

Cinematography Cinematography

Ernest Laszlo

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Ad Schaumer

Art Direction Art Direction

Jack Martin Smith Dale Hennesy

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Stuart A. Reiss Walter M. Scott

Special Effects Special Effects

Art Cruickshank Emil Kosa Jr. L.B. Abbott

Title Design Title Design

Richard Kuhn

Composer Composer

Leonard Rosenman

Sound Sound

Bernard Freericks David Dockendorf

Makeup Makeup

Hairstyling hairstyling.

Margaret Donovan

20th Century Fox

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English French

Releases by Date

24 aug 1966, 30 sep 1966, 14 oct 1966, 20 oct 1966, 28 nov 1966, 23 dec 1966, 13 jan 1967, 23 jan 1967, 05 sep 2000, 22 dec 2003, 12 jan 2005, 05 jun 2007, 08 oct 2013, 18 oct 2013, releases by country.

Physical L Fox
Theatrical U
Theatrical 12
Theatrical T
Theatrical 15
Physical 15 DVD release
Physical 15 Blu-ray release
Theatrical PG
Physical PG Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea / Fantastic Voyage DVD Double Feature
Physical PG DVD Release
Physical PG Blu-Ray Release

100 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★★★★ 2

It's one of my all time favorite sci-fi films! I was hooked on the tv series Voyage to the bottom of the sea and then Fantastic Voyage came out with a submarine navigating the human body and I about went out of my ever livin mind!

I was glued to the screen, slack jawed and drooling! I'm describing my recent viewing not my experience as a kid! The film is absolutely mind boggling!

Sure it's kitschy, that's part of its charm, come on cut it some hard earned slack, it's nearly 50 years old and for its day it was quite a technical marvel! It was just as exciting today as the day it was released!

Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½

I really loved how well thought out this movie was, making the miniaturization of people , and the medical application of the miniaturization, almost seem scientifically plausible.

The opening credits were beautiful.

Raquel Welch was beautiful. 😍

I'm glad to have finally crossed Fantastic Voyage off my list of shame.

Review by russman ★★★ 6

Insane in the membrane

Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ 6

If you've seen that episode of The Magic School Bus this isn't terribly different. It's 60's sci-fi, so there's a laser beam and pervasive fear of communism, but otherwise it's pretty much the same. A group of scientists enter the human body to fix it from the inside. The sets both inside and outside the body are absolutely magnificent in every sense of the word, and the special effects are obvious by today's standards but not without their unique charms. The screenplay is a bit simplistic which robs the movie of most of its tension ( apparently Isaac Asimov said it was full of plot holes), and too much of it is just actors staring at special effects, but for the…

Review by Travis Lytle ★★★★½ 6

Richard Fleischer's "Fantastic Voyage" is a fun yet serious-toned slice of 1960s science fiction. Earnest where it could have been silly, and scientifically minded where it could have been overly far-fetched, the film is a neatly assembled, semi-plausible, and engaging adventure.

Starring Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, and Donald Pleasance, the film is built around the fantastic voyage of a team of scientists that is miniaturized and injected into a man's body in order the save his life. The story is split between the minuscule team, maneuvering through arteries and organs, and its handlers in a secret, underground, government complex. The story is told seriously and treated without any whimsy that could have turned the tale hokey. As the team is…

Review by noir1946 ★★★★ 2

“The other side got to him.”

I saw Fantastic Voyage when it was released and enjoyed it with reservations. I watched it again many years later but don’t’ recall any reaction other than those same reservations. On this third viewing, having acquired many more layers of pulp in the interim, I enjoyed it more than ever, though those darn reservations keep lurking around.

What’s fun about Fantastic Voyage includes the outlandish premise. Our hero, Grant (Stephen Boyd), is summoned to this secret government facility in the middle of the night, yet dozens of employes are strolling around, an awful lot of folks to be trusted not to spill the beans to The National Enquirer . Grant learns what’s so secret and…

Review by Justin Decloux ★★★½

"Oh shit, did we forget the sub in the guy?"

[Man explodes]

Review by ᴬⁿᵗʰᵒⁿʸ ⛧ ★★★

One of my favorite opening credits of all time. 💉

Review by Ben Hibburd ☘🏀 ★★★½ 17

It feels like an eternity since I last reviewed a classic Sci-Fi film on my account. I've been feeling a little lost these last couple of months. My interest in writing and this site have been waning whilst other hobbies such as reading and drawing have been taking precedent.

Anyway, I read Issac Asimov's novelisation of this film a few months ago and stumbled across this movie upon my bi-weekly trip to my local video store. So I thought it would be fitting to get back to my early roots of this account and review a schlocky 50's, although in this case 60's science fiction film.

I'm sure by now the gist of this story is well known in pop…

Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★½

Got deja vu when watching this, because shrinking is involved just like when I was watching Spies in Disguise that same afternoon...

Review by Tanner ★★★ 1

Well, no Ant-Man for me this weekend because my movie buddy got sick and I don't want to go without them. Yes, I'm still excited for it despite the reception. So I decided to to turn to a couple of alternatives for my shrinking entertainment needs.

A Cold War, not of nuclear arsenals but of a fantastic new technology — the ability to miniaturize matter but only for the duration of an hour. Dr. Jan Benes has perfected the technology, allowing for it to be used indefinitely. The only problem being that both sides know about it. When he defects to the U.S., an assassination attempt leaves him comatose and with a blood clot threatening his life. With the secrets…

Review by Brian Formo ★★½

The production design, the sheer look of Fantastic Voyage , is fantastic. And I don’t just mean the pillowy flutters of the ear canal. I’m actually probably more taken by the base camp, with its honeycomb shrinking floor, banking tube shoots full of liquid, and a giant red and blue Operation-styled mock-up of the body. This is the perfect movie to have on behind folks, playing silently during a party, because everything exciting here is in the background. The story foreground—of shrunken scientists racing against their own body clocks to save the head scientist who's in a coma—is a vinyl clad shrug. Because the infighting and sci-fi dialogue in the ear canal is pretty staid. The landscapes are livelier than the…

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Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Isaac asimov’s fantastic voyage from film to novel, thursday, march 25, 2021 mark r. kelly comments 4 comments.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov First Edition: Houghton Mifflin, March 1966, Cover art Dale Hennesy (Book Club edition shown)

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Houghton Mifflin (239 pages, $3.95, Hardcover, March 1966) Cover art Dale Hennesy

Isaac Asimov’s early novels were published over a period of just eight years, from Pebble In the Sky in 1950 to The Naked Sun in 1957, with linked collections like I, Robot and the Foundation “novels” along the way. Some of his early short stories, published in magazines as early as 1939, weren’t collected into books until the 1960s, but for the most part Asimov had stopped writing science fiction by the late 1950s, perhaps because of the collapse of the SF magazine market, or perhaps because he’d discovered that writing nonfiction books was more lucrative and easier. As Asimov fans were painfully aware of at the time, a spell of some 15 years went by before he published his next original novel, The Gods Themselves in 1972, to great acclaim and awards recognition. (And then yet another decade went by before Asimov returned to regular novel writing, with Foundation’s Edge and a string of following novels derived from his Foundation and Robot universes.)

—Except for a book called Fantastic Voyage , in 1966, which was a novelization of a movie script. Such novelizations are by now a virtually extinct species, I think, but they were quite common in the 1970s especially where, once a movie left theaters, there was no way to experience it again except via proxy novel versions (and perhaps revival house movie theaters), especially of SF films. (Until the 1980s, when Video Cassette Recorders became widespread, and lots of old movies were issued on videotape, and novelizations became redundant.)

The year 1966 was early in the history of movie novelizations. Theodore Sturgeon had done Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea back in 1961, and by 1967 James Blish was doing narrative versions of Star Trek episodes, gathered into collections of 6 or 8 per book. There were other books associated with several TV shows in the mid-1960s, by Murray Leinster, Keith Laumer, and others, but these were not based on actual scripts and so are better described as “ties” or “tie-ins.” (If “novelizations” passed in the 1980s, there remain to this day hundreds of such “ties,” especially set in the Star Trek or Star Wars universes.)

Anyway, Isaac Asimov did the novelization of Fantastic Voyage , a big-budget film with spectacular special effects for its time. Why? The story is recounted in various places, but essentially his publisher asked, and talked him into it. Despite that Asimov had not written a novel in years. Despite that Asimov considered the job essentially hackwork. Nevertheless, Asimov agreed, on condition the book be published in hardcover (not just as an original paperback), and on the condition he could correct various scientific impossibilities in the film’s plot. He wrote the book quickly and so it was published some six months before the film opened, leading some to believe the film was based on Asimov’s novel. But it was the other way around.

Unlike my post about Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man , another story about miniature people, here I will explicitly revisit both the film and the book. Both to reconsider the idea of how miniature people makes sense or not, and to examine to what extent Asimov improved or otherwise changed the film’s narrative and rationale.

With that in mind, I’ll step through the film, and along the way comment on where Asimov expanded scenes, provided additional background, and offered scientific rationalization.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Bantam Books, October 1966, Cover art from movie poster (Scholastic Books edition shown)

Full disclosure: According to my records, the paperback edition of Asimov’s novel, shown here, was the first science fiction book I ever purchased. It’s an edition from Scholastic Book Services that provided, back in 1966, mail-orders from school classrooms, with delivery several weeks later. Editions for Scholastic at that time were identical to the publishers’ (paperback) editions, except that the price and publisher ID numbers were left off. I didn’t see the film until years later, in the VCR era.

To destroy a blood clot in the brain of a scientist whose mind holds the key to breaking a Cold War stalemate, a submarine with a crew of five is miniaturized to microscopic size and injected into the scientist’s body. As the sub travels to the brain to destroy the clot there with a laser, it experiences a series of accidents and attempted sabotages; the suspense is as much whether the mission will succeed (of course it will) but who of the five is the saboteur.

The film has spectacular special effects in its depictions of the interior of the human body, impressive even now, though the story is a suspense thriller with a one-crisis-a-minute plot. The Asimov novelization tries to rationalize the implausibility of miniaturization, expands on the mild sexual innuendo of the film (involving the one female crewman), adds analysis of the potential motivations of the saboteur, and finishes with a couple scenes confirming the success of the mission and about a potential romantic relationship.

Walkthrough of film and novelization, with [[ comments ]]

The film Fantastic Voyage ( Wikipedia ) was announced as “the most expensive science-fiction film ever made” (as of 1964 or 1965), with a budget of $5 million; its box office was $12 million. The film was notable not just for its special effects, but for the appearance, early in her career, of “international sex symbol” Raquel Welch ( Wikipedia ), and for its atonal score by Leonard Rosenman, with no music at all in the first four reels of the film, until the submarine enters the scientist’s body. Other stars in the film were Stephen Boyd, Edmond O’Brien, Donald Pleasance, Arthur O’Connell, and Arthur Kennedy, all familiar from other films of that era.

For this walk-through I’ll use Asimov’s chapter headings as dividers, but describe the film first, then Asimov’s version of the same scenes. A summary of the principal differences between film and book is at the end.

Movie: We see an airline in the night sky, descending toward landing.
General Alan Carter [Edmond O’Brian in the film] talks with Colonel Donald Reid [Arthur O’Connell]. Each wears a CMDF insignia. They fret about there being only 72 minutes before the plane lands. The agent in charge is Grant [Stephen Boyd]; the target is Benes . Both sides are evenly matched [[ this is very Cold War-ish, but only in terms of “Ourselves” and the “Others” ]]. Benes is bringing new knowledge to end the stalemate, if he makes it.
[[ Since I’d read the book first, I’d thought that Benes was pronounced “beans.” I was 11 years old! In fact it’s an eastern European name, pronounced in the film as “ben-esh.” ]]
Reid then visits Dr. Michaels [Donald Pleasance], of the medical division, who babbles about the complex circulatory system. He has heard of Benes’ research and is skeptical. Maybe lying, maybe mistaken. They discuss the surgeon Duval [Arthur Kennedy] as an arrogant son of a bitch. He’s a brain surgeon, always busy with his work. His assistant is Miss (Cora) Peterson [Raquel Welch], 25yo. Her specialty is laser work. They debate whether Benes’ work is for good, or if it would just increase the probability of world destruction.
[[ This is a running theme in Asimov, unexamined in the film. What is the greatest danger? For both sides, or only one side, having this miniaturization technology? ]]
Cpt William Owens [William Redfield] rides in a limousine flanked by motorcycle escorts, coming to the airfield. He chats with the secret service agent, Gonder. Owens is confident he will recognize Benes, rather than a double agent impersonating him.
With no dialogue (and no music), we see the plane land, then two big trucks with troops move in, along with motorcycles and three limos.
Out of the plane come two men: and old man, Benes; and the younger agent, Grant. Benes shakes hands with Grant in thanks, then rides away in a limo. Grant remains behind.
The cars and motorcycles drive through the dark city, a warehouse district. Suddenly an attack car emerges from an alley, hits the corner of the limo containing Benes, and then bursts into flames. Frantically, the agents drag Benes to another limo, while gunshots are heard as the agents attack the enemy.
Asimov: Benes greets Owens, recalling a drinking episode some years ago (which Grant sees as confirming Benes’ identity). And then the attack scene as in the film.
We see Benes, from above, unconscious in a hospital bed.
Then we get the film credits. Titles appear with teletype sounds. We hear electronic pings — very much like the electronic pings we heard in ‘60s TV shows like Lost in Space . There’s even a steady sound like that used for the Jupiter 2 flying in space, heard here as the Proteus shrinks. As in films of this era, full credits run at the beginning of the film. (As film credits became increasingly bloated, they’ve moved to the end of films, for decades now.) We never hear these electronic sounds again in the rest of the film.
Since I haven’t mentioned until now, the film credits four writers, most notably Jerome Bixby (author of SF novels and stories, such as “It’s a Good Life”), along with Otto Klement, David Duncan, and Harry Kleiner.
We fade to a city street at night. Finally we hear some dialogue: Grant is riding in a limo, accompanied by an agent, who apologizes for waking him up so early. In a deserted warehouse area, the limo stops, the other men in the car step out, Grant told to stay inside. The limo, on a hidden elevator pad, descends into the ground.
The elevator stops; a large door slides open, and we see a huge underground complex of well-lit corridors and people busily walking around. A man on a scooter appears; Grant gets on board, and they ride through the facility. The initials CMDF are everywhere. The scooter drives up ramps that parallel escalators. They pause at a security station, then Grant is dropped off at an office. General Carter greets him, takes him into an observation room, where they look down at Benes in a hospital bed on the level beneath them. Carter quickly explains that Benes has a brain injury and they have to operate. He turns on two monitors to introduce Duval and his assistant on one, Dr. Michaels on the other. Grant is needed for security purposes — Duval is suspected of being an enemy agent. Carter tells Grant to take orders only from Dr. Michaels. Grant remarks about Miss Peterson’s good looks
Follows the film closely, except that Grant is not told to follow Michaels’ orders; Asimov develops this differently in the next chapter.
Grant wonders what CMDF stands for. Consolidated Mobilization of Delinquent Females? Grant explains: Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces. They can reduce anything, put an army in a match box. Both sides have it, but it can’t be controlled. That was Benes has discovered.
Grant, flabbergasted, tries to refuse; he doesn’t want to be miniaturized!
They come to a briefing room, where Dr. Reid is objecting that Duval insists on taking his assistant along; a woman doesn’t belong on a trip like this! Duval says she volunteered. “So did every male technician in this unit!” Reid gives in, but disapproves.
Michaels proceeds with the briefing, turning on an overhead projector to display a crude diagram of Benes’ body on a screen. The injury can’t be reached from the outside, so a submarine will be reduced to the size of a microbe and injected into the body. Benes’ body will be slowed down, lowering heartbeats and respiration. No danger of turbulence, because they’re not going through the heart. Michael indicates their path, where the laser will be used, and then where the sub will head for removal. Communication will be by wireless, and since the sub is nuclear-powered, it can be tracked from outside. But they must be out in 60 minutes, when the miniaturization reverses; as they grow, there’s danger from white corpuscles and antibodies.
[[ I’ll note that during this scene, and many later scenes in the Control Booth, we see General Carter and one other character light up cigars, just as so many Asimov characters did in his early novels. ]]
Grant’s guess about CMDF is Consolidated Martian Dimwits and Fools.
Asimov attempts some rationalization of the miniaturization process, giving Michaels some long speeches about the miniaturization controversy some time back, how the idea was dismissed on theoretical grounds. There were two ideas for how to reduce size: push the individual atoms closer together; or discard a certain proportion of atoms. Neither is plausible, Michael explains; another technique was developed, and the idea went underground (thus the secret CMDF facility): “We are miniaturized, not as literal objects, but as images; as three-dimensional images manipulated from outside the universe of space-time.” He goes on about hyper-space. (p40)
Whereas the film states flatly that the miniaturization lasts only 60 minutes, Asimov explains that the length of miniaturization is proportional to its degree. To get as small as required for a mission inside the body, the miniaturization will begin to revert after 60 minutes. (Benes’ discovery is that he can beat this limitation, to maintain miniaturization indefinitely.)
The briefing room scenes proceed, with Grant twice trying to decline the mission, and being told he’s not a volunteer. Asimov states that the ship will be reduced to three micra, just under a ten-thousandth of an inch. And significantly, Grant is given the authority to make executive decisions. (Rather than merely keep an eye on Duval, who is not specifically suspected in the book.)
The crew walks out, crosses a concourse, passes through a big security door and into a computer room overlooking the operating room. [[ The TV monitors are ovoid and black and white, very primitive looking; meanwhile the computers flash patterns of meaningless white lights, like every other Hollywood computer of this era. ]]
The crew passes through a purple-lit sterilization corridor, then into a big room where the sub awaits. It’s white, horseshoe-shaped with an upright tail and a glass dome on top. They climb a ladder and enter from the top.
Inside is a chart table, a wireless station, and four seats beneath the captain’s perch under the dome.
Grant helps Cpt. Owens lower a heavy, battery-sized device into a niche in the floor — a “particle,” Owens explains, a microscopic bit of nuclear fuel that will be all they need to power the ship once miniaturized.
Owens explains how the sub was built as a research vessel to study the spawning of deep sea fish.
[[ And yet with all those windows and a glass dome, this sub doesn’t seem to be designed for deep-sea work. ]]
Grant then makes a remark about needing to “spawn” a message on the wireless. Miss Peterson, who has been determinedly business-like in attitude so far, notices the wordplay and smiles, just slightly.
So Grant sends out a message, and in the control room it’s read out: “Miss Peterson has smiled.”
Asimov omits the planting of a nuclear “particle.”
As they settle inside Michaels, who admits himself he likes to talk, speculates to Grant about who might be a secret agent — not Owens, because he would never sacrifice his ship. The least suspicious is him, Grant.
Asimov plays up the attempted innuendo between Grant and Cora; he keeps making remarks that allude to her looks, or just the fact that she’s a woman. She reproves him and tells him to treat her like any other crewman. But when she tests her laser and asks him to move his hand, he says “When near you hence-forward I shall be careful where I place my hand.” And she smiles, just a bit. So he sends the message, “Miss Peterson has smiled.”
Cpt. Owens shows Michaels a “repeater” in the cockpit, which will display whatever chart Michaels has out below.
Grant asks Miss Peterson about how she is around the house, if she can cook. She ignores him and tests the laser. [[ Asimov moved the laser test into the previous chapter. ]]
They prepare for miniaturization. They all strap in. Outside, the miniaturizer, a huge disk at ceiling height, is slid in above the sub.
From the Control Room, Reid orders Phase One. We hear whining. From above light glows onto the ship.
From inside, the crew sees the world through the windows expanding and growing farther away.
The sub becomes matchbox-sized on the red tile, the “Zero Module,” in the center of the room.
Much the same, though Asimov adds further interchanges between Grant and Cora, especially as she discusses her place in a man’s world. [[ Gradually as the novel proceeds, “Miss Peterson” becomes “Cora” both in the narrative and in Grant’s speech. ]]
While Michaels and others are nervous about all this, Duval blandly remarks that he has “the consolations of religion. I have confessed, and for me death is but a doorway.” The film has a scene or two in which Duval expresses near-religious awe, even presuming the existence of a creator, but Asimov makes Duval’s religious faith explicit.
Phase Two. A precision handling device is slowly wheeled in. Zero Module is elevated — the hexagonal tile slides up from the floor, to chest height. Carefully, a technician guides a fork at the end of an arm of the device underneath the ship, and lifts it. Zero Module descends, and in its place a huge glass cylinder rises. The handling device lowers the sub onto the surface of the water.
Inside, Owens orders Grant to open a couple valves, for the ship to submerge.
Outside, we see the tiny sub drifting downward in the glass cylinder.
Michaels has a panic attack, saying he can’t breathe, climbing up to the hatch and trying to open it. The others pull him down; he calms down, and apologizes.
Phase Three. Now the entire cylinder shrinks. Full reduction is achieved. The timer on the wall starts: 60 minutes and counting. Inside, the ship powers up.
Asimov refers to the handling device as a waldo, and alludes to a 1940s sf story without naming it.
Asimov has the sub crew perceive the people outside as slowly-moving, as if the subjective time at miniaturization may be longer than an hour. [[ Perhaps Asimov’s way to make more plausible how many events the crew endures in a single hour. ]]
Phase Four. Zero Module is elevated again; the handler moves in, and in two steps, a plunger and then a needle are attached to the ends (by nurses wearing white uniforms with caps).
The handler moves over to Benes, whose bald head is now lined in a grid, and who has a big X marked on his throat. An array of tiny radar antennas is positioned around his head.
Asimov has the crew recognize that the slight vibrations they feel are Brownian motion.
Cora is optimistic they can wrap this up in 15 minutes, then it doesn’t matter (if the ship suffers from the vibrations). Michaels angrily explains that it *does* matter, because if they wreck the ship before being extracted from Benes, he would still be killed by the expanding debris. [[ This is Asimov’s first allusion to they key flaw of the film, which Asimov takes pains to correct. ]]
Grant accepts Owens’ assurance that the ship will survive 60 minutes of such vibrations. So they will proceed. [[ This is Grant’s first executive decision, given the role Asimov assigns him. ]]
We see the ship sliding down through the water, at a downward angle, with a gushing sound – and then they’re out, into relatively calm waters, inside the body.
[[ —And here is where the film’s music begins. It’s by Leonard Rosenman (composer of many films from East of Eden to Star Trek IV ), and it’s atonal, though not 12-tone (there’s a repeated four-note motif in almost every scene). It’s appropriately otherworldly for a science fiction film about a place no one has ever seen before. There’s an 11-minute suite of the score at YouTube here , complete with electronic pings and teletype noises. (The first instance of the four-note motif is at 1:10)
(YouTube also has this 17-minute documentary about the making of the film here , which reveals where those various electronic sounds came from: created by a sound editor named Ralph Hickey for a 1957 Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn film called Desk Set , as sounds an advanced computer would make.) ]]
The ship’s crew looks out at huge red and blue blobs floating around them—corpuscles. Duval gets philosophical: “…man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity between outer and inner space.” He sees something he doesn’t recognize — maybe a protein? — and wants to stop for a sample, but they have no time.
They expect a branch in the artery in two minutes, but Cpt. Owens finds himself struggling against some kind of current. The ship plunges into a whirlpool. The crew straps in, but are pressed outward by centrifugal force.
Abruptly, the sub emerges through an arterial wall into calm. But where are they?
In the book Duval calls the view “God’s handiwork.”
At the end they realize they’ve passed through an arterio-venous fistula, a small connection between artery and vein, perhaps caused by the initial accident Benes was in.
Michaels is the expert on Benes’ circulatory system; shouldn’t he have known this fistula was there? Or perhaps it was too small to be noticed?
Control realizes Proteus is off course, in the jugular vein.
In the sub, Michaels explains about the fistula. They’re headed for the heart, and they can’t go through it. Michaels wants to call off the mission, at 51 minutes. In Control, the General insists they keep going, and asks about stopping the heart. How long can it be stopped? And how long for Proteus to get through? 60 seconds, and 57 seconds respectively. He orders the surgical team to prepare for cardiac shock.
As the sub approaches the heart, the crew hears heartbeats, and feels the ship jerking with each one. As they reach the valve — a huge three-sided thing — Owens hits the gas and they enter the abruptly quiet heart.
Outside the General watches his stopwatch. Inside the sub glides through the calm, through tendrils, spotting the semi-lunar valve, and just as the heart starts again, is whisked into the pulmonary artery.
No significant difference.
So now the sub is headed toward the lungs. They enter a capillary, and watch how corpuscles release CO2 in return for oxygen; refueling, and changing color.
Duval: “One of the miracles of the universe.” Michaels: “Just an exchange of gases; the end product of 500 million years of evolution.” Duval: “You can’t believe that all that is accidental, that there is a creative intelligence at work?”
But then an alarm sounds. The air pressure is dropping, due to a short that Owens quickly fixes. But they’ve lost too much air to go on. Grant observes they’re right along the lung, plenty of air there. Are there snorkels on board? Yes. Michaels, always ready to abandon the mission, reluctantly agrees to Grant’s plan.
Then Grant notices the laser has half fallen out of its cradle. How did that happen? Cora is sure she strapped it down.
But for now the four of them put on suits to go outside. The camera lingers on Raquel Welch as she partially disrobes.
Outside, the ship lowers legs to sit on the capillary wall.
In Control, they wonder why the sub has stopped again.
In the capillary, two of the crew, and then another two, exit the bottom of the sub.
Duval: “Look at the God-given wonder of it.” And so on, the exchange a bit expanded, the time period changed to 3 billion years.
Asimov realizes there’s a problem with miniature people breathing un-miniaturized air. (Which is to say, the movie implicitly presumes all the atoms and molecules are the same size and can interact with each other.) Asimov imagines, rather implausibly, that the sub has a small miniaturizer on board, and the crew jury-rigs a system of tubes to get full-sized air through it before refilling the sub’s tank.
Outside the sub, in snorkeling gear, Grant pulls on a big rubber hose attached to the sub. They see the lung through a thin wall, with bits of rock (dust).
Duval ties Grant’s lifeline to the sub; we see him doing it.
Grant pushes through the wall into the lung, pulling the hose. Sound of wind. In the sub, the pressure meter rises until full. In the lung, Grant slips and is blown away from the ledge where he pushed in. He tumbles through the air, lands, climbs back up, and pushes through.
The sub sails on (this scene as on the cover of the hardcover, top).
Essentially the same.
Back in the sub, Cora finds a broken trigger wire in the laser. End of laser. Michaels, yet again, suggests ending the mission immediately.
But Grant has an idea: he can get a replacement wire from the wireless. Michaels of course objects; they’ll be cut off from the outside world! The others calm him down, and a last message is sent to Control: “Cannibalizing wireless to repair laser.”
Cora holds up the replacement wire. It’s too thick. Duval, the surgeon, will try scraping it down to size.
This location or term wasn’t mentioned in the movie; Asimov has the crew mention they can move forward through the pleural lining.
As Duval and Cora work to repair the laser, Michaels wonders to Grant if Cora herself sabotaged the laser. And what about the lifeline? Did Duval try getting rid of him, Grant, for paying attention to Cora? Michaels admits he might have known about the fistula. Clues here seem to point everywhere.
The sub sails on. Grant confides to Michael: there have been attempts at sabotage. Could it be Duval?
The sub is going through the lymphatic system, which looks like a tunnel of netting, with fibers draping over the ship, like seaweed. They observe antibodies destroying the invaders.
[[ Of all the otherworldly landscapes and objects the film imagines as the inside of the human body, the antibodies are especially striking effects: little bundles of fibers that skitter quickly through the water, clinging and shaping themselves to the perceived intruder. ]]
Is there another route, to avoid these fibers? Duval suggests the inner ear. Michaels warns it’s dangerous — any noise from the outside world would be a disaster for the sub. Grant points out, they’re tracking the sub, they’ll see where we’re going and will understand.
Asimov has Cora explain what the lymph system does, what antibodies do. The fibers cause the engines to overheat. They watch as antibodies attack a bacterium and squeeze it to death. They acknowledge the risks of going through the ear, but figure those outside will understand. Grant specifically makes the decision to go ahead.

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov Bantam Books, October 1966, Back cover image from film (Scholastic Books edition shown)

In Control, realizing where the Proteus is heading, Reid makes an announcement (over a loudspeaker) that everyone is to remain completely silent.
The sub heads along a blue-green tunnel, settling onto a ledge. The vents are clogged with puffy seaweed. Grant, and then Michaels and Cora, suit up to go outside and pull the fibers off the ship. Duval stays inside to repair the laser. [[ The sub on the ledge as three pull off fibers is shown on the back cover of the paperback edition, above. ]]
In Control, the frazzled general, drinking cup after cup of coffee, reaches out to crush an ant, hesitates, and withdraws.
As the surgical team stands silently, one man’s forehead twitches with sweat. A nurse, seeing this, reaches out for a towel behind her, and as she pulls it off the table, knocks a pair of scissors onto the floor.
In the ear, chaos ensues, as the sounds echoes through the ear, sending the sub crew tumbling. [[ But why for so long? The sound was sharp but not reverberating. ]] Cora, tossed away, gets caught in some kind of fibers (the Cells of Henson, Michaels later mentions), which in turn attracts antibodies. Grant pulls her out, but the antibodies catch up to them, clinging to Cora. The two climb inside the sub, Cora gasping that she can’t breathe. They open the airlock prematurely; water pours onto the deck, as three of the men struggle to pull the antibodies off her. And discover they quickly crystalize, and snap into shards.
At the end of this last scene, Asimov has Cora burst into tears.
Asimov has Reid hand-write a warning to be completely quiet, which is carried around to each member of the surgical crew.
Later, when Carter and Reid realize the sub has stopped, they have a nurse put cotton in Benes’ ears.
Asimov omits the ant scene.
Here, as in some earlier scenes, the panic with the antibodies brings to Grant phrases from his college years: peptide chains, Van der Waals forces.
In Control, the General notes 12 minutes left. He runs out of sugar.
Inside, the sub glides through green light; they realize it’s light from the eardrum.
Duval has repaired the laser and Michael argues that it must be tested. Duval refuses; it will or will not work, he says, and perhaps only for a short period, and he doesn’t want to waste any of its capacity on a test.
They enter the brain: an enormous lacework with flashes of light moving up and down.
Duval is moved to quote: “Yet all the suns that light the corridors of the universe shine…”
A quote which Grant finishes.
Duval goes on about the soul and the infinite and God.
A Google search suggests that the lines of verse in the film were made-up. Asimov substitutes lines from Wordsworth: “Where the statue stood of Newton with his prism and silent face…” Which Duval begins and Grant, belying his military background, completes.
The sub crew sees the blood clot ahead — a huge dark red mass amid the latticework of the brain. Michaels as usual warns they don’t have time; they have only 6 minutes left, and it takes 2 minutes to reach the removal point. Michaels insists on abandoning the mission, heading for the removal point at once. Cpt. Owns says, OK, since Michaels is nominally in charge. But Grant, in response, flips switches on a control panel to depower the sub, and directs Duval to get his laser.
Michaels and Grant argue as Duval and Cora exit.
Duval begins firing the laser at the clot. Pieces of the clot, like moldy cloth, fall away.
Inside the sub, Michaels tells Cpt. Owens that there’s something wrong with the escape hatch. Owens comes down to investigate, and as he leans over, Michaels picks up a wrench and clubs Owens on the head. (At last, Michaels is revealed as the saboteur.)
Michaels quickly turns on power, climbs into the control dome, and pilots the sub toward the clot.
Duval, Cora, and Grant have seen the clot is sufficiently destroyed. Cora notices the sub is moving quickly toward them. Grant grabs the laser and fires it at the sub, cutting a swath through its hull that sends water flooding the inside. The sub lurches and crashes into a bundle of fibers. White corpuscles appear, converging on it. Can Michaels and Owens be saved? If not they’ll be ingested.
Grant climbs into the wrecked sub, finds Owens conscious, and Michaels trapped in the dome by machinery trapping his hands. Overhead, a white corpuscle, a huge mass of white foam, penetrates the dome and engulfs Michaels’ head, as he screams. Grant and Owens escape.
As the ship arrives at the clot, Michaels insists Duval is the enemy agent; Grant fires back that he, Michaels, is the enemy agent.
Owens escapes the sub by himself — actually Michaels suits him up, allowing him to escape — and joins the others. Michaels calls the others from the sub, ranting about saving mankind (from the danger of both sides having controllable miniaturization technology), before being taken out by the laser.
The ship crashes and the survivors realize they have to leave now. What’s the quickest way? Out through the eye.
The survivors swim to the corner of the eye. The sub has been engulfed by the white corpuscle.
In Control, time is up, the sub crew has to be removed. The order comes: trepanation. The radar rack is removed, and a surgical team gathers around Benes’ head.
And then the general stops them. He thinks the ship may already be destroyed, and the crew is on their way to the nearest exit point, the eye.
Reid walks down to the operating room, leans over Benes, and looks into his eye. He sees a spot. He asks for a glass slide, pulls a teardrop with that spot onto the slide, walks it over to the red hexagon in the miniaturization room, sets it down, stands back. And the four survivors grow from nothingness to full size as everyone watches.
[[ The music here becomes more tonal, complete with chimes. ]]
As the crew reaches full-sized, Reid smiles and nods to them. They shake hands. In the control room, all the staff sitting at those computer consoles get up and rush down to the operating floor, forming a crowd, welcoming the crew back. Then end.
[[ Thus, we presume Benes is OK and the mission was a success, but we’re not told or shown so. ]]
At this point Asimov addresses the problem of the wrecked sub, and the dead Michaels, a problem the film ignored. They will deminiaturize too, or their fragments will, and would kill Benes. So Asimov has Grant attract the attention of the white cell that engulfed the ship by stabbing it with a knife, and so lures it to follow him as he swims with the others toward the eye.
As they swim, and start de-miniaturizing, they see their surroundings getting small; they are getting bigger. They escape through a duct, the white cell following.
The survivors then expand to full size next to a heap of metal fragments. Where’s Michaels? Grant explains: “Somewhere in [the wreckage] you’ll find whatever’s left of Michaels. Maybe just an organic jelly with some fragments of bones.”
And then, past where the movie ends, Asimov provides some concluding, confirmational scenes.
Grant wakes after sleeping 15 hours. He speaks with Grant and Reid, discussing how Michaels wasn’t a story-book villain; he was sincere in his way, worried about the spread of dangerous technology. There have been people like this since the atomic bomb; yet his mission was futile because Benes’ secret would have been discovered eventually by someone else.
Grant explains how he came to suspect Michaels. How each apparent accident wouldn’t have been sabotage by the obvious suspect. Michaels always argued for the end of the mission after each accident. His initial fear gave way to calm, since he figured the mission would fail; then he got angry as each accident was overcome. [[ This is the kind of analysis typical of most Asimov novels. ]]
Grant decides to find Cora. She is just leaving Duval’s office. Grant appears. Still “Cora”? And he’ll be Charles. May they admire each other? Of course.
They visit Benes, eyes open. He remembers what he came here to say. His secret is secure.
And so Grant and Cora depart, “hand in hand, into a world that suddenly seemed to hold no terrors for them, but only the prospect of great joy.”

Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain by Isaac Asimov Doubleday, September 1987, Jacket illustration Ron Miller

To summarize film and book and the changes Asimov made:

A sub enters a human body to repair a clot in the brain, and suffers one calamity after another, some perhaps accidents, some perhaps due to the work of a saboteur or double agent. But the mission to destroy the clot succeeds.
Asimov addresses the problem of how miniaturization would work, dismisses two obvious methods, and settles on familiar sfnal double-talk about hyperspace. (Asimov wrote a later novel, Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brian , not a sequel to the movie or his novelization of it, but his own independent treatment of the idea. But it’s twice as long as the novelization here, and I haven’t checked to see what its miniaturization rationale is.)
Asimov adds scenes at the beginning (to introduce characters) and end (to confirm the success of the mission), but otherwise follows the movie’s plot very closely.
Asimov ramps up Grant’s sexual innuendo with Cora, to a point that would be unacceptable today; but as the story goes on, their relationship becomes more respectful, and by the end of the book is the implication of a serious relationship.
And Asimov considers the motives of the saboteur: not a cartoon villain, but whose motives are sincere, if misguided.
Finally, despite the one-crisis-a-minute plotting, both film and novel remain impressive as an imaginative journey, and for the film’s visualizations of the interior of the human body (which much of the time looks like paintings by Paul Lehr).

Mark R. Kelly’s last review for us was of Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man . Mark wrote short fiction reviews for Locus Magazine from 1987 to 2001, and is the founder of the Locus Online website, for which he won a Hugo Award in 2002. He established the Science Fiction Awards Database at sfadb.com . He is a retired aerospace software engineer who lived for decades in Southern California before moving to the Bay Area in 2015. Find more of his thoughts at Views from Crestmont Drive , which has this index of Black Gate reviews posted so far.

I also read that fairly early in my SF reading career. I still have never seen the movie.

Too bad you didn’t have Seinfeld to give a hint to the pronunciation of Benes’ name! (Or, in my latter day case, Cardinals’ pitchers Andy and Alan Benes.) Of course those Americanized names are pronounced BEN-uhs, with an “S” sound, not “Sh”.

I don’t know when movie novelizations became very popular, but I have novelized editions of plays (from the first decade of the 20th Century), and of movie serials (or series of shorts) from 1915 or so. I think the earliest feature film novelization can be traced to the very early ’20s. I do think they became far more popular by the ’60s.

Point taken — Paul Di Filippo emailed me about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoplay_edition .

Another great, detailed review! A real trip down memory lane for me, too: when sf films were thin on the ground, it was an event any time this was broadcast on TV. And that was even before I was old enough to realize why Raquel Welch was a big deal.

I had a few novelizations on my regular reread list as a kid, and this was one of them, partly because I was an obsessive Asimov fan. But I think Asimov was actually good at capturing the dry, worldly tone of spy novels and mysteries. His plain, matter-of-fact style is the prose equivalent of Jack Webb’s radio voice.

I remember thinking that this book almost seemed like a prequel to Asimov’s “Let’s Get Together”, a robot espionage story set in a future where the Cold War never ended. Although I haven’t read either for a long time.

About the history of novelizations… There was one by Achmed Abdullah of the 1924 Thief of Bagdad. King Kong got one in 1933 and I know of one to The Creature From the Black Lagoon in 1954, so I’m guessing there were probably quite a few early ones.

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a large anatomical map was projected, as Dr. Duval identified the location of Dr. Benes' deadly blood clot; he explained how it would be "impossible to get at without damage to the intervening tissue which would prove fatal to Benes"; the only way to reach the blood clot would be through the arterial system (via the carotid artery); the surgical crew-team would be placed inside a high-tech, bubble-domed, nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Proteus ; they (and the sub) would be reduced to "about the size of a microbe," and would then be injected into the arterial bloodstream of Benes' body; they would travel through the patient's arteries (in red) to the brain to dissolve the clot with a laser beam to relieve pressure on his brain; meanwhile, Benes would be placed in "deep hypothermia" to freeze him and slow down his bodily processes
Dr. Michaels interjected that the only area of danger from turbulence inside a blood vessel was within the heart; after reaching the blood clot, Dr. Duval would dissolve the blood clot with a laser beam, and then the team would return by way of the venous system (in blue) - reaching the base of the neck to be removed with a hypodermic needle
the entire mission would be monitored in the main operations room; a giant life-sized model of the interior circulatory system of the comatose patient would be viewed to monitor and precisely pinpoint the location of the submarine's 'fantastic voyage'; the nuclear-powered submarine's location was communicated wirelessly to observers in the military complex, and also monitored and tracked by navigator and circulatory specialist Dr. Michaels; the crew could be extracted by medical surgeons if an emergency developed; they needed to be wary of natural defensive attacks by white blood corpuscles or antibodies
the team was led into the Sterilization Room and then to the Miniaturization Room, where the sleek submarine craft (fitted on top with a transparent plastic bubble dome) was positioned on a supportive cradle above a honeycomb-patterned Zero Module; in a small lead box, a minuscule particle of radioactive material would be used to atomically-power or fuel the sub after it was reduced in size; the crew was strapped into the sub before it was miniaturized
a POV shot from inside the vessel looked out to illustrate its shrinkage; the microscopic sub was then carefully placed and submerged into a gigantic hypodermic needle filled with a saline solution; Dr. Michaels suffered an attack of claustrophobia and cried out: "I can't breathe. I've got to get out"; a few moments later, he recovered and explained that he had been buried alive for two days during an air raid in England
in Phase 3, the hypodermic needle was also miniaturized; a count-down began from 60 minutes now that they were fully reduced in size; in Phase 4, the vessel - amidst the turbulent fluid and similar to a roller-coaster ride - was injected via the hypodermic needle into the arterial bloodstream (via the carotid artery) of the patient through a targeted spot on his neck - seen from various perspectives; the sub entered the body and was now surrounded by globular red blood cells (looking like multiple lava-lamps)
as they beheld the colorful sights of the bloodstream (viewing corpuscles carrying oxygen) in front of them in an "ocean of life," Dr. Duval philosophically speculated: "The medieval philosophers were right: Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of Infinity, between outer and inner space, and there's no limit to either"
due to strong currents, a whirlpool, and a rare artery-vein connection, the sub was set off-course into the jugular vein instead of the carotid artery; they realized they had been detoured by the changed color of the cells surrounding the sub - now blue instead of red; they determined that there had been a "forced joining of a vein and an artery" (an arteriovenous fistula) that probably occurred when the patient was injured; they realized that they were now headed on a course toward the superior vena cava (SVC) in the direction of the heart, where they would be crushed by thumping heartbeats; 9 minutes had passed since miniaturization
in order to survive the turbulence of the heart (and prevent the utter destruction of the Proteus ), they needed to induce cardiac arrest momentarily, for no more than 60 seconds, to allow the submarine to detour through it - but it risked killing the comatose patient; according to slide-rule calculations by Gen. Carter, at top speed, it would take the Proteus crew 57 seconds to navigate the route; during the passage, it was noted that the sounds of the heart were like a barrage of heavy artillery; Dr. Michaels described how the heart was a marvelous organ, capable of "four million beats" in a lifetime; Dr. Duval marveled gloomily: "And every beat separates a man from eternity"; the maneuver was successful - the crew progressed into the right atrium and out through the pulmonary semilunar valve into the pulmonary artery in 57 seconds, in time to revive Benes' heart
on the way to the left lung, they entered a narrow capillary and had a close-up view of the oxygenation process (corpuscles turning from blue to bright red); Cora marveled: "We're the first ones to actually see it happen" - and Dr. Duval was in awe: "The living process" and labeled the process as one of the "miracles of the universe" - evidence of a Divine Creator and Intelligence ("the engineering of the cycle of a breath"); during a brief philosophical debate between intelligent design vs. evolution, Dr. Michaels downplayed the process as only an evolved or rational phenomenon: "I wouldn't call it a miracle. Just an interchange of gases - the end product of five hundred million years of evolution"
the two were interrupted by a warning buzzer-alarm; the ship's pilot-commander Bill Owens notified the crew that the Proteus was losing air pressure in its floatation tanks; Grant found that the left-side tank had lost pressure and had mysteriously failed; it was possibly attributable to a short in the electrical valve circuit system; their progress would be impeded for the remainder of the mission
Grant proposed that everyone on the team, except for Owens, exit the sub (wearing scuba-diving gear) and replenish the sub's oxygen supply; they would use a snorkel tube attached to the patient's lungs to extract and force oxygen into the sub's tanks
while preparing for the trip outside the sub, at about 42 minutes of remaining time, Cora simultaneously discovered that the surgical laser rifle that was to be used to perform the blood-clot procedure was damaged - it was not strapped down to its mounting and had become dislodged; Dr. Duval suspiciously suggested it must have come loose during turbulence - evidence of a enemy saboteur in the group that had tampered with it
during the repair mission of increasing the sub's air pressure, Dr. Michaels noted "rocks" or impurities embedded in the lung, due to carbon from smoke and specks of dust; after successfully completing the mission, Grant's safety tether line attached to the sub snapped (was it sabotage?), and he was sucked into the lungs and buffeted around; he was able to get back into the blood stream with the other crew and return to the ship; they then proceeded through the pleural cavity
upon their return, Cora - during a closer examination - discovered that the laser gun had a broken trigger wire; Dr. Duval also found a smashed transistor - meaning they had no way to "fire" the laser's lamp; the solution was to repair the laser by cannibalizing parts (one transistor and a circuit wire) from Grant's wireless radio
leaving the lung's pleural sac, the Proteus then entered the lymphatic system (and one of its lymph nodes), functioning in the body to drain off excessive fluid from the tissues; there, Grant and Dr. Michaels noticed that seaweed-like reticular fibers and antibodies appeared to ominously multiply; the reticular fibers could easily clog the sub's vents and water-jet intakes, causing overheating; Dr. Michaels warned: "Antibodies destroying bacteria or any other foreign invader that threatens the system"
due to the slow progress of the sub, Dr. Duval proposed that the best way to now proceed was to change course and pass through Dr. Benes' left inner ear and then go by way of the endolymphatic duct; during the more hazardous passage, another 'scuba-diving' trip was required to clear and remove the fibrous material in order to halt the sub's overheating (resulting in a lack of propulsion)
back in the control room, Gen. Carter reached for another cup of coffee and noticed an ant crawling around on spilt sugar specks; he resisted the temptation to squash the insect with his thumb, and Col. Reid remarked: "You'll wind up a Hindu. They respect all forms of life, however small"
at about the 21 minute mark, during the successful vent-clearing mission outside the sub performed by Grant, Cora and Dr. Michaels, a destructive shock wave of vibrations was produced when one of the nurses in the operating room accidentally dropped a pair of surgical scissors - and the ship and all of its crew were violently jostled; in a memorable sequence, Cora was thrown about and into some cilia fibers due to the shock waves - causing damage and prompting antibodies to attack her body after regarding it as a foreign object; the skittish Dr. Michaels warned: "If the antibodies reach her, they'll attack as if she were bacteria"
as she was brought back to the ship and through the reflooded airlock and into the ship, the antibodies continued to attack, and she screamed: ("They're tightening up - Please, I can't breathe"); the crew rescued her by groping her chest and throat and pulling the seaweed-like antibodies from her body as they crystallized
with only 12 minutes remaining, from the middle ear, the sub passed through the endolymphatic duct and back into the vascular system before it entered into the brain and the location of the clot; as they entered the base of the brain, Dr. Duval again went into a reverie: "Yet all the suns that light the corridors of the universe shine dim, before the blazing of a single thought…" - and his thought was completed by Grant: "proclaiming in incandescent glory the myriad mind of man"; Dr. Michaels was more sarcastic: "Let me know when we pass the soul"; Duval answered him: "The finite mind cannot comprehend infinity, and the soul which comes from God is infinite"; they came upon a "dark spot" - recognized by Dr. Duval as the site of the injury that needed to be healed
the crew determined that it had only a total of six minutes to complete their mission before de-miniaturization began (four minutes to perform the blood clot operation with the laser and two minutes to get to the removal point); the crew was under tremendous pressure outside the ship to succeed
once the operation to relieve the pressure was completed in about four minutes by Dr. Duval (with Cora and Grant), the mission was meanwhile being sabotaged by twitchy on-board crew member Dr. Michaels who wanted to abort the mission; he knocked out pilot Owens with a blow to the head, took control of the sub, and attempted to crash it at full speed into the clot area of fragile brain cells (the central nerve) to kill the patient
the remaining crew members were saved by heroic Commander Grant, who grabbed Duval's laser and shot at the high-tech sub to incapacitate it; after it was diverted and crashed into some dendrite tissue, puffy, jelly-fish like white corpuscles converged to envelope, consume, and digest both the submarine and Dr. Michaels who was physically pinned and trapped inside the bubble-dome
before the Proteus was entirely injested, Grant returned to the Proteus to rescue Owens, and he watched as the saboteur Dr. Michaels was engulfed and suffocated by a gigantic white corpuscle (macrophage)
the four surviving crew hurriedly swam along the optic nerve and were able to emerge safely from the tear duct at the corner of the patient's right eye to be rescued - they were viewed in a magnifier and lifted out of the teardrop on a microscope slide by Col. Reid, and placed on the Zero Module in the Miniaturization Room just before they reverted back to normal size
[Note: One of the scientific flaws or plot holes of the film was the fact that the Proteus remained in Benes' body, as well as Dr. Michaels' digested corpse, the laser gun and hundreds of gallons of saline solution in the huge hypodermic cylinder used during the initial injection; at the end of the 60 minutes, there would have been enough left-over elements that had the potential to expand, and ultimately would have exploded and killed the patient.]

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Film / Fantastic Voyage

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A 1966 Science Fiction film, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Stephen Boyd , Raquel Welch , Edmond O'Brien, and Donald Pleasence , about a shrinking machine used to send a mini submarine and its crew inside the body of a defecting scientist.

During the Cold War , both the United States and " The Other Side " have discovered the shrinking technology, which is limited in practicality because of how short-lived the effect is. But the scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) had discovered how to overcome the limit, and enemy agents will stop at nothing to prevent the secret from escaping from behind the Iron Curtain. Benes, wounded in an attack, is comatose and dying from a externally inoperable bloodclot, so the U.S. miniaturization taskforce organizes an expedition to be shrunken to remove the clot from the inside, operating on it at the cellular level.

But for the same reason they need to save the scientist, they have a time limit to get out of the body (or they'll grow back to normal size while inside of it). Even further, an enemy agent is trying to stop them; the protagonist Charles Grant (Boyd), who smuggled the scientist from behind the Iron Curtain, has to make sure the mission succeeds while not knowing who he can trust on the crew.

The film also received a novelization by Isaac Asimov , as well as an Animated Adaptation . Very often homaged or parodied — see "Fantastic Voyage" Plot .

This film and its novelization provide examples of:

And several years later he wrote a from-scratch "remake"-slash-"sequel", Fantastic Voyage 2: Destination Brain , that attempted to clean up even more of the science and plot problems.
Asimov also wrote an essay discussing the science problems brought by the premise of the movie, as among others how to miniaturize the sub and its crew, to be able to see when wavelengths of visible light are larger than the eyes of the crew, and getting air from the lungs when molecules are not much smaller than the submarine.
All for Nothing : In one version of the script, the team saves Benes, but Benes suffers from amnesia and does not remember how to achieve unlimited miniaturization .
all lowercase letters : The opening and closing credits for the film.
It isn't clear if the whirlpool was a freak accident or if Michaels knew about it somehow and navigated the Proteus there on purpose.
Grant insists his snapping safety line in the lungs must have been tampered with. This serves to increase the suspicion around Duval. But it could have been an accident, especially since the forces were described as "incredible," and because it's not clear when (or why) Michaels might have tampered with it.
Did Michaels deliberately navigate them through the lymph system, hoping that it might clog the engines? Or simply slow them down? Or did it have nothing to do with sabotage, and Michaels was earnestly concerned about the (justified) dangers of going through the ear?
One sexist example: antibodies tend to flood an area and attach themselves at random to anything they can. They wouldn't distinguish Cora from Grant, and would attack them both. Apparently, they wanted a Damsel in Distress moment instead.
Bald of Evil : Michaels
Bigger on the Inside : Played With — The Proteus was built as a single set, with removable exterior panels to allow filming. However, some have argued that the remaining volume is insufficient for the air tanks, engines, etc.
The Big Board : A vertical diagram of the scientist's body, where the location of the Proteus is marked.
Big "NO!" : Carter gets a few of these when things look bad.
Blob Monster : The White Cells
The Brigadier : General Carter, the commander of a scientific research division, who sends them into the body to save Benes and his knowledge.
Buried Alive : Michaels attributes his claustrophobia to having been trapped beneath rubble during the Blitz.
The Chains of Commanding : Carter is determined to have them get through the body, and takes some great risks to do so, but is clearly torn up over it.
The Coconut Effect : Deoxygenated blood is actually maroon , not blue. Blue is simply how systemic veins look from the outside when seen through human skin, and how deoxygenated blood vessels are illustrated to distinguish them from their oxygenated counterparts. But of course the film's lava lamp blobs - er, erythrocytes - turn from blue to red as they pick up oxygen in the lungs...
Communications Officer : Grant's cover
Cool Ship : The Proteus
Defector from Commie Land : Benes, who holds the secret to unlimited miniaturization.
Determinator : It's far more pronounced in the book, but Carter will do anything within reason he can to see the mission succeed, even induce cardiac arrest so they can travel through Benes' heart safely.
Elaborate Underground Base : CMDF HQ
Energy Weapon : The surgical laser, it has a constant beam and slices cleanly through what it's aimed at — but would a doctor really be using a rifle for brain surgery?
Fanservice : Raquel Welch is in the movie, wearing a skintight Latex Space Suit . 'Nuff said.
"Fantastic Voyage" Plot : The Trope Namer
Future Spandex : Under the neat white jumpsuits. Justified, both for the Fanservice, and because they're neoprene diving suits.
Giant's Droplet, Human's Shower : A variation. The crew inside Benes's body must make a quick exit before they grow back to their normal size, taking one of the tear ducts as their only possible route. The supervising scientists then discover them swimming in Benes's tears as if they are in a pool.
Got Volunteered : Grant is not happy to be selected for the mission once he finds out what it entails, but he isn't given much choice.
Government Agency of Fiction : C ombined M iniature D eterrent F orces (CMDF).
Hammer and Sickle Removed for Your Protection : The Soviet Union and its allies are only referred to as "The Other Side".
High-Tech Hexagons : The shrink ray room had hexagons all over the floor. The ship rose up on one of them once it got small enough, so that it could be shrunk one more time, and then readied for insertion into the guy's body.
Hollywood Atheist : Michaels. Does it come as any surprise to the 1960s audience that the non-believer turns out to be the traitor?
If I Wanted You Dead... : In the novelization, Grant eventually figures out the identity of the mole by realizing that the acts of sabotage that seem to implicate various crew members would have been far more effective if those crew members had in fact committed them using their specialized skills note Owens could have sabotaged the ship in a way that could not be fixed, Cora could have sabotaged the laser in a way that would not be visible, but would either prevent its use or make it so inaccurate that Benes would be killed, Duval figures out a way to save Grant when he is lost in the lungs, and could have just let him die . The one exception is Michaels, the only one who could have mis-navigated them into a circulatory whirlpool that nearly destroyed the ship.
Incredible Shrinking Man : The whole plot to the story involves a surgical team and their sub being shrunk to microbe size to laser away at the life-threatening clots Benes developed.
Insufferable Genius : Duval, the surgeon. In the novel he's more of a Dr. Jerk with No Social Skills .
Latex Space Suit : As Homer Simpson has been known to observe, the crew get to wear skintight diving suits when venturing out of the sub. This is actually quite justified, in that wetsuits are less complex than space suits and do indeed have to be quite figure-hugging — but any movie that gets Raquel Welch into a costume on those lines may be suspected of fanservice .
Played straight, however, in the heart scene. "60 seconds" of cardiac arrest actually lasts for over 3 minutes of film, probably to draw out the dramatic tension and the special effects.
Mega-Microbes : Inverted — Tiny Humans, normally sized Microbes...
The Navigator : Dr. Michaels, who steers the vessel through the body, being the member of the group who is most aware of what goes where in anatomical terms.
No Ending : The film ends with the Proteus destroyed, Michaels gobbled up by a white blood cell, and the rest of the crew escaping the scientist's brain through his tear duct, de-miniaturising on a microscope slide. There is no explanation for what actually happens afterwards. There was an extra scene at the end of the film that explained what happened next but for whatever reason it was cut out. See "Shaggy Dog" Story below.
No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup : Benes apparently did not keep any notes of his process. Justified in that he probably destroyed any notes he took to keep The Other Side from getting hold of them before he defected.
Nothing Is Scarier : Specifically, a lack of soundtrack is frequently used to build suspend. The first bit of "soundtrack" music comes after Acts I and II. There is no soundtrack at all in the ship's approach to the dangerous heart. The soundtrack is similarly absent while the crew are in the ear, to heighten the suspense around needing "complete silence."
Race Against the Clock : After miniaturization, the team has 60 minutes to complete their mission before they start to de-miniaturize.
The Radio Dies First : Technically, the laser dies first — the wireless is cannibalized to fix it.
Scenery Porn : The body interior sets, built full scale.
Seeker White Blood Cells : White blood cells are mentioned but not seen until the near end; antibodies make an earlier appearance.
"Shaggy Dog" Story : In the original screenplay, Dr. Benes awakens from the operation having recovered, but is unfortunately unable to remember how to make the shrinking process work indefinitely due to the blood-clot , rendering the heroes' efforts all for naught (other than having saved his life). This was included in the Asimov novelisation and surviving production stills suggest this was how the film was supposed to end as well, but it was removed - perhaps to prevent audiences from feeling that the heroes' efforts - and therefore the audience's time - had been wasted.
Shrink Ray : The non-portable variety, used chiefly as a research tool due to the time limit making military uses non-viable (it's also the variety that can expand as well as shrink note The novel notes the potential of entomologists using the tech - "Ants blown up to the size of locomotives for easier study" ).
The Smurfette Principle : Cora is the only female member of the team (and the only female speaking part in the movie). Colonel Reid complains that a woman has no place on such a dangerous mission.
Square-Cube Law : Why Isaac Asimov was initially reluctant to write the novelisation — he thought that being miniaturised was impossible because of this. Nevertheless, he decided it would make for some good writing and came up with a novelisation that is almost as hard as science fiction can be, ignoring the physical impossibility of miniaturisation.
Stating the Simple Solution : It takes a bit before Carter thinks to put cotton in Benes' ears to lessen the risk when they are traveling through the eardrum.
In the novelization, the mole is played with more subtlety. Michaels avoids the blatant panic attacks of his movie incarnation, and serves as Grant's mentor about miniaturization; the two even discuss possible suspects throughout the story — including themselves. (Grant admits that Michaels' theory that The Other Side could have let Grant escape with Dr. Benes to build his reputation is reasonable, if nothing else.)
To the Batpole! : The Elevator to CMDF HQ.
The War Room : The CMDF Operating Theater
What Happened to the Mouse? : A number of elements that should be problematic are ignored: the wreckage of the Proteus , and Dr. Michaels' body, after being eaten by the white blood cell — somehow that keeps them from re-enlarging once time runs out. This is one of the most memorable plot holes of the film, and Asimov made sure to close it in his novelization. Massively averted by the novelization, which accurately depicts, as well as we know (or, at least, as well as we knew in 1966), what it would be like if humans could in fact be miniaturized to this degree. Even Brownian Motion (random molecular motion of a fluid or gas) is noticed and commented on. Most of the flaws of the movie are explained or elaborated on so as to be acceptable to reality, making the book as much a corrective Retcon as a novelization.
The World Is Just Awesome : Well not the world , but this describes Duval's feelings about their journey though the body.
Zeerust : Varies — Being set 20 Minutes into the Future in 1960s, some elements, like the laser rifle don't hold up well, while the Proteus itself varies from a sleek futuristic but practical exterior, to an interior that could be considered Used Future . What dates the film most of all are the '60s contemporary elements, such as computers, cars and uniforms.
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The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Rating: ★★★★.

Director – Richard Fleischer, Screenplay – Harry Kleiner, Adaptation – David Duncan, Story – Jay Lewis Bixby [ Jerome Bixby ] & Otto Klement, Producer – Saul David, Photography – Ernest Laszlo, Music – Leonard Rosenman, Photographic Effects – L.B. Abbott, Art Cruickshank & Emil Kosa Jr, Art Direction – Dale Hennesy & Jack Martin Smith, Submarine Design – Harper Goff. Production Company – 20th Century Fox.

Stephen Boyd (Charles Grant), Raquel Welch (Cora Peterson), Donald Pleasence (Dr Maxwell Michaels), Arthur Kennedy (Dr Peter Duval), William Redfield (William Owens), Edmond O’Brien (General Carter), Arthur O’Connell (Colonel Reid)

Scientist Jan Benes defects to the West but an attempted assassination by the other side places him a coma. Agent Charles Grant is recruited by the top-secret organisation Combined Miniaturized Deterrence Forces. He learns that he is to be part of a crew aboard a submarine The Proteus. The crew and submarine will be reduced to microscopic size and injected into the Benes’s bloodstream in order to operate on the surgically inaccessible clot in his brain using a laser. Injected into the body, Grant and the surgical team travel through the bloodstream in the submarine, marvelling at the wonders of the human body seen on a microscopic level. They must reach the brain within 60 minutes or else the effect will wear off and they will return to full-size. However, the voyage is undermined by one of the crew who is an enemy saboteur and is prepared to risk everything to stop the mission.

Fantastic Voyage is one of my all-time favourite science-fiction films. It is one of the most ingenious pieces of pure conceptual science-fiction poetry that the genre has ever created. One can ridicule its problems and holes, which are manyfold, but it is impossible to argue with the conceptual brilliance of the film, the sheer imaginative splendour of the idea of conducting a journey by miniaturised submarine through the human body. The script, which comes in part from science-fiction writer Jerome Bixby, knows exactly what a sense of wonder is. The film creates an amazing view of the human body as a veritable Aladdin’s cave of marvels, more wondrous, colourful and lit up than it could possibly ever be in real life. Even if the superb sets and effects are occasionally beset by grainy mattes lines and the visibility of wires, the imagination of the exercise soars. It is a pure celebration of science-fiction as conceptual poetry rather than as science. Indeed, Fantastic Voyage is an object lesson in what science-fiction can do on screen that the written page can never replicate.

Jerome Bixby originally envisioned the film as a Jules Verne-styled period piece a la the fad for retro-Victorian science-fiction created by Fantastic Voyage director Richard Fleischer’s own 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). This would have been fascinating – but it was changed during rewriting and the film updated into the Space Age. Now it echoes with the sense that humanity was on the frontier of taking a quantum leap forward and conquering the whole universe. “Maybe the ancient philosophers were right – man is the centre of the universe. Man stands between inner and outer space and there is no limit to either,” says Arthur Kennedy’ Duval during one of his many such pronouncements.

The film is almost a hymn to Space Age technology. Richard Fleischer follows the operation with wonderfully methodical exactitude – the journey through the vast labyrinth by golf cart, the operation being monitored by characters in lab coats on blinking, whirring computers, the submarine slowly being placed on an hexagonal dais, the pickup trolley being wheeled in and the submarine being shrunken in a glass tube and then connected to a syringe. The sense of detail and detached clinicism to the operation is enthralling. Contrast this to the wave of hand that usually produced marvels of super science in 1950s science-fiction or the heated fervour of madness under which discovery was conducted in 1930s and 40s mad scientist films – there is the sense that the future is here right now.

Once inside the body, Fantastic Voyage is dramatically construed as a series of set-pieces involving journeys to a particular part of the body whereupon something goes wrong with regular predictability. It is the things going wrong that makes the story dramatically gripping. The scenes navigating through the temporarily stopped heart, the manned venture into the lungs, and especially the seat-edge suspenseful passage through the inner ear as everybody in the operating room has to remain absolutely still and not make a sound lest they cause the inner ear to vibrate are utterly gripping.

Unfortunately, in the numerous re-writings the script clearly underwent, not much attention was paid to the characters. These are all written to type – the square-jawed jock hero, the curvaceous token female, the atheistic traitor. Stephen Boyd and Raquel Welch, in her first leading role, are both wooden, although this is not a film where one has come expecting penetrating character depth. What is worse is the character of Duval the surgeon who has no other purpose than to stand around and delivers ponderous pronouncements about “the miracle of life.” “40 million beats a year,” someone comments in reference to the heart, to which his reply is “All that stands between man and eternity.” It is a not particularly subtle debate – the side of good shows religious awe at the miraculous nature of the human body, while the contrary opinion represents godless atheism and is ultimately revealed as being a Communist traitor (even if Communism is not directly referred to in the film), not to mention is also the perpetual voice of cowardice and defeatism on the mission.

You cannot deny that there are numerous logic holes in the film. One can forgive minor quibbles such as the impossibility of squeezing normal-size air molecules into a micro-sized snorkel, or how surface tension would make it extremely difficult to swim inside a tear. However, there is one gaping hole that you could drive a full-size submarine through and that is this:– the film establishes that it is necessary that the operation be completed within a 60 minute limit otherwise the crew and submarine will return to full-size. (Interestingly, the dramatics of the journey take longer than 60 minutes to occur on screen). However, at the end of the film, the crew return to full-size but somehow leave a submarine and the body of the traitor behind in Benes’s brain after both have been consumed by a white blood cell. Do the filmmakers somehow think that being consumed by a white blood cell will fail to cause them to return to full size?

Not to mention the fact that at some point between when they complete the operation and swim out, the crew also discard the laser inside the brain. Everybody also seems to have forgotten about the fact that a six foot tall cylinder of water was reduced to the size of a syringe and injected into Benes – indeed, the amount of water injected into Benes’s body is far more than his body mass, which would surely cause him to literally explode when it too returns to normal size.

At least, the producers had the good sense to recruit science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov to write the novelisation Fantastic Voyage (1966), which is one of the finest in the usually creatively impoverished arena of film novelisations, wherein Asimov patched up many of the scientific and plot holes. For all its logical failings, Fantastic Voyage is still one of the most ingenious pieces of total Hollywood bunkum.

There was a short-lived animated tv series Fantastic Voyage (1968-9). There have been plans in the 1990s and sporadically throughout the 2000s to mount a remake as directed by Roland Emmerich of Independence Day (1996) fame. James Cameron also expressed interest, although apparently Roland Emmerich rejected his script. The film was parodied in Joe Dante’s Innerspace (1987) and the Futurama episode Parasites Lost (2001). The basic premise of the miniaturised journey inside a body has been used in two Doctor Who stories The Invisible Enemy (1977) and Into the Dalek (2014), as well as the film Antibody (2002).

Richard Fleischer has directed a number of other genre films – Disney’s classic Jules Verne adaptation 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), the musical version of Doctor Dolittle (1967), The Boston Strangler (1968), the psycho-thriller See No Evil/Blind Terror (1971), the true life serial killer film 10 Rillington Place (1971), the over-populated future film Soylent Green (1973), Amityville 3-D (1983), and the Robert E. Howard adaptations Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985).

The story comes from Jerome Bixby, a writer who dabbled in a number of genres and different media during his career. Bixby wrote several novels, although is mostly known for his short stories. He delivered several scripts for genre movies, including Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), The Lost Missile (1958) and The Man from Earth (2007). He also wrote several episodes of Star Trek (1966-9) and the famous It’s a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-63), which was later remade as a segment of Twilight Zone – The Movie (1983). David Duncan was also a regular genre writer with the screenplays for the English-language version of Rodan the Flying Monster (1956), The Black Scorpion (1957), The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), Monster on the Campus (1958), The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958), The Leech Woman (1960) and The Time Machine (1960). The actual screenwriter Harry Kleiner also wrote a number of classic films including Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), Carmen Jones (1953) and Bullitt (1968).

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Fantastic Voyage

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, richard fleischer, stephen boyd, raquel welch, edmond o'brien, donald pleasence, arthur o'connell, photos & videos, technical specs.

In 1995 Czech scientist Jan Benes escapes from behind the Iron Curtain and is brought to the United States for interrogation. U. S. scientists are able to reduce objects, including people, to the size of bacteria, but the miniaturization can be sustained for only 60 minutes. The Czech scientist has learned the secret of prolonging the miniaturization; but before he reveals this knowledge, he sustains a severe brain injury which can be treated only from within his body. A plan is conceived whereby a crew of five will be placed in an atomic-powered submarine, miniaturized, injected into the scientist's bloodstream, and set on a course through the arteries to the brain. In addition to American secret agent Grant, the crew consists of Dr. Duval, the surgeon who will perform the operation; Cora Peterson, his assistant; Dr. Michaels, a circulatory expert; and Captain Owens, the sub's pilot. To save some of the 60 minutes, the group decides to stop the scientist's heart to allow the submarine to pass through the heart. Then Grant and the crew leave the sub, and by means of a snorkel tube attached to the patient's lungs, replenish their oxygen supply. As they near their destination, a nurse in the operating room drops a pair of surgical scissors, and the sound causes tremendous vibrations in the sub that hurl the crew from their positions. With only 6 minutes left, Dr. Michaels reveals himself to be an enemy agent intent on sabotaging the mission. The remaining crew members escape as white corpuscles envelop and digest both the submarine and Michaels. The operation is successfully performed by removing a blood clot with a laser beam, and the four survivors leave the scientist's body by swimming along the optic nerve and emerging through a tear duct.

William Redfield

Arthur Kennedy

Jean del val.

Shelby Grant

James Brolin

Brendan fitzgerald, l. b. abbott, jay lewis bixby, art cruickshank, david dockendorf, margaret donovan, david duncan, bernard freericks, harper goff, dale hennesy, ollie hughes, harry kleiner, otto klement, emil kosa jr., richard kuhn, ernest laszlo, doris mchale, michael mclean, william b. murphy, national screen service, stuart a. reiss, leonard rosenman, ad schaumer, marvin schnall, walter m. scott, jack martin smith, eric stacey, bruce walkup, fred zendar, photo collections.

Hosted Intro

Best Art Direction

Best special effects, award nominations, best cinematography, best editing, best sound editing, best sound effects sound editing.

Yet all the suns that light the corridors of the universe shine dim before the blazing of a single thought - - Dr. Duval

- proclaiming in incandescent glory the myriad mind of Man... - Grant

Very poetic, gentlemen. Let me know when we pass the soul. - Dr. Michaels

The soul? The finite mind cannot comprehend infinity - and the soul, which comes from God, is infinite. - Dr. Duval

Yes, well, our time isn't. - Dr. Michaels

The medieval philosophers were right. Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity between outer and inner space, and there's no limit to either. - Dr. Peter Duval

Isaac Asimov was approached to write the novel from the script. He perused the script, and declared the script to be full of plot holes. Receiving permission to write the book the way he wanted, delays in filming and the speed at which he wrote saw the book appear before the film. Asimov fixed several plot holes in the book version, but this had no effect on the film (see the Goofs entry).

The scenes of crewmembers swimming outside the sub were shot on dry soundstages with the actors suspended from wires. There was some additional hazard involved because, to avoid reflections from the metal, the wires were washed in acid to roughen them, which made them more likely to break. To create the impression of swimming in a resisting medium, the scenes were shot at 50% greater speed than normal, then played back at normal speed.

As a college student, director Fleischer was a pre-med student for a time.

When filming the scene where the other crew members remove attacking antibodies from Ms. Peterson for the first time, director Fleischer allowed the actors to grab what they pleased. Gentlemen all, they specifically avoided removing them from Raquel Welch's breasts, with an end result that the director described as a "Las Vegas showgirl" effect. Fleischer pointed this out to the cast members -- and on the second try, the actors all reached for her breasts. Finally the director realized that he would have to choreograph who removed what from where, and the result is seen in the final cut.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States July 1966

Released in United States Winter January 1, 1966

Released in USA on video.

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Fantastic Voyage was released in 1966, the same year that Gene Cernan completed the second spacewalk and Star Trek debuted on NBC. But the film eschewed the space race for a trip inside the human body.

Merely summarizing the plot does it no favors. A scientist working in the Soviet Union has discovered the secret of prolonged miniaturization (temporary miniaturization having already been perfected) and defects to the West. After being injured during an assassination attempt, the scientist slips into a coma caused by a blood clot. A team of five is set up with a submarine, shrunk down, and injected into the man’s arteries in order to destroy the blood clot with a laser. Needless to say, hijinks ensue.

The idea of sending people in tiny submarines shooting through someone’s coronaries asks for a heroic suspension of belief. And while the film won Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Special Visual Effects, today the trippy backgrounds and unintentionally hilarious sets feel campy. But in an era before nanotechnology or neuroscience, the film presciently imagined a day in which people would be able to peer into the darkest recesses of the human body.

Neuroscientist and neuroethicist Dr. James Giordano, chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, was seven years old when he saw the film for the first time, sparking a lifelong love of the brain that led him to devote his life to neuroscience. His career, he says, “literally was catalyzed by a roll of celluloid fifty years ago.”

Below are edited excerpts from a conversation with Dr. Giordano.

SSF : You’ve said Fantastic Voyage inspired you. It’s such a cool movie but it seems so improbable, scientifically.

JG: Yeah, but—but—think about when it came out, 1966…

I was born in 1959. We hadn’t gone to space yet. Very soon after I was born we had the whole Sputnik crisis, which really initiated the space race in earnest. So one of the earliest memories I have is sitting in front of my parents’ black and white television set watching the Mercury capsule take off. And I thought that was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I had grown up on science fiction because of all of the wonderful, albeit somewhat cheesy science fiction movies of the late 1950s we would watch on TV. On Science Fiction Theater , Chiller Theater , and every Saturday morning on WPIX or WNEW—channels eleven and five, respectively—they had science fiction stuff.

This was the age of discovery. We were pushing the boundaries. We were going to outer space and to deep inner space. This is the time when we were exploring the ocean bottom: There was the bathyscaphe and the Trieste deep submersible submarine. I was fascinated by all this stuff, truly.

So I’m seven years old. I’m in second grade. My father takes me to see this movie Fantastic Voyage . The movie blows me away for a number of reasons (not the least of which [is] Raquel Welch in a scuba suit). It’s everything I love. It’s a submarine, it has to do with miniaturization and they’re going to be injected into a body. It wasn’t like they were going to outer space or deep inner space like the bottom of the ocean, they were going inside the body. And I thought to myself: that’s what I want to explore. I remember actually saying to my father, I want to do that. And so he turns to me and asks, what do you want to do? And I said, I want to do that—I want to explore the brain. And I will never forget this until the day I die. He said, you know if you really want to do that, I think you probably could.

There’s a great line in this movie. They get to the point where they actually enter the brain in this little miniaturized submarine. For the first time they actually see neurological impulses sparking, so to speak, over nerve cells. Now, it was done with all the sophistication that was available in 1966, both scientifically in terms of what they knew, and of course, cinematographically in terms of what they could do. But it was still brilliantly done. Edmond O’Brien kind of waxes sentimental in this wonderful soliloquy, and he says that all of our aspirations, hopes, and histories, and all of our future is encapsulated in this single organ, in the sparks of thought that we see before us. And I thought, that’s the most cool thing in the world to explore because you’d never stop exploring.

I couldn’t stop talking about this movie. All of a sudden I’m telling my Dad I want to get books about the brain. This is in the middle of the 1960s; there was no neuroscience; there was no field that was titularly called neuroscience. But this was sufficient enough to capture not only my interest, but my imagination. What could one do with this? How could you combine those kinds of deep, profound thoughts of everything that humanity is and everything humanity could be, and use this cutting edge technology to do it? It became a lifelong love.

The field of neuroscience, as a titular field, as a defined field, really didn’t birth until the middle 1970s. There were a lot of intra-disciplines—there was pharmacology and anatomy and biology and chemistry—that were looking at functions and structures of the brain, and of course psychology, but they really hadn’t coalesced. In other words, there were all of the ingredients were in the pot but it wasn’t called stew until the end of the 1970s.

I was at that point just graduating from high school. I go off to college and my particular college had an academic major in physiological psychology and brain functions. And I was hooked. I mean the only things—truly the only things—that captivated my interest more than that were sports and girls. Sometimes the order was actually mixed up.

So I got to study this stuff and work in a laboratory. By the time I graduated from college in 1980, the field had come of age a bit. At that point there were still only four programs that were defined as neuroscience programs. I applied to all of them; I didn’t get in. But irrespective of that, by the time I was ready to go to graduate school, now these programs are really beginning to blossom. Even programs in biological and physiological psychology were emphasizing neuroscience. I was very, very fortunate. I went to City University of New York, that’s where I did my Ph.D.

Critically important to me was the fact that through every step of that, my north star was that when I was a seven-year-old kid there was this thing that seemed to concatenate all of my interests. It brought together my imagination, my creativity and my intellect. And it was a movie. That blows me away.

I think science fiction functions, in a way, in modern society how literature and myth functioned in classical and antiquarian society. There’s a Greek word that is called eidola ; it means providing an ideal. So what it does is it provides this ideal that can communicate public aspirations, hopes, anxieties, fears. We understand it’s fiction, that the topic may be fiction, the extent may be fictional, but what isn’t fictional is its depiction of those things that are either liminal or subliminal fears in individuals, groups, communities, all of us.

SSF : Is there any part of the technology in the movie that you see being used now? It sounds like there’s actually an incredible parallel to your experience.

JG: So falling in love with this fifty years ago, have you seen it realized? Well yeah, in a couple of different areas. You have to back out from the way it was depicted a little bit. I mean we haven’t been able to miniaturize people and put them in submarines and inject the submarines in. But we’ve been able to miniaturize sensors and probes, so that instead of putting people in we can put a camera in that allows people to go inside the body. So the concept is there, although its conceptualization is a little bit different. The idea of being able to put miniaturized people into a brain and utilize a cold laser to dissolve away a blood clot that was interfering with brain function that was not accessible through standard surgical means? That’s become the laser knife, the gamma knife. We’re doing that. Now of course, we’re not doing it with little miniaturized people, but the idea of being able to use, for example, insertable probes, or robotically-guided gamma knives, to then engage in very, very complicated neurosurgery that would otherwise be inoperable? We’re there.

Fantastic Voyage did that. Of course, as you recall from the movie, [the technology] was used on an individual who had very particular secrets that were necessary for international security. To me, it’s ironic that here I am, at 55, and I’m doing work with DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], and my latest book deals with neurotechnology and national security.

This was 1966, and what they were really playing with was the idea of a government agency that was involved in secret projects that utilized cutting-edge science that could be used for public defense or for military operations. It was really an insight into the then very, very nascent DARPA. Also, you are dealing with miniaturization, and working on a scale so small that physical properties were alterable and changeable. So this was almost foresight to the field of nanotechnology, which didn’t bloom for another thirty years, twenty-five years.

And, then there’s the idea of probing the brain, utilizing the brain as a viable target, with a device that was essentially a submersible. Although it was manned in the movie, [it] is very much the type of thing we’re doing now, with a very, very high nanoscale drone apperati, which we can then insert into the bloodstream to travel around the body to do things like eradicate clots and take photographs and do a variety of bio-sensor scanning. In 1966, this was a movie with great foresight.

SSF : Have you seen or do you want to see anything more recent that had an interesting take or particularly accurate portrayal of the scientific community?

JG : If I were king for a day, I would go to one of the leading producers, one of the leading directors, and I’d say, listen, you have to remake Fantastic Voyage . You just have to. It’s so timely right now. The plot could be that there’s a foreign dignitary who’s not necessarily friendly to this country, they incur an injury, and so the only way to be able to avert an international incident that could be cataclysmic is to get this international team of scientists to do this through cooperative technology. That’d be great. And of course, you know all the computer graphics today and the all the wonderful CG effects would be killer. I mean, 3-D, you’re inside somebody’s brain—how cool is that?

SSF : What is interesting in science fiction now that in fifty years could an inspiration to your kids?

JG: We’re moving into this next era that’s going to be very much centered upon the brain sciences integrated with the computer sciences integrated with genetics: this is what we call convergent bioscience. It would be very cool to see some movies harnessing that. There’s great power in things that deal with the essence of what it means to be; whether what it means to be human, to be animal, to cross those bridges, what it means to be a sentient machines, and what that would incur. And there’s been some good ones: obviously Blade Runner , and even a movie like I, Robot did a nice job. Planet of the Apes did a wonderful job about crossing ontological boundaries between species.

I would say that that trend [is] very important in communicating the profound hope that the brain sciences, working together with the other sciences, are able to probe the depths of what it means to be human, and as a result build these bridges between people and other species and create some moral commonality and goodness.

SSF ; Voyage is all about going into the body in a literal way. What you’re describing is the next step beyond, going into the immaterial brain—the mind.

JG: The idea that there’s something that can realistically get to the point where science is able to effectively probe the interface between the physical substrate brain and the thing that it does, which is to create consciousness, and then engage that interface somehow—that’s where the science fiction comes in, the fictional aspect, because we’re not there yet. We don’t understand how that happens, first of all, and we certainly don’t have a device to do it. That would be very cool.

SSF : By the way, I’m completely sold on a remake.

JG: You know the Faustian bargain? I’m not saying I’d go as far as to sell my soul, but if in fact somebody like Ridley Scott or James Cameron or another director or producer of that magnitude decided to engage with Fantastic Voyage with great C.G., I’d hack off a limb to be a scientific advisor on something like that. I’d think, “My life’s come full circle. This is great.”

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Fantastic Voyage (1966) Directed by Richard Fleischer

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Screen: 'Fantastic Voyage' Is All That:Science-Fiction Movie Opens at 2 Theaters

By Bosley Crowther

Sept. 8, 1966

TALK about "underground" movies, wait until you see the first of the "inside" movies! "Fantastic Voyage" is its tag, and it opened yesterday at Loew's State and the Festival Theater.What is it? Well, it is the latest in sheer science-fiction fantasy about a group of adventurous people who take a way-out trip—a CMDF trip, you might call it, meaning a Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces trip—inside Dr. Benes (which might be a better tag).That's right. This team of scientists, including a woman technician, played by Raquel Welch, a newcomer who is the most pneumatic-looking thing in a skin-diving suit that has yet appeared on the screen, are shrunken to microscopic proportions by a new scientific means. Then they are injected into the bloodstream of an injured Czechoslovak scientist to do an inside job of removing a threatening blood clot from his highly knowledgeable brain.Snugly contained in a tiny capsule that bears a comforting resemblance to that wonderfully neat diving saucer of Capt. Jacques-Yves Cousteau, these voyagers through the arterial system find themselves in a kind of Mammoth Cave, filled with transparent liquid in which float squashy colored balloons."That's plasma," somebody mentions, and now we presumably know what the blood in the human body looks like, from the point of view of a germ.Inevitably trouble develops. It just couldn't be a nice safe trip from that point of injection above the clavicle to the injured area of the brain. A violent fistular disturbance in the region of the throat diverts the tiny capsule into the jugular vein. With the pilot, William Redfield, wrestling with the controls, and CMDF officers, Arthur O'Connell and Edmund O'Brien, giving directions in the operating room, the capsule is delicately guided through the perilous caverns of the heart, which has been stopped (by the operating room) for one precious minute to let the vehicle pass.But that's not all. There is dangerous trouble in the area of the lungs. The air pressure tanks have been leaking. Stephen Boyd has to leave the capsule and, with an air hose, refill the empty tank from the abundance of vapors roaring through this mighty cave of winds.In the arteries of the nose, the frightened travelers are forced to get out of their capsule to remove heavy mucous substance from the nuclear intake valves. In the ear chamber, cotton-candy crystals form on the skin-suit of Miss Welch and the fellows have to strip her to save her."Antibodies," somebody says.The climax comes when the good guys—Mr. Boyd, Arthur Kennedy and Miss Welch—are out of the capsule, clearing the blood clot with a handy laser ray, and the evil saboteur, Donald Pleasance, tries to run them down. Just then a white corpuscle, a great cotton avalanche, looms to engulf the operation. What a predicament!Yessir, for straight science-fiction, this is quite a film—the most colorful and imaginative since "Destination Moon." Harry Kleiner's screenplay and Richard Fleischer's direction combine to make it amusing and exciting, and the interior decorations have a bubbly, fantastic quality you won't find this side of Disneyland.Are they reasonably authentic? A couple of lads who I suspect were from the Bronx High School of Science were arguing that point behind me yesterday. I wouldn't know. All I can tell you is it is quite a trip.Fortunately, all of the voyaging is done in the northern hemisphere.

The CastFANTASTIC VOYAGE, screenplay by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jay Lewis Bixby; directed by Richard Fleischer, and produced by Saul David for 20th Century-Fox release. At the Loew's State Theater, Broadway and 45th Street, and the Festival Theater, 57th Street west of Fifth Avenue. Running time: 100 minutes.Giani . . . . . Stephen BoydCora Peterson . . . . . Raquel WelchGeneral Carter . . . . . Edmond O'BrienDr. Michaels . . . . . Donald PleasenceCol. Donald Reid . . . . . Arthur O'ConnellCapt. Bill Owens . . . . . William RedfieldDr. Duval . . . . . Arthur KennedyJan Benes . . . . . Jean Del Val

Den of Geek

Why Hasn’t Fantastic Voyage Been Remade Yet?

As we mourn the passing of ‘60s icon Raquel Welch, we ponder why her breakthrough sci-fi classic, Fantastic Voyage, has not received a full-on upgrade.

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When 1960s and ‘70s icon Raquel Welch died last week at the age of 82 , much of the media focus was on her (well-deserved) status as one of the most memorable and gorgeous sex symbols in movie history. A lot of the coverage, in fact, noted that the Chicago native’s substantial talents as an actress, singer, and dancer (she appeared in 30 films, numerous TV series, and hosted a handful of her own variety specials), were overshadowed by her status as one of the era’s premiere pinups.

While she may be best remembered for her turn as a skimpily-clad cavewoman in 1966’s One Million Years B.C. , her breakout role came earlier that year in the 20th Century Fox sci-fi spectacle Fantastic Voyage . The film was Welch’s fourth, but the first in which she had a lead role. She played Cora Peterson, one of five members of a medical team who are miniaturized, along with a small submarine, and injected into the body of a defecting Soviet scientist in order to remove a clot from his brain and save his life.

With only 60 minutes in which to work, since that is when the miniaturization process will subside and they’ll revert to full size, the team makes its way via the patient’s bloodstream through various marquee organs—the heart, the lungs, the ear—each with their own dangers and challenges. Meanwhile the crew’s security officer (Stephen Boyd) begins to suspect that someone on board is a saboteur, installed on the mission by the enemy government to kill him from the inside.

Welch doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the movie, but for the era, she’s no wallflower either. Her character is a capable technician charged with assisting the surgeon who’s going to perform the procedure. Welch and the rest of the cast, which also includes reliable character actors like Boyd ( Ben-Hur ), Donald Pleasance ( Halloween ), and Edmond O’Brian ( Seven Days in May ), all acquit themselves reasonably well considering that they spend most of the movie either on wires or in the cramped submarine set.

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Like many movies of its time, Fantastic Voyage is best remembered for its audacious (if scientifically ludicrous) premise and its technical presentation of the inner workings of the human body, which were recreated through the use of large sets , animation, and rear projection. The 57-year-old movie looks shakier today in visual terms—although one has to wonder how far we’ve really come from matte images to, say, the Volume—but watching it begs the question: Why hasn’t this been remade?

A Sci-Fi Spectacle of Its Time

Directed by Richard Fleischer, whose other sci-fi outings included the Disney submarine classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and the seminal Charlton Heston overpopulation thriller Soylent Green (1973), Fantastic Voyage was conceived by writers Otto Clement and Jerome Bixby (the latter wrote the classic “It’s a Good Life” episode of The Twilight Zone and penned two of the original Star Trek ’s most famous segments , “Mirror, Mirror” and “Day of the Dove”).

The story was adapted by David Duncan ( The Time Machine ) and the final screenplay penned by Harry Kleiner (yes, they had multiple writers on films back then too!), with science fiction titan Isaac Asimov approached to write the novelization. Because Asimov penned the book at a fairly rapid pace, leading it to come out ahead of the movie due to the latter’s production delays, it was a common misconception for years that Asimov himself came up with the premise and story.

Many of the internal organs that the submarine (dubbed the Proteus) travels through were created as full-sized sets, in which a five-foot model of the craft would sail. A full-sized set of the Proteus interior was also built, along with other versions of various sizes. Fox had announced prior to production that Fantastic Voyage would be the most expensive sci-fi film made to date, and with a final budget of $6 million (about $56 million when adjusted for inflation), the picture certainly lived up to that billing.

Critical reception at the time was mostly kind, and Fantastic Voyage won Oscars for Best Special Effects and Best Art Direction . Looking at it now, it moves more slowly than modern VFX-driven blockbusters (as do most films made before, say, the mid-1990s), and as mentioned the effects have not aged all that well. But there is absolutely a sense of wonder and even awe still present in the film, the imagery is colorful, imaginative, and psychedelic, and its ticking-clock narrative still builds in suspense and tension.

With Hollywood always on the lookout for another IP to remake or reinvigorate, it stands to reason that Fantastic Voyage would be ripe for rediscovery. The basic story remains sound, from a genre point of view, and the capabilities of modern VFX houses would no doubt be able to bring the interior of the human body to life in ways that the makers of the 1966 movie could have only dreamed about.

So what’s the holdup? The truth is that Fantastic Voyage has been on the remake “to-do” list for years, but even some heavyweight genre filmmakers have been unable to get it to the starting gate, never mind across the finish line.

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Decades of Development Hell

Although there was a short-lived Saturday morning animated kids’ series that ran in 1968 on ABC, it wasn’t until 1984 that development of a new Fantastic Voyage movie , at the time as a sequel, began in earnest. Isaac Asimov was asked in 1984 to pen a sequel novel that could be then turned into a movie. His book, titled Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain , came out in 1987 and featured an entirely different story and characters, but the movie itself was never made.

The IP went dormant for more than a decade after that, until no less an auteur than James Cameron expressed an interest in remaking the original film. With his experience in working with water and sets both massive and cramped, as well as his ongoing exploration of the bleeding edge in visual effects, it’s enticing to imagine what Cameron could have done with this material.

Cameron did get as far as writing a screenplay, but after completing Titanic , his mind began to turn toward the development and creation of Avatar . He decided not to direct Fantastic Voyage , although he was willing to produce a film based on his script.

Next up was Roland Emmerich , the king of Z-movies disguised as blockbusters, who actually began pre-production on the movie in 2007. But Emmerich also rejected Cameron’s screenplay and commissioned a new one. We’ve had our issues with Cameron as a writer for sure, but this is still the guy who wrote Aliens and The Terminator , and the idea of the fellow who directed The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day: Resurgence rejecting Cameron’s script makes us both laugh and cry.

The new script got bogged down thanks to a Writers Guild strike, and Emmerich exited the project to make sure that 2012 could meet its title release year. Paul Greengrass ( The Bourne Ultimatum ) and Shawn Levy ( Free Guy ) both spent some time after that on Fantastic Voyage ’s increasingly not-so-fantastic development process, and both eventually dropped out with no results either.

Enter Guillermo del Toro . Everyone’s favorite genre filmmaker was announced to be in talks about the movie in 2016 , with David S. Goyer ( Batman Begins ) coming aboard to pen a new version of the script in collaboration with neuroscientist Justin Rhodes. While Greengrass and Levy were not especially exciting prospects, del Toro was easily the most intriguing since Cameron’s tenure on the film. While the latter would probably have brought a great deal of scientific rigor to a new Fantastic Voyage , we could easily see Del Toro turning the inside of the brain into a Gothic memory palace while making microbes and white blood cells into nightmarish Lovecraftian monsters. Alas, del Toro reportedly put the project on hold in mid-2017 to focus on completing The Shape of Water , intending to return to it in the spring of 2018.

That date came and went, and in the intervening five years, del Toro has developed, written, and directed both Nightmare Alley and his stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio , released late last year. His next two projects are another stop-motion film , The Buried Giant , and an unnamed live-action effort, but is there any chance it could be Fantastic Voyage ?

It seems unlikely at this point. Following Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox in 2019, the fate of many projects in the Fox pipeline became murky or lost in development limbo, if not canceled outright. As far as we can ascertain, no one’s ever said a word about any of the scripts that were commissioned for the film, with the exception of David Goyer, who told The Scriptlab in 2015 that he and Justin Rhodes were striving to make it as “realistic” as possible.

Whether the remake ever gets made or not, Fantastic Voyage is still a landmark in the subgenre of movies about shrinking people, which stretches from 1936’s The Devil-Doll to the 1957 masterpiece The Incredible Shrinking Man , to comedies like 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and 2015’s Ant-Man . Its influence on the latter is considerable, and aside from 1987’s Innerspace (which owes an enormous amount to Fantastic Voyage ) it remains the only live-action sci-fi movie to travel inside the human body.

But one thing that all those movies, and any potential remake, doesn’t have is the luminous presence of Raquel Welch, perhaps Fantastic Voyage ’s greatest visual effect.

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

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