Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)

Do you remember when a trip to the movie theater seemed like an adventure- a time before the saturation of film via video, DVD and the internet? People would plan weeks in advance for the outing. It was an Event. As a child, you savored every moment of the ritual; the line outside the box office, your torn ticket stub, picking your seat, the smell of the popcorn and the promise of treats. Even the trailers riveted you to the screen. You always feared, in a little recessed portion of your mind, that it could be a very long time until you got back to the movies again. You had better savor every moment.

It is in that spirit that films like the 1961 science fiction epic Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea were made. It’s popcorn entertainment for sure but, with a nod to genre heavies such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, its heady aspirations were in good company. Producer/director Irwin Allen set the special effects bar high for the likes of George Lucas and Steven Speilberg some fifteen years later. The primary difference being that you sense Allen was always having a little bit more fun with it. The film is also one of the first to utilize a crossover marketing scheme. A TV series spinoff, board games, models, paperback novelizations, a pop song, trading cards, puzzles, “Viewmaster” reels, pins, lunch boxes and gum wrappers were just a few of the offshoots. Lucas should pilgrimage to Allen’s gravesite and kow-tow before it twice daily for that alone.

Voyage, despite its cutting edge vision of the time, has inevitably found its niche in the realm of nostalgic kitsch. Such is the fate of most science fiction. But where this would normally be a drawback in reassessing most works of the genre, it is a positive boon to the enjoyment of Voyage.   

“In all the world of fact and fiction there has never been an adventure like…” boasts the film’s promo trailer. You can almost hear the announcer’s voice over:

SEE… the world’s largest atomic age super sub!

WITNESS… the meteoric destruction of Earth!

THRILL… to the unknown secrets of the ocean depths!

FEAR… the wrath of the gigantic Octopus!

and perhaps less likely…

HEAR… Frankie Avalon laughingly lounge-croon through the title song!

ASTONISH… as the two commanders chain smoke in every room of a nuclear powered submarine!!!

Irwin Allen would make such spectacular fare as this throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s. He began as a magazine editor and radio show producer in Hollywood. He headed his own advertising agency before progressing into documentary films in the ‘50s. It was an Oscar win in the best documentary category for 1953’s The Sea Around Us that brought him enough notoriety to start his feature filmmaking career. Here, his passion for science fiction (he was an avid H.G. Wells and Jules Verne fan) steered him toward a 1960 production of The Lost World and he co-wrote the screenplay from his own story idea for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in 1961.

The remainder of the decade he spent in television producing such shows as the Voyage spinoff, The Time Tunnel, Land Of The Giants and most famously Lost in Space.

They were all successful.

He parlayed that success into his ‘70s “Master of Disaster” period and became a household name, bringing to the screen 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure (producer only), 1974’s The Towering Inferno (producer, director of the action sequences) and the unfortunate The Swarm (producer and director) in 1978, trying vainly to latch onto the “killer bee” panic of the time.

Never known for his subtlety or ease with dialogue, Allen nevertheless knew how to tell a story. He had a gambler’s knack for the desires of the American viewing public. Its pulse was directly under his thumb. He used meticulous storyboarding and planning in his set up and despite the logistic problems and heavy financial pressures of shooting effects oriented material, he most often came in under budget with a fully realized product of his vision.

In hindsight, this is where the fun of Voyage begins. Before CGI; props, miniatures, full scale models, glue, mirrors, string and a little bit of old practical wisdom were needed to bring the fantastical to the movies. Add to the mix a rapidly changing real world of technology and it became extremely difficult to avoid suffering obsolescence of design before the film even wrapped.  

The atomic age submarine, the Seaview, holds up pretty well despite these limitations. Sure, there are the pops, pings, buzzers, whistles and panels that look like enormous “Lite Brites” in the sub’s control room but these are all contained in an enormous, fully developed set that the actors could walk through, room to room, without ending up hiding behind cardboard walls or balancing on hidden scaffolding. Rear projection shots give us a vision of undersea beauty and danger through the vessel’s large glass windows and well crafted models provide a decent sense of reality to the establishing long shots. In the most impressive effect, the crew took flamethrowers and filmed the bursts, layered those into new footage and produced the burning sky sequences which lie at the heart of the story. Allen received a $250,000 budget for the effects alone (a large sum at the time) and it is, as they say, “all up there on the screen”.

There are also some humorous chinks in the armor. Some of which make an Ed Wood production staff look like a team from Industrial Light and Magic. The battle with the giant squid on the ocean floor rivals Bela Lugosi’s in Bride of the Monster. The actors must continually ravel themselves with the creature's obviously limp and rubber tentacles. Their “struggle” is eased by the fact that the squid moves about as swiftly as a common sea slug. The obligatory rubber shark makes an appearance as well (the exact same model used in 1966’s Batman) to rather silly effect. And it wouldn’t be an Irwin Allen film without his “rock and roll”. Namely, whenever a craft is bumped, shot or rams anything, the actors must leap, fall, careen or throw themselves off the nearest set piece while the camera is manually shaken.  

Scientific reality also lends a few chuckles. There is an ice chunk avalanche which pelts the deeply submerged craft, belying the fact that ice floats in water. Despite an advanced sonar system on the ship - it is continually surprised by such things as a huge octopus, a vast field of sea mines and the aforementioned ice shower.

There’s inadvertent humor in the dialogue as well. Mostly stemming from the younger actors playing their lines with stern conviction while the film’s three veterans (Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine and Peter Lorre) coyly have fun with their roles. At times it’s like Sherwood Shwartz adapting Ray Bradbury. Most befuddling is Pidgeon’s sweat glands. His shirts will be soaked with perspiration in some shots and completely dry the next. He also has a curious tendency to sweat from his left armpit only.

The premise walks a fine line between the possible and absurd. The Van Allan belt of radiation (a natural phenomenon) has sent meteors cascading down on earth setting the sky on fire. Glaciers are melting. Famine, drought, floods, fires and overwhelming temperatures threaten man’s existence. The news reaches the Seaview and Admiral Nelson (Pidgeon) and his Commodore (Lorre) devise a plan to shoot their newly developed missile into the radiation belt, blowing it outward past the earth’s magnetic field. They are thwarted along the way by a saboteur on board the sub, a religious zealot (Michael Ansara) preaching fatalism and posing a bomb threat, a shrink (Fontaine) who is profiling the Admiral for a strait jacket, the ship’s Captain (Robert Sterling) who is bordering on mutiny and an internationally acclaimed scientist named Dr. Zucco (Henry Daniell) who sends out U.N. ships and subs to finish off the Seaview before it can launch the projectile.

It is fascinating to note that Irwin Allen addresses the issue of global warming here some forty years before it was to become an everyday headline. Many of the film’s premises regarding sudden climate change and its possible devastation to mankind are echoed almost verbatim today. He also portrayed a now widely held belief that the United Nations is a hodgepodge of ineffectual talking heads driven more by political image than actual problem solving. The appearance of a bomb wielding religious fanatic is chillingly prescient as well. As the character of Admiral Nelson states, “The wild dreams of today are the practical realities of tomorrow”.

Regardless of these heavy foresights it should not be forgotten that the film is good clean fun. It’s now a nostalgic romp back to the days of Cinemascope and technological innocence. Cheese? Yes. But good quality cheese at that. Just remember to bring the wine and crackers.