Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Ever wonder where "Star Trek" and all the other Sci-Fi series got there starts?

I used to watch the series as a kid back when the UK only had 3 television channels, and they were offline more than online back in the 1960s when this was the State-Of-The-Art.

Now, over 40 years after it was made and most of the cast are either dead or retired, this movie is still standing the test of Time.

The plot is a little silly, with glaring holes that submarines could be driven through, and the acting is a little on the hammy-side sometimes, but for an entertaining look at how movie-makers in the 50s/60s thought the future might look, this is an excellent peek into how Hollywood was thinking at the time.

The cast seem to mesh well together around stilted dialogue ("Military Police swim like fish - it's part of their training"), and the prodigious talents of the likes of Joan Fontaine and Peter Lorre are somewhat reined-in, but overall this movie is still great to watch over four decades after they made it.

A fantastic submarine encounters dangers.

Voyage is a sci-fic movie, a disaster movie about a fire, an end-of-the-world movie, a movie with striking sets/miniature effects, and finally, the very first Irwin show to highlight the need of a top (and loud) musical score, thanks to composer Paul Sawtell.

This epic begins with Frankie Avalon singing - "Come with me, come with me, on a Voyage, to the Bottom, of the Sea" - and this totally under-rated song (it compares with the best of Sinatra!) should have been re-used in the Voyage/Sea TV series...as everything else in this picture was lifted into the series.

Shortly after, the film then moves into Admiral Nelson giving us a tour of the submarine Seaview, which resembles the opening minutes of the Irwin Allen directed Time Tunnel pilot (1966) when we were also given a Tunnel complex tour.

The Paul Sawtell scored footage of the icebergs pounding on the Seaview and the footage of the Seaview surfacing in a red sea would rank as some of the most striking bits of footage in Irwin's long history of film/TV making! Outstanding!

The cast of this motion picture is fine but I know this cast from other quality productions (Forbidden Planet, I Dream Of Jeannie) and am not all together comfortable seeing this cast on the Seaview. Give me Richard Basehart (and the flying sub!).

Some fans will put down this film because it features no Richard Basehart or David Hedison, but remember this, without this film there would have been no Voyage/Sea (1964-68) TV series. That is recorded fact! The budget for all of these sets, props and effects was HUGE, too huge for a TV series of the 1960s. The series happened because it could lift everything from the film.

One of my very favourite movies ever!

Walter Pidgeon leads fellow iconoclasts aboard a giant, futuristic (for 1961) submarine in a desperate race to save the world from firey oblivion. Another reviewer once commented that there was plenty of action but precious little logic in this film, but so what? If one views it as escapist nonsense, it's pretty enjoyable, even if the plot does get a little overheated (sorry, we couldn't resist) toward the end. Van Allen belt catching fire? Absurd. Three thousand foot crush depth for a Thresher-class attack sub? Ridiculous. But again, so what? The effects hold up pretty well, there's a solid cast including Peter Lorre (not his last film but clearly his days were numbered), Michael Ansara, and Frankie Avalon, who was thrown into the mix to attract a younger audience, and, of course, the giant octopus. The octopus scene was actually shot in reverse, since octopi are quite timid and this one could not be coaxed into attaching itself to the submarine for any usable length of time. Seriously though, in spite of bad science and stupendous leaps of questionable logic, "Voyage" is a better than average vintage sci-fi flick. Make a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy the ride!

Saw 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' as somebody who considers the cast very talented and who has liked some of Irwin Allen's other films (i.e. 'The Towering Inferno' and 'The Poseidon Adventure' that he produced). The premise was great also.

'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' unfortunately is not one of Allen's better efforts though and doesn't live up to its great premise. It's one of the more famous submarine films but for me not one of the best ones. This saddens me to say that, absolutely no vindictiveness here, because there was a lot of talent on board, who can go wrong with Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lorre and Joan Fontaine. Can see why some people find it entertaining and why others find it underwhelming, but it generally didn't do much for me.

Starting with the positives, the submarine is quite rightly the star here and a very big one it is too. It is aided by some colourful and atmospheric cinematography. The lively music score also adds a lot and the theme song is a memorable one and a deserving one.

The film's underwater sequences look pretty good still and while ridiculous the climax is entertaining. Generally the cast are not used to their full potential, but Walter Pidgeon is good in the lead, while Michael Ansara and Barbara Eden add some charm to the proceedings.

Peter Lorre on the other hand is criminally underutilised and looked like he was in ill health. Like Joan Fontaine a lot, but she was out of her depth and out of place while the rest of the cast were better off not being there. While the underwater sequences don't look too bad, they generally lack excitement and go on far longer than they needed to, also not placed very well. Some of the effects, like the octopus, look really hokey now.

Furthermore, the pace tends to be ponderous, trimming the underwater sequences would have helped, the film is too long and the direction is stodgy. Add to that a silly and too talky script and a story that lacks suspense, surprises and excitement and falls on the wrong side of daft and nonsensical constantly and you have a far from terrible but very problematic film.

Recommended for a one-time watch, but there is not enough to make me want to see it on repeat viewings. 5/10 Bethany Cox

A solid piece of science fiction that's fairly dated, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" was a film from the old school of exposition film making. Half docu-drama and half science-fiction, Allen's production makes an effort to mix the world of tomorrow, as it was perceived in the late 50s and early 60s, with then contemporary drama. The result is somewhat stilted, and immature in a very innocent sort of way, but worth a look if you need some vintage sci-fi on your screen.

The exposition of what Irwin Allen felt "the future" of scientific defense in the realm of the world's oceans feels like a Disney documentary. The drama almost seems as an afterthought to the technology being depicted (which I'm sure isn't too far off the mark), and doesn't really ever click in.

An egalitarian para-military that is the crew of the USOS Seaview, was no doubt an inspiration for the Star Trek franchise as it was first conceived, as were probably the scientific functions of a government vessel manned by what is ostensibly a crew serving aboard a vessel whose role is part defensive and part scientific. It is in this capacity that the story takes shape, and challenges sub and crew as the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

Scientific loopholes abound: Ice floats (the breakup of an iceberg would not produce sinking chinks of ice), radiation doesn't catch fire (the Van Allen belt is speculated to be a result of USAF atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s), the most advanced attack subs today can not dive beyond 1300 feet, active sonar is rarely used, etc. etc. etc. But, if you can get by all that, and forgive some of the earlier film making stylings in this film, then it's worth a look.

It's not classic vintage sci-fi in the conventional sense, but one clearly sees how it influenced generations of sci-fi films to come afterwards, as well as spawning the eventual TV series that evolved from this film.

Give it a chance, but don't expect too much. If you're a younger viewer reading this review, then you'll probably get somewhat impatient with it. Even so, try to keep in mind the kind of film it is, and the time in which it was made.