Le sous-marin de l'apocalypse

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.

As the trailer movie explains ¨In all the world of fact and fiction..There has never been an adventure like Irwin Allen's Voyage to the bottom of the sea . Prepare for the most exciting experience , you have ever a motion picture theatre¡ ¨ . This is a Sci-fi thriller in which Admiral Harriman Nelson (Walter Pidgeon) as the commander of an experimental, extraordinarily designed US sea sub called ¨Seaview¨ and as second-in-command captain Lee Crane (Robert Sterling) take on several hazards and risks that are threatening all life on Earth . They encounter in the Arctic that suffers from melting iceberg caused by a burning radiation belt called Van Allen . Nelson is called into rescue a castaway (Michael Ansara) trapped on the remaining of an ice floe . Later on , there appears a saboteur aboard and the atomic submarine sit races to set off the torpedoes which Adm. Harriman knows will explode the dangerous radiation.

Acceptable submarine movie blends adventure , action, intrigue , disaster spectacle, hokey fun ,suspense and emotional happenings with romance included . Our heroes incarnated by a throughly believable casting of the splendid character players get stuck in the ship before the world explodes , undertaking numerous adventures and suffering innumerable perils .It includes a series of interesting ideas that benefit from a decent screenplay and nice special effects to make regular-size Octopus seem like deep-sea giant. There are also mine fields, large squids and attacking sub courtesy of the flamboyant FX team . The protagonists spend most of their time devising intelligent ways for avoid to die from solar radiation . The underwater scenes , burning skies, explosion , pyrotechnics, floods are spectacular but the film is just another usual Hollywood product . High level all star cast as it stars Walter Pidgeon as efficient Nelson , Peter Lorre as his scientific assistant and Robert Sterling and Barbara Eden as intimate couple , plus the singer Frankie Avalon and the fanatic religious Michael Ansara and of course the attractive Joan Fontaine . Lively score musical fitting to action by Paul Sawtell and colorful cinematography by Winton C Hoch . Lavishly produced and directed by Irwin Allen who would go on filmmaking millionaire products as ¨The Poseidon adventure¨, ¨The towering inferno¨¨ and ¨Beyond of Poseidon¨ this picture is one of the last Allen's flops along with ¨Swarm¨and ¨When the time ran out¨ . It's followed by a successful and long running series , a TV show with the well known characters starred by Richard Basehart as Nelson and David Hedison as captain. Rating : Good family fare , acceptable and passable Sci-fi movie ; kids and teenagers will have a fine time.

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.

Irwin Allens 1961 submarine flick. Although the special effects are on the antiquated side the film when it came out in 61 was state of the art. The movie led to the TV series of the same name but with a different cast. Once again Peter Lorre is on a futuristic submarine on a dangerous mission (as in Disney's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) The world is teetering on destruction from a force of nature. The submarine Seaview with its genius Admiral Nelson aboard played by Walter Pidgeon knows how to save the world. However there are those who don't want him to succeed. All in all a good Sci Fi feature. Best if viewed in letter box. Barbara Eden is included in the cast and as always is gorgeous. Frankie Avalon, Michael Ansara, Joan Fontaine co-star. Also look for Howard McNear best known for playing Floyd the barber on the Andy Griffith show as a congressman onboard to check out the submarine.

I still remember seeing this film at movie theaters way back when I was a lad. Of course I didn't hear very much of it due to all the shrieks and squeals from the teenage girls in the audience over Frankie Avalon. That curiously enough didn't matter because Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a very visual film.

It might seem a little old hat today, but we've been through two more generations that have seen the United States Navy become an atomic fleet of submarines and surface carriers. It was only seven years earlier, in 1955 that the U.S.S. Nautilus was launched as our first atomic submarine. In homage to that wonderful visionary Jules Verne who foresaw atomic power one hundred years earlier the Navy named it after that famous undersea ship of Verne's great novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The nuclear submarine was a wondrous thing in 1961.

The idea of a nuclear power submarine was the brainchild of Admiral Hyman Rickover. Rickover was a tough minded s.o.b. who usually got whatever he wanted by any mean necessary including bullying. Hard to believe that the gentlemanly Walter Pigeon could play him, but he did and well as Admiral Harry Nelson, the ersatz Rickover.

What's happened here is that the Van Allen radiation belt that surrounds the Earth has caught fire and temperatures are climbing all over the world. The planet is doomed, but Walter Pigeon's got an idea to save it. Fire a missile and seed the belt with more radiation, kind of a nuclear backfire and the blaze will end.

A lot of people are telling him it won't work, but Pigeon brushes them all aside. The only two who have faith in him are his assistants played by Peter Lorre and Barbara Eden. But our intrepid admiral pushes through.

Of course the U.S.S. Seaview encounters all kinds of obstacles along the way, but that's the rest of the story.

The cast does very well for itself and young Frankie Avalon as a junior officer comes off rather nicely. Frankie sings over the title credits, but during the movie plays a trumpet. Avalon in fact was a trumpet virtuoso and a singing career was an afterthought. The fickle finger of fate.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea still a nice science fiction adventure even though it is dated.