List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $11.98YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
DVD Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea / Fantastic Voyage
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea gets a dose of On the Beach in Irwin Allen's visually impressive but scientifically silly Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. While the Seaview, the world's most advanced experimental submarine, maneuvers under the North Pole, the Van Allen radiation belt catches fire, giving the concept "global warming" an entirely new dimension. As the Earth broils in temperatures approaching 170 degrees F, Walter Pidgeon's maniacally driven Admiral Nelson hijacks the Seaview and plays tag with the world's combined naval forces on a race to the South Pacific, where he plans to extinguish the interstellar fire with a well-placed nuclear missile. But first he has to fight a mutinous crew, an alarmingly effective saboteur, not one but two giant squid attacks, and a host of design flaws that nearly cripple the mission (note to Nelson: think backup generators). Barbara Eden shimmies to Frankie Avalon's trumpet solos in the most formfitting naval uniform you've ever seen, fish-loving Peter Lorre plays in the shark tank, gloomy religious fanatic Michael Ansara preaches Armageddon, and Joan Fontaine looks very uncomfortable playing an armchair psychoanalyst. It's all pretty absurd, but Allen pumps it up with larger-than-life spectacle and lovely miniature work. --Sean Axmaker
Fantastic Voyage 2001: A Space Odyssey took the world on a mind-bending trip to outer space, but Fantastic Voyage is the original psychedelic inner-space adventure. When a brilliant scientist falls into a coma with an inoperable blood clot in the brain, a surgical team embarks on a top-secret journey to the center of the mind in a high-tech military submarine shrunk to microbial dimensions. Stephen Boyd stars as a colorless commander sent to keep an eye on things (though his eyes stay mostly on shapely medical assistant Raquel Welch), while Donald Pleasance is suitably twitchy as the claustrophobic medical consultant. The science is shaky at best, but the imaginative spectacle is marvelous: scuba-diving surgeons battle white blood cells, tap the lungs to replenish the oxygen supply, and shoot the aorta like daredevil surfers. The film took home a well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Director Richard Fleischer, who turned Disney's 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into one of the most riveting submarine adventures of all time, creates a picture so taut with cold-war tensions and cloak-and-dagger secrecy that niggling scientific contradictions (such as, how do miniaturized humans breathe full-sized air molecules?) seem moot. --Sean Axmaker
Review(s): DVD Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea / Fantastic Voyage
Please don't even think Forbidden Planet when these two come up!!!
Of course you should add these to your collection if you are compulsive or teach a course in SF film - or are a really big Isaac Asimov fan (he wrote FV). But if you liked/loved Forbidden Planet you will not find any comparison amusing (well, you could compare Walter Pigeons' performances). Forbidden Planet is a (well deserving) classic SF film, FV and VtoBoS were both made on film.
BOFFO
For anyone who is a SCIFI Nut!
These Movies take you back to some of 1st Color Scifi movies of the age and the latest "Special Effects" of the era.
They are both very entertaining.
If you like "Forbidden Plant" you will also enjoy these features.
Effects still hold up today...
The difference? They may have looked fake, but you knew they were real-ie: had mass-they were models of varying sizes;-todays CGI often looks 'fake' ie: too perfect- and you know whatever being shown only exists on a hard drive!
Would YOU put up with a CGI USS Enterprise?-I think not.
No, LB Abbott was THE MAN at 20th Fox in the day-if he was given a good budget.
I love the shots of the larger, detailed Seaview-it was 20 feet long-and SUPER detailed-though some of the bubbles trailing after the smaller models gtve the scale away-today they would have used condensed milk to stand in for massive small bubbles/foam for prop-wash..
---
I still think FANTASTIC VOYAGE stands out over much of todays SPFX-and the design of the Proteus is divine;
One glaring error of continuity-in the novel, the crew COAXED the antibodies containing the wreckage to follow them out through the eye, where, while still small, were put on the floor of the chamber to grow-
in the film, they simply ASSUME that the antibodies have digested it, and thus it is of no danger to Benes.
NOT SO-
even if it were ground to jelly, that blob of jelly would have grown, after 60 minutes-to the size of the former sub inside or outside of Benes-thus killing him (Death by exploding internal sub wreckage!)
Related DVD's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea / Fantastic Voyage
James Mason plays Professor Oliver Lindenbrook, a scientist hoping to find the world's core in this 1959 adaptation of the Jules Verne novel. He leads his unusual party on an expedition to the center of the earth, by way of a volcano in Iceland. On the way, they encounter enormous mushrooms and giant prehistoric monsters. Produced by Michael Todd with then-spectacular special effects, the story was modernized to 1950s sensibilities. Mason gives this class, while Arlene Dahl and Diane Baker are the romantic interests. And Pat Boone is more palatable than you might expect as a secondary lead. You can watch this with your children and not be bored, and they will surely love it. --Rochelle O'GormanMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Pat Boone - James Mason Director(s): Henry Levin DVD Release Date: Released the 04 March 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $11.24YOU SAVE $3.74!
Buy it
The swashbuckler genre bumped into science fiction in 1954 for one of Hollywood's great entertainments. The Jules Verne story of adventure under the sea was Walt Disney's magnificent debut into live-action films. A professor (Paul Lukas) seeks the truth about a legendary sea monster in the years just after the Civil War. When his ship is sunk, he, his aide (Peter Lorre), and a harpoon master (Kirk Douglas) survive to discover that the monster is actually a metal submarine run by Captain Nemo (James Mason). Along with the rollicking adventure, it's fun to see the future technology that Verne dreamed up in his novel, including diving equipment and sea farming. The film's physical prowess is anchored by the Nautilus, an impressive full-scale gothic submarine complete with red carpet and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kirk Douglas - James Mason Director(s): Richard Fleischer DVD Release Date: Released the 20 May 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.99 Your Price: $15.99YOU SAVE $4!
Buy it
This 1956 pop adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest is one of the best, most influential science fiction movies ever made. Its space explorers are the models for the crew of Star Trek's Enterprise, and the film's robot is clearly the prototype for Robby in Lost in Space. Walter Pidgeon is the Prospero figure, presiding over a paradisiacal world with his lovely young daughter and their servile droid. When the crew of a spaceship lands on the planet, they become aware of a sinister invisible force that threatens to destroy them. Great special effects and a bizarre electronic score help make this movie as fresh, imaginative, and fun as it was when first released. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Walter Pidgeon Director(s): Fred M. Wilcox DVD Release Date: Released the 18 April 2000 Usually ships in 5 to 7 days
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $14.99YOU SAVE $4.99!
Buy it
After scoring popular hits with When Worlds Collide and The War of the Worlds, special-effects pioneer George Pal returned to the visionary fiction of H.G. Wells to produce and direct this science-fiction classic from 1960. Wells's imaginative tale of time travel was published in 1895 and the movie is set in approximately the same period with Rod Taylor as a scientist whose magnificent time machine allows him to leap backward and forward in the annals of history. His adventures take him far into the future, where a meek and ineffectual race known as the Eloi have been forced to hide from the brutally monstrous Morlocks. As Taylor tests his daring invention, Oscar-winning special effects show us what the scientist sees: a cavalcade of sights and sounds as he races through... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Rod Taylor Director(s): George Pal DVD Release Date: Released the 03 October 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $15.98YOU SAVE $4!
Buy it
