Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea ***½ (1961, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Sterling, Joan Fontaine, Peter Lorre, Barbara Eden, Michael Ansara, Frankie Avalon, Henry Daniell, Regis Toomey) – Classic Movie Review 4860

Co-writer/ producer/ director Irwin Allen’s jolly 1961 sci-fi action adventure disaster movie tells his story about an atomic submarine sent to fix a hole in the Earth’s core. Walter Pidgeon plays the US Navy commander, Admiral Harriman Nelson, who decides to ignore the United Nations and put out the fire from the fissure by shooting a nuclear missile at the burning Van Allen Radiation Belt, using his experimental atomic submarine, the Seaview.

Luckily for vintage film fans, Peter Lorre (as Commodore Lucius Emery), Henry Daniell (as Dr Zucco) and, rather surprisingly, Joan Fontaine (as Dr Susan Hiller) are among those aboard. It also stars Robert Sterling (as Captain Lee B Crane), Barbara Eden, Michael Ansara, Frankie Avalon, Regis Toomey and John Litel.

And the popular and influential film’s other main pleasures are the interesting ideas in the sci-fi script, the painstaking, costly production ($1,580,000), the smart undersea photography and nifty special effects, for their day, of course.

This was the film that started the hit 110 episode TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that ran from 1964 to 1968, with Richard Basehart as the commander, Admiral Harriman Nelson, and David Hedison as Captain Lee B Crane.

Also in the cast are Howard McNear, Skip Ward, Mark Slade, Charles Tannen, Del Monroe, Anthony Monaco, Michael Ford, Robert Easton, Jonathan Gilmore, Art Baker, Larry Gray, David McLean, James Murphy and George Diestel.

It is co-written by Charles Bennett, shot in widescreen and colour by Winton C Hoch and John Lamb, scored by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter, and designed by Jack Martin Smith and Herman A Blumenthal.

The complete title is Irwin Allen’s Production of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4860

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Walter Pidgeon (1897–1984).