Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

1961 movie poster
Directed by Irwin Allen
Produced by Irwin Allen
Written by Irwin Allen &
Charles Bennett
Starring Walter Pidgeon
Joan Fontaine
Barbara Eden
Peter Lorre
Robert Sterling
Michael Ansara
Music by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter
Cinematography Winton Hoch
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) July 12, 1961
Running time 105 min
Country USA
Language English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a science fiction film produced and directed by Irwin Allen and released in 1961.The Film was done in CinimaScope. The story was written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennet. Walter Pidgeon starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson, designer/builder of USOS Seaview, a futuristic nuclear submarine, with Robert Sterling as Capt Lee Crane, and Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden, Michael Ansara and Peter Lorre. The theme song is sung by Frankie Avalon, who also has a part in the film.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The plot involves the Van Allen radiation belt catching fire, causing a world threatening global heat wave.The Van Allen belt fire is literally causing the skys to be on fire all over the world. The heat wave that the fire is causing is making the worlds temperture rise alamingly each day. If this steady rise in heat is not stopped it will soon end all life on Earth. The skyfire is caused by metors piercing the Van Allen belt. The fire begins while the new and state of the art Atomic submarine Seaview is on diving trials in the Arctic Ocean along with a team of observers onboard.The purpose of the observers is to appraise the new submarine while its builder puts it through its trail runs. These runs end abruptly when icebergs start falling on the Seaview. The futuristic submarine surfaces and its crew learns about the skyfire.

The Admiral and his freind,Commodore Emery than do a lot of calculating. Than they lead a group to a UN emergency meeting with a plan to extinguish the orbiting flames. Once they are at the meeting the Admiral tells the delegates that if the rate of heat increase is not stopped,his calculations show that the "Earth has a life expectancy of about three weeks" He than explans about the plan the commodore and he have come up with to save the day. They want to use a missle fired at the right point and time to extinguish the skyfire.This missile would be aimed at the burning Van Allen belt from the Marianas Trench. Only the Seaview can fire the missle correctly.This goes over the head of chief sceintist and head delegate Zucco(Henry Daniel). At Zuccos urging Admiral Nelson (Pidgeon) and Commodore Emery (Lorre) are shouted down at the UN emergency meeting. The Admiral remains convinced his plan is the right one. The Commodore and he return to Seaview and order the crew to set sail. The submarine races to the Pacific to launch the missile from the Marianas Trench. Trouble for those on board the sub begins when it emerges there is a saboteur amongst them. But is it the rescued scientist Miguel Alvarez (Ansara), or the stress-observing psychologist, Dr. Susan Hiller (Fontaine)

The plot from hereon is driven by a race against the clock as the as Admiral Nelson tries to reach the Marianas Trench in time. The story bars his way by piling one disaster on top of another (a minefield, a hostile submarine, a giant octopus, a near-mutiny and a religious fanatic).

Near the end of the film the saboteur is revealed to be Dr. Hiller, she then falls into the sub's aquarium during a fight and is eaten by a shark that the sub's marine biologist Commodore Emery (Lorre) has on board for research purposes.

Eventually, despite the efforts of the religious fanatic Alvarez to prevent it, the sub launches a nuclear missile into the belt, extinguishing the fire and saving the world.

Spoilers end here.


[edit] Technical Background

The name of the film is an inversion of a phrase popular at the time, concerning the exploration of the Arctic Ocean by nuclear submarines, namely, "a voyage to the top of the world." No large submarine can reach the ocean floor in the high seas and safely return.

The film submarine's design in unique in that it features an eight window bow viewport which provides panoramic undersea views (in the novel of the film by Theodore Sturgeon the windows are described as "Transparent hullplating", a process developed by Nelson as "X-tempered herculite"). The bow/nose also has a shark-like bottom flare,and the stern has extended V-shaped wing tail surfaces. In the film,the USOS Seaview (United States Oceanographic Survey) is under the authority of Nelson and the Bureau of Marine Exploration. The novel mentions the bureau as being part of the U. S. Department of Science.

At the time that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was made the Van Allen Radiation Belts had only recently been discovered. Much of what this movie says about them is made up for the film. Discoveries that have been made about the Van Allen Belts since clearly invalidate what the film says: the Van Allen Belts (actually somewhat more radiation-dense portions of the magnetosphere) are made up of sub-atomic particles trapped by the Earth's magnetic field in the vacuum of space which cannot catch fire.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Other media

The success of the movie led to the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series).During the run of the series this film was remade as an hour in length episode. The episode was written by Willam Welch and was called The Skys on Fire,The Skys on Fire. Many of the scenes in the movie became scenes or even episodes in the Television series.

In June 1961, Pyramid Books published a novelization of the feature film by Theodore Sturgeon. The book was reprinted several times during the 1960s. Collectors be aware that one of those reprintings has Richard Basehart and David Hedison pictured on the cover. The book is still about the Walter Pidgeon film. For collectors who want a novelization of the Tv series you should find "City Beneath the Sea". That book uses the Tv characters but should not be confused with either the tv episode or the later Irwin Allen flim of the same name.

The Sturgeon book is based on an early version of the movie script. The book has the same basic story as the movie. The book also has a few characters that were not shown in the film and some additional technical explanation. Some scenes are different from the film.

The original 1961 cover shows a submarine meeting a fanged sea serpent. Neither the submarine nor the sea serpent appear anywhere in the novel or the film.

In 1961 Dell Comics did a full color adaptation of the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea movie. The comic book has a few publicity stills of the movie plus a section on the history of submarines. In the comic book the admirals first name is Farragut instead of Harriman.

[edit] Similar films

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was made at a time when Nuclear Submarines were very new. They must have seemed like futuristic Science Fiction come to life. In addition to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,futuristic submarines were the heroic subject of two other Science Fiction films made in the same era. Those two similar films were the American made The Atomic Submarine and the Japenese made Atragon.

Several years prior to the making of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,Peter Lorrie starred in another submarine fantasy film Walt Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954 film)

[edit] External links

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