Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.)

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
Topic Started: Jul 2 2012, 09:40 AM (771 Views)
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Welcome to the biggest, baddest, most super-hyper-atomic nuclear submarine in the world, the Seaview, on a test drive beneath the Arctic, with Admiral Walter Pidgeon, Captain Robert Sterling, Senator Floyd the Barber, Psychiatrist Joan Fontaine, Secretary Jeannie, and shark-walker Peter Lorre. Oh, and general deckhand Frankie Avalon, who sings the opening theme song, which nearly made me turn the disc over and watch Fantastic Voyage instead, but I was too lazy to get up.

After a week lurking on the bottom, the Seaview surfaces to discover the ice caps are melting and the sky's all ablaze. Seems that the Van Allen Radiation Belt is on fire, and the earth is about to burn (interestingly, this is similar to but a lot dumber than The Day the Earth Caught Fire, watched by me just a couple of weeks ago). The Seaview zips to New York City, where a U.N. team of scientists led by the evil Barnaby from Babes in Toyland has decided to combat the global menace by doing nothing whatsoever and hoping for the best (a/k/a "The Republican Plan"). Pidgeon's knee-jerk reaction is to head to Guam, where if they can shoot an atomic missile into the Belt at exactly 4:00 p.m. local time on a date exactly 16 days away, they can knock the Van Allen Radiation Belt into space and save the earth, and yes, THE WHOLE MOVIE IS THIS FUCKING STUPID, PEOPLE.

Not that it's too terrible to watch, mind. It's just, to paraphrase something else that somebody else said about some other thing, they must've done a LOT of scientific research to get EVERYTHING wrong. What I know about science couldn't fill a fortune cookie, but I fell off my chair 16 or 17 times during this movie.

The Seaview is a model that looks slightly less realistic than... Well, okay, a LOT LESS realistic than the Stingray in Gerry Anderson's puppet show. All of the sets are tiny, and to mask it, whenever the Seaview surfaces it surfaces in a thick fog bank so that you don't need to see that it's an indoor set, so please don't pay attention to the shadows and boom mics, please. Michael Ansara is a radical Jesus freak they pick up as the only survivor of something or other, and as nuts as HE is, he's the only realistic character in the entire movie. Was there REALLY so much cigar-smoking going on in submarines? Yikes. How smelly THEY must've been.

I'd never seen this film before (nor will I see it again), but when I was a kid I watched the TV show, which I remember being just as stupid. Well, considering that I only remember one episode, and that one had a werewolf on the submarine(!), I am gonna go way out on a limb and state that the TV show was just as stupid.

Stupid dialog, non-special effects, and paper-thin characters notwithstanding, the film IS wide and colorful, so I can see why it was a hit, despite the fact that what you're getting for your Technicolor CinemaScope is a bunch of folks standing in a red fog on a 20x20 set meant to represent the largest submarine in the world.

Okay, maybe I will watch this movie again. It did make me laugh.



"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Seriously, this movie is so stupid I thought about creating a new Balcony Message Board area for it, a "STUPID MOVIES" area. I still might.

"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
CliffClaven
Member Avatar
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
[ *  *  * ]
I've got the theme song on my iPod ("Come with me . . . on a voyage . . . to the bottom . . . of the sea . . . ").

Recall reading an article years ago about a science professor who had an informal club that reported on scientific inaccuracies in movies. He said he was spurred by a movie that had chunks of a glacier falling on a submarine. The good professor yelled something to the effect that ice FLOATS you idiots, drawing a few giggles and several shushes. It sounds like he was watching this, which raises the question of how he kept quiet to that point.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
I started to make a list of all the stupid science, but I couldn't find a pencil. Plus, I don't have three days. But if I ever saw the late Irwin Allen, I would've dropped an ice cube into a bucket of water, show him that it FLOATS, and said, "Really, Irwin? Really?"
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
JazzGuyy
Member Avatar
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
[ *  *  * ]
I think the TV show was even stupider because they had a lower budget for scripts and special effects.
TANSTAAFL!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sgt Saturn
Member Avatar
Charter Member
[ *  *  * ]
The best thing about the movie as the novelization by Theodore Sturgeon. He did what he could, and I am sure he needed the money. He may have been the only person associated with the movie with two brain cells to rub together.

Back in the day, my friends and I referred to the TV show as "Under Water Upchuck".
The Ol' Sarge
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Frank Hale
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
[ *  *  * ]
Serials and giant bug pictures also have cheap sets, idiotic stories, and poor acting. What kills Allen’s productions is a certain mucilage factor, best exemplified IMO by Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure.

I’m reminded of our friend Irwin Bat Heston back at the Squadron, who loved Irwin Allen films, Adam West as Batman, and Charlton Heston. A man of exquisitely bad taste. Or perhaps just ahead of the curve.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
CliffClaven
Member Avatar
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
[ *  *  * ]
What's crazy is I think Irwin Allen started out with documentaries. For me, his most enjoyable nonsense is when he was still making family sci fi instead of big shot disaster movies. To wit:

-- "Five Weeks in a Balloon": Bigger budget and milder ambitions than "Master of the World", missing only some child actors to be a Disney summer throwaway. It's a period piece, which adds a little flair. Watch for familiar old faces, including Billy Gilbert playing two characters for some reason. Peter Lorre and Barbara Eden are both back; he as a lovable white slaver and she as a mission teacher who slowly falls for Red Buttons.

-- "The Lost World": Paging Mystery Science Theater. Claude Reins and other decent actors in what looks and sounds like a cheap TV show until they get to the mysterious plateau. Then we get grade-A silly with soapy intrigues, the obligatory giant lizards, caverns that look oddly whimsical, generic natives, Jill St. John in candy-colored outfits, and a poodle.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
panzer the great & terrible
Member Avatar
Mouth Breather
[ *  *  * ]
Quote:
 
I’m reminded of our friend Irwin Bat Heston back at the Squadron, who loved Irwin Allen films, Adam West as Batman, and Charlton Heston. A man of exquisitely bad taste. Or perhaps just ahead of the curve.


I had forgotten ol' Irwin. He wasn't very polite as I recall. He spelled his handle Batheston, which I always read as Bath-eston.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · It Came from Beyond the Balcony · Next Topic »
Add Reply