In the early 1950's, a young radio, television, and film producer named
Irwin Allen made his directorial debut with an Academy Award-winning nature documentary
called The Sea Around Us. Based on the best-selling book by marine biologist
Rachel L. Carson, The Sea Around Us dealt with life in the world's oceans
and even makes a passing reference to global warming and melting polar ice.
Irwin Allen capitalized on his success as a director to make more movies that
highlighted his fascination with the natural world. After a stint at Warner Brothers,
he went to 20th Century Fox, producing and directing the 1960 remake of The Lost World.
This was an enormous success, and the pressure was on for his next movie to replicate it. To do so,
Allen turned his eye back to the oceans and wrote a story about a nuclear submarine of the near future.
The sky is on fire and the world is burning. With only weeks left before temperatures become so high
that life will cease, scientists are divided on the question of what to do.
The most widely accepted theory is that the fire will burn itself out,
but Admiral Harriman Nelson believes otherwise. He believes that he must take his new,
experimental submarine, the USOS Seaview, to a specific point in the Pacific Ocean
and fire a nuclear missile into the atmosphere in order to ensure the future of mankind. However,
with communications cut off and other ships on his tail, Nelson's mission is complicated by an
unsettled crew and the creeping suspicion that maybe the admiral has lost his mind.
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In 1958, the first working nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, doubled its
groundbreaking feats by also becoming the first submarine to pass beneath the North Pole, making
the transit between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Two years later, in the deep-sea bathyscaphe Trieste,
Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh became the first men to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep,
the deepest known point of the world's oceans, situated in the southern part
of the Mariana Trench. These endeavors became Allen's inspiration to write a
story about a submarine that goes from the top of the world to the bottom of the sea,
centered around an apocalyptic event involving the newly discovered Van Allen radiation belt.
With the help of his frequent collaborator Charles Bennett,
a veteran screenwriter who'd worked with such greats as Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil DeMille,
Allen turned his story into a full script and set a date for principle photography to begin
in January of 1961, just six months after the release of The Lost World.
Some effects work was done before even that, however, with most of the budget--which was just
over one and a half million dollars--devoted to set construction, undersea photography,
and model work. The submarine sets and models cost a combined total of four hundred thousand dollars,
and the underwater scenes, along with the brief shot of the Earth from space
showing the burning Van Allen belt, cost a whopping eight hundred sixty thousand dollars.
All of the effects were overseen by the legendary L.B. Abbott,
the head of Fox's special effects department who'd worked on hits like The Day the Earth Stood Still,
The Fly, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and of course, The Lost World.
Art director Herman Blumenthal was responsible for the design of the submarine interiors,
and he refused to consult with the US Navy for fear of letting the script
leak. Ironically, Allen had approached the Navy while writing the original story,
but the Navy had declined to help, out of fear that details of the nuclear submarine program
would leak to the Soviets. The Cold War was a different time.
The cast of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is headed up by the late great Walter Pidgeon as
Admiral Nelson. With a reputation for playing both zealots and geniuses in movies like
Forbidden Planet, Pidgeon, who was returning to film after a long stint in the theater,
is perfectly cast in the ambiguous role. He is both charming and off-putting,
so that audiences never quite know if they should root for him,
and I can think of few other actors of the time period capable of such a delicate balancing act.
For the role of Lee Crane, the submarine captain who serves as the main P.O.V. character,
Allen initially approached The Fly's David Hedison, fresh off The Lost World,
but Hedison reportedly didn't like the script. Instead, they cast Robert Sterling, best known for
playing the television version of Topper in the early fifties. To his credit, Sterling also does
a good job selling his internal conflict, which is what the narrative ultimately hinges upon.
His character's fiancée, Lieutenant Cathy Conners, the loyal secretary of Admiral Nelson,
is played by a young Barbara Eden, who had already made a name for herself on television
as well as appearing in films like A Private Affair and Flaming Star. Of course, Eden's name
would later become synonymous with Jeannie, and though I have nothing against her as an actress,
her character in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a bit dry and one-dimensional.
The script is smart for pitting her against Captain Crane, using their romance as a tension
point rather than a trope, but it doesn't do much to give her a character of her own,
outside of her introduction, which includes a brief dance number Eden choreographed herself.
The other female lead, Dr. Susan Hiller, is played by the multiple award-winning superstar Joan
Fontaine, known for dozens of films including Suspicion, Ivanhoe, and Island in the Sun.
Fontaine is of course great, and her character is far more complex and interesting than Eden's,
especially upon multiple viewings, once you know the twist involving her character.
Other actors worth mentioning are the incomparable Peter Lorre as the scientist Commodore Emery;
Barbara Eden's first husband, Michael Ansara, as the fatalistic Miguel Alvarez;
the man of a thousand voices, Robert Easton, as Sparks;
and teen heartthrob Frankie Avalon, who also sings the title song, as Lieutenant Danny Romano.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea debuted in July of 1961. It received mixed reviews from critics,
but earned a total domestic box office of seven million dollars in theater rentals,
making it even more successful than The Lost World and securing Irwin Allen's reputation as a big
budget director. Though his next film, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was a box office disappointment,
Allen transitioned seamlessly to television, starting with a wildly successful adaptation of
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which used the existing sets and models built for the film and
starred both Richard Basehart and David Hedison, accepting the role he had previously refused.
Allen would subsequently become the biggest name in science-fiction on the small screen,
producing Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants, before going back to
film and directing the disaster classics The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
I'm going to level with you. Before setting out to make this video, I had never actually
seen Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It's just one of those movies that snuck past me.
I also went into it without knowing a lot about it, expecting something more like 20,000 Leagues
under the Sea or Fantastic Voyage than, say, The Day the Earth Caught Fire or Crimson Tide.
Needless to say, I was surprised at how intense and morally ambiguous the movie is,
something I certainly don't expect from big budget Hollywood in the early sixties.
Sure, the science is laughably bad, the underwater creatures are pretty goofy, the miniatures
aren't great, even for the time, the plot is driven by coincidences that are far too neat,
and this is probably the roomiest submarine I've ever seen on screen,
but once you let yourself suspend disbelief,
this is a great and entertaining movie that has more depth than you'd have any right to expect.
It cleverly sets up its conflict by exploiting the Captain Ahab archetype to lead the audience
down a certain path, one where it is expected that Admiral Nelson will prove to be a raving lunatic.
However, it also offers plenty of evidence that Nelson is right,
that his plan for saving the world is the only one that could work. What makes it so compelling is
that every single character is driven by their own moral center, some more unbalanced than others,
and the story is very careful not to give away the solution to the mystery until the very end.
Underpinning it all is this question of agency, of whether an individual should do
what they can to affect change or whether they should have faith that things will work out,
be it through faith in scientific authority or faith in God. It is critical that Admiral
Nelson is never given permission or rejection by the president, that he has to decide to act
of his own will, because that's what the movie is ultimately about: human will.
I am sorry to have missed out on it for so long, but now that I have finally given it my attention,
I can say with conviction that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is absolutely a sci-fi classic.
And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. What's your favorite submarine movie?
Let me know in the comments, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe if you
haven't already. If you'd like to offer even more support, consider joining my Patreon to get access
to bonus content, vote on future topics, and more. You can also check out my website at emagill.com,
where you'll find written reviews of plenty more science-fiction classics in both film
and literature. Until next time, though, when we'll be dealing with some next level road rage,
this is the Unapologetic Geek, telling you to never be ashamed of what you love,
as long as you're not hurting anybody.
"Suppose the other fella shoots first."
"In that event, sir, that's the way out. This way, doctor, please."