Fantastic Voyage (1966)

"The antibodies will attack as if she were bacteria!"

This is a very silly film, played incredibly straight and, what’s even weirder, what looks and acts like a sci-fi B Movie is helmed by a proper Hollywood director and seemingly lavished with cash..

The performances are a cut above what you can expect from a B movie, with Donald Pleasance standing out as (spoilers) the baddie. We sort of know we’re not supposed to like Dr Michaels when he suggests that the wonders of the human body may have arisen through evolution, as confirmed many times over by empirical observation, as opposed to being a literal “miracle”.

The whole thing is surprisingly focused, with very little framing device; with the minimum of fuss a team is put into a submarine, shrunk and injected into the bloodstream of the ill man who absolutely must be cured because plot reasons. It begins quickly, ends abruptly and consists of various perils from the human body in-betweeen, with the realisation of the bloodstream, the heart and various organs being actually pretty impressive. Meanwhile there’s a bunch of fretting military types watching their progress, in scenes that must surely have inspired Airplane!

It’s all very ‘60s spy film, sent in the present day in a large government facility with massive corridors that looks like a Bond villain hideout, complete with those cool little cars. There’s only one token woman, of course, and she’s an assistant. And, er, Raquel Welch is playing a character called Cora. Yes, Cora.

But what’s extraordinary about this film is, firstly, that it actually looks pretty damn good and gets away visually with the premise, but mainly in the way it carries out the Lost art of doing something very, very silly with absolute seriousness. They don’t make them like this any more...