Richard Fleischer's film is uncommonly good fun and might have been even more enjoyable had the leads not been played by Stephen Boyd and Raquel Welch. (In this movie they are supposed to be brainy medical scientist-type people; Boyd is a top security bod and Boyd is an actor who doesn't look comfortable in a suit). It's pretty hard to take the supporting cast as brainy scientist-types either, (that will be Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, Arthur Kennedy and Arthur O'Connell), but the plot is ingenious.
A scientist is brain-damaged before he can reveal his secret. The only way to save his life is to operate, wait for it, from inside the brain and the only way to do that is to, wait for it, miniaturize a submarine with said scientists on board and inject it into an artery where it will travel to the source of the problem and remove the clot with a laser beam and all within sixty minutes or said sub and its crew will start to grow again. OK, so it's deliriously silly but that's why it's so enjoyable. The whole cast act with the straightest of faces; as far as they are concerned this could be Shakespeare, (let's be grateful it isn't, although O'Brien was once a commanding Casca).
Never having been inside a human body, (and stop snickering at the back), I can't say if the 'set design' is accurate or not but it certainly looks the part and the designers and the special effects guys did pick up Academy Awards for their efforts. Excitement is provided largely by having a saboteur on board and from some very nasty antibodies that see the submarine as a threat and leap to the body's defense. (Oh, and it prompted one of my all-time favorite reviews in Time Magazine that went, 'When a body meets an antibody coming through the eye ...')
A scientist is brain-damaged before he can reveal his secret. The only way to save his life is to operate, wait for it, from inside the brain and the only way to do that is to, wait for it, miniaturize a submarine with said scientists on board and inject it into an artery where it will travel to the source of the problem and remove the clot with a laser beam and all within sixty minutes or said sub and its crew will start to grow again. OK, so it's deliriously silly but that's why it's so enjoyable. The whole cast act with the straightest of faces; as far as they are concerned this could be Shakespeare, (let's be grateful it isn't, although O'Brien was once a commanding Casca).
Never having been inside a human body, (and stop snickering at the back), I can't say if the 'set design' is accurate or not but it certainly looks the part and the designers and the special effects guys did pick up Academy Awards for their efforts. Excitement is provided largely by having a saboteur on board and from some very nasty antibodies that see the submarine as a threat and leap to the body's defense. (Oh, and it prompted one of my all-time favorite reviews in Time Magazine that went, 'When a body meets an antibody coming through the eye ...')