Destination Inner Space

I rate this movie to be like..."The creature from the black lagoon" meets a bad episode of "Sea Hunt", meets "Mars needs women". But....you have to remember the 60's didn't have computer graphics special effects. And you must remember this was a low budget movie. It is ok to watch for a laugh if you watch it in the spirit of the times in which it was made. I like this movie particularly because I have acquired and own the twelve foot long, red, torpedo shaped, twin open cockpits, wet submarine that was used in this movie. It's neat to own a piece of the original equipment from this movie.

Long before ABYSS, LEVIATHAN, DEEP STAR SIX or even UNDERWATER (2020), you had this now totally forgotten feature, which seems to be inspired by VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA series and its pilot movie directed by Irwin Allen. This one is lousy but fun, despite desperate efforts from Scott Brady to save the whole stuff. Do not confound this film, because of its title, with Joe Dante's INNERSPACE, itself a remake of THE FANTATIC VOYAGE. This film was obviously destined to the sixties teen audiences and it looks like a TV feature. However, please, don't be too hard with this film, OK? Just have fun, that's all.

This isn't a B-flick. It's worse, it's a C-flick. Sea-flick? See?

Now that my really bad joke is out of the way, I can say this movie is one really bad joke on the audience. To say that the science is flawed is an understatement. (The specimens in the biology lab will die without air?!? They're a sealab; their purpose is to study water-breathing life!) The bombast-filled score is nothing more than stale leftovers from the 1950s, straining at almost every moment to add suspense where none exists. The sets are among the least convincing I've ever seen and the special effects are laughable. The "giant" spaceship and the sealab look like the 12-inch miniatures they probably were. The rubber-suited monster is not scary at all even when poor bluescreen matting makes it look several times larger that life. Worst of all, it commits the cardinal sin that distinguishes truly bad movies from the classics like "Plan 9 from Outer Space," it's no fun. It makes Irwin Allen's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" series look like "Star Wars." Even the eminently forgettable "DeepStar Six" and "Leviathan" were an order of magnitude better than this. It's almost enough to make me rent "Sphere" and finally see the second half. Almost, but nothing's quite that bad.

Lots of cheesy fun but what's really cool is that Mike Road did the voices for the animated series' characters Race Bannon (JONNY QUEST), Reed Richards (FANTASTIC FOUR) and Zandor (HERCULOIDS). So for fantasy fans everywhere, we can put a face with that heroic "manly man" voice we grew up with in the 60s.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Francis D. Lyon; Produced by Earle Lyon, for United Pictures, released by Feature Film Corporation of America. Screenplay by Arthur C. Pierce; Photography by Brick Marquard; Edited by Robert Eisen; Music by Paul Dunlap. Starring: Scott Brady, Sheree North, Gary Merrill, John Howard, Wende Wagner and Biff Elliot.

Science-fiction adventure revolving around perilous underwater scientific exploration and the uncovering of a man-like amphibian monster, of fishy parentage. Suffers from a low-grade production despite nice cast.