But guess what? Both Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and its sister release, Allen's The Time Tunnel look fantastic! So bad were Fox's Lost in Space transfers that all enthusiasm for that series (a guilty pleasure) on those DVDs quickly evaporated. But this reviewer can't get enough of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea; episodes look so good and the show is so much fun (even when it's lousy) that it's been hard to watch anything else since receiving them.

The series, of course, is adapted from Irwin Allen's hugely successful 1961 feature film, itself made in the wake of Fox's enormously popular Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Allen took that film's template and made the execrable The Lost World the following year, and Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1962. (A DVD of Five Weeks in a Balloon is due out March 14th, but curiously there's no sign at all of The Lost World; it was never released to laserdisc and is hard to find even on VHS.) When Five Weeks in a Balloon flopped, Allen turned his attentions to the small screen for the next several years. The TV version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was his first and best series.

Allen was among Hollywood's most tasteless producers. His movies shamelessly played to the lowest common denominator and were crudely fashioned to appeal to the widest possible audience demographic. Several of his films (The Story of Mankind, The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure) are so stupefyingly bad as to become entertaining.

And yet Allen was an enthusiastic showman who brought a type of razzle-dazzle to his projects that were distinctively all his own and which were in some respects undeniably impressive. The movie version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) represented both the best and worst of Irwin Allen. Its screenplay is so utterly illogical and scientifically preposterous as to be almost impressive in its stupidity. And yet despite this the film is almost endearingly entertaining. It's fun in spite of itself and holds up well to multiple viewings, delivering enough action and spectacle for three movies instead of one.

The TV version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, at least during its first season, actually tones down or eliminates altogether some of the movie version's more outlandish concepts, though it quickly veers into the realm of science fantasy. As in the film version, Admiral Harriman Nelson (Richard Basehart) has created a fantastic super-sub, the SSRN Seaview, which is dispatched to various corners of the globe to investigate strange happenings under the sea and on its shores. Aided by Captain Lee Crane (David Hedison), Nelson and his crew confront extra-terrestrial beings, stop international crime organizations, fight unnamed Iron Curtain powers from dominating the globe, and generally save the world from total destruction week-after-week.

Ultimately though, the real draw to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is the Seaview itself and the wonderful weekly eye-candy production design, action and suspense, no matter that much of it is pretty ridiculous. The Seaview doesn't remotely resemble a real submarine but that was never the point - it's really just a full-size, gigantic toy, every boy's fantasy.

Nevertheless, early on the series was less the wild, childish fantasy of Lost in Space instead focusing on spy adventure action along the lines of Danger Man, with big doses of free-wheeling science fiction thrown in here and there. In this way the series was several years ahead of its time, anticipating the integration of sci-fi spectacle in high concept entertainment. The pilot episode, for instance, "Eleven Days to Zero," features a SPECTRE-like organization led by a bald-headed super-villain perhaps modeled after Lex Luthor but still several years away from Blofeld's first real onscreen appearance, in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967). (Oddly, a credited Theodore Marcuse plays "Dr. Gamma" in some shots, but an uncredited Werner Klemperer is clearly seen in others. Presumably reshoots were needed and the original actor wasn't available.)

Where later Allen shows like Lost in Space generally hired pedestrian directors to helm infantile teleplays, Voyage boasts some pretty good directors like John Braham and Gerd Oswald helming pedestrian scripts no worse than most other hour-long action dramas.

Like he did on his other shows, Allen clearly is throwing a lot of money up front, into all those nifty sets and elaborate special effects (by L.B. Abbott and Howard Lydecker, among others) while saving money in other ways. One of these cost-cutting measures is the use stock footage, of which Allen became something of a master. "The Sky Is Falling," for instance, uses a good chunk of the opening to Fox's The Day the Earth Stood Still, while "Turn Back the Clock" uses scenes from Allen's The Lost World. And almost every show features at least some footage from the movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, converted from its original grainy CinemaScope / De Luxe color to 4:3 black and white format.

Video & Audio

As stated above, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea looks just great, a flawless transfer of black and white, 35mm shows that show almost no sign of age-related and other damage, and are not edited or time-compressed. The contrast, blacks, etc., are outstanding. Episodes are offered in both their original mono and a (barely perceptible) stereo remix. A Spanish mono track is included, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles. There are three DVDs with four shows on side A of each of the three discs, and two each on side B of discs one and two, for a total of 16 shows.

Extra Features

Included are some fine supplements, starting with the original pilot version of "One Minute to Zero," which as it turns out was shot in full color. There's actually very little difference between the pilot and the aired black & white version, so you might want to start watching the series from here. Like the monochrome episodes, this color pilot is absolutely pristine, with bright hues, a sharp image, and virtually no damage.

Also included are 32 minutes of Irwin Allen's Home Movies, filmed in what looks like color 8mm. There's no audio, making one wish Fox had sprung for an audio track or text from genre historians in the manner of Paramount's SE's of the Star Trek movies, or Warner's Doctor Who DVDs. The footage is great, however; it's all from the pilot, and one sequence suggests that Theodore Marcuse probably replaced actor Werner Klemperer (see above), and not the other way around.

An ABC network Presentation Reel exemplifies the frequent outrageous chutzpah of Irwin Allen, with the producer showing full-color scenes from his new show that are in fact almost entirely footage from Allen's movies. "Guest stars" Red Buttons and Peter Lorre appear in scenes from Five Weeks in a Balloon (the Seaview transports Red Buttons to Africa on a "vital secret mission," so claims a straight-faced Allen), while "guest star" Jill St. John appears in dinosaur footage from The Lost World with series star David Hedison, who isn't even playing Captain Crane in these scenes!

Finally, a very good Still Gallery includes a presentation booklet, production and behind-the-scenes stills, and images of seemingly endless Voyage merchandise.

Parting Thoughts

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea may not exactly represent television's finest hour, but this DVD is one of the biggest kicks of 2006 so far, a blast from the past that, thanks to some fine mastering and a nice sampling of extras, make this a must-have for children of all ages.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.