Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Classic TV: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964)

From 1964-70, producer Irwin Allen tried to be a major player in television before turning to films. Three series were sold to ABC, and a fourth (Lost In Space) found its way to CBS.

The first series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, anchored (pun intended) ABC's Sunday primetime lineup from its launch in 1964. Spun off from the movie of the same name, Voyage starred Richard Basehart as Admiral Nelson and David Hedison (who starred in the original "The Fly") as Capt. Lee Crane. The crew of the Seaview fought not only enemy spies, but an assortment of bizarre threats during its run.

Mona0628 uploaded this season 4 episode, which reunites Hedison with one of his "Fly" co-stars, horror icon Vincent Price, in "The Deadly Dolls":



Me-TV holds the rights to the series, and has it running on weekends in late night. Apparently, it doesn't fit in with the westerns & crime dramas during the daytime.....

Rating: B.

2 comments:

magicdog said...

I've been catching a few eps here and there but I just can't get into this series.

Don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed a lot of Irwin Allen's work. The sets alone for "The Time Tunnel" were extraordinary! The earlier seasons of Lost In Space (before the network camped it up) was also quite ambitious for the time.

There was something about VTTBOTS that just didn't gell for me.

hobbyfan said...

Hey, I don't recall seeing the movie all that much, either, but I did get into the show when it aired in syndicated weekday reruns when I was younger. Like Lost In Space, it got camped up as it went along.

Vincent Price must've had friends at Fox, as he also guest-starred on Batman during this season (1967-8).