Cinema: Squid Food

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (20th Century-Fox) rates poorly in science fiction’s Foam-Rubber Monster and Magnified Chameleon category; its only people eaters are a shamefully lethargic giant squid, an octopus and a shark. The film’s score in the End of Civilization As We Know It division is hardly more impressive; the Van Allen radiation belt catches fire, and the earth’s temperature rises to a toasty 173°. Voyage, however, does creditably in Wires, Dials and Doodads; there is an atomic submarine almost as gorgeous as a producer’s Cadillac, with a control room like a Parisian pinball machine.

But it is in the often neglected Professor’s Daughter and Beautiful Lady Scientist department that the film excels. Joan Fontaine plays a World-Renowned Psychiatrist with fierce regard for tradition: she is snappish and mean to Walter Pidgeon, the World’s Greatest Scientist right up to the moment she is eaten by the shark. Balance is provided by blonde Barbara Eden, as cute a canape as ever broke a giant squid’s heart. Tradition must sometimes be broken if an art form is to grow: she plays Pidgeon’s secretary, not his daughter. Her function is to proceed about the submarine at canter, bearing messages, coffee and surcease from sorrow. Fully a third of the film is devoted to shots of Actress Eden running in her painted-on skirt and 4-in. heels, and there can be no question that Director Irwin Allen knows his proportions.

It need only be added that at one point Pidgeon is forced to slap, in the manner of General Patton, a malingering crew member played by Frankie Avalon, a vapid juvenile customarily billed as a singer. In view of the song Avalon emits while the credits are being shown, Pidgeon clearly shirked his duty. Patton would have fed the squirt to the squid.