Francis D. Lyon's Destination Inner Space (1966) is a better movie than its first 30 minutes would lead one to expect, but not by too much -- and it's also not as good a movie as one would hope for, given its cast. Scott Brady, Sherry North, and Gary Merrill star in this underwater science fiction yarn, which resembles an episode of Voyage To The Bottom Of the Sea, though it also has elements of Howard Hawks' The Thing (1951) and anticipates elements of Alien. Written by Arthur C. Pierce (Navy Vs. The Night Monsters, Women of the Prehistoric Planet), the movie has a cheap look about it, apart from the cast -- the plot borrows liberally from the script of The Atomic Submarine as well as 20 Million Miles To Earth and Hawks' The Thing; the sets are threadbare; and the music score is a mostly hand-me-down work by Paul Dunlap, adapted from the same composer's music for Angry Red Planet. But the truly laughable moments are the exterior shots are of the undersea lab where most of the action takes place -- the shooting cannot allow one to overlook the fact that it's a model, probably no bigger than two feet across; similarly, in most of its appearances, the "giant" saucer looks to be about the same size. Add to that the fact that Scott Brady -- though he tries hard in the role -- must be the oldest commander in the US Navy, and that there's absolutely no chemistry between him and Sherry North; that veteran former leading man John Howard doesn't have much to do except stand around and look very serious; and that gifted actor James Hong is reduced to a comic stereotype, and you've got a disaster-in-the-maiking. The movie should be just that, especially as the first 30 minutes move at a snail's pace, and showcase all of those flaws (and more, too numerous to go into). But then, at 30 minutes in, finally the action kicks in, and while the production is too limited in scope and budget to aim for the kind of suspense that would allow the build-up to sustain itself as long as it should, at least there's excitement from that point on. And the monster itself, looking like a the nightmare equivalent of a wide-mouthed bass and designed by Richard Cassarino, is a memorably nasty creature. The second half of the film is where the similarities to Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea (and Hawks' The Thing) really kick in, a resemblance enhanced by the presence of Gary Merrill, who appeared on the TV series during this same period, here portraying a brilliant if ultimately misguided scientist. Elsewhere, the producers do make the most of a minuscule budget, so that an opening power-boat ride is edited into something exciting and mysterious, and the scene in which the saucer approaches the lab is suspenseful and well shot -- and where images fail, some good sound effects and music compensate for the shortcomings. It's not Creature From The Black Lagoon by a longshot, but it is worth a look or two. The makers had a script with some good ideas, and a decent enough cast, but not quite the money or the time needed to bring it off.
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