In 1966, with a bunch of giggling classmates hot with the idea of catching a glimpse of the new bombshell, Raquel Welch, we made our way to a friday night showing at the Cleveland Circle cinema. We not only enjoyed Ms. Welch but the film, Fantastic Voyage (1966), was a special effects, sci-fi gasser too. Seeing it again 41 years later, although the effects are greatly reduced in estimation, and a with a lack of appreciation for the cold-war, religious undertones (a godless commie is the bad guy, natch), the score more then makes up for it. And Fox does a great job with an isolated score track where someone took the initiative to fade up the regular track between cues (makes listening much more enjoyable, I wish that Universal had done that on Mary Queen of Scots with John Barry's score).Leonard Rosenman (whom I keep confusing with Laurence Rosenthal) had four months to compose the very modern score, and 86 pieces! Time and money wonderfully spent, the score elevates the film and is worth hearing in isolation, the beautiful images like a light show. I just wish the talking heads doing the commentary on the score, were not such bobble headed train-spotters that they laugh and make fun at the original idea of using jazz (that Rosenman talked the director out of) as it only reveals their lack of imagination. Orchestral film music train spotters have a warped lack of jazz exposure. Like my father, to whom the word jazz meant dixieland, these fellows must have a similar ignorance. There could be a fine jazz score to this film. But this one is worth hearing too.
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