Fantastic Voyage [VHS]
2001: A Space Odysseytook the world on a mind-bending trip to  outer space, butFantastic Voyageis the original psychedelic inner-space  adventure. When a brilliant scientist falls into a coma with an inoperable blood  clot in the brain, a surgical team embarks on a top-secret journey to the center  of the mind in a high-tech military submarine shrunk to microbial dimensions.  Stephen Boyd stars as a colorless commander sent to keep an eye on things  (though his eyes stay mostly on shapely medical assistant Raquel Welch), while  Donald Pleasance is suitably twitchy as the claustrophobic medical consultant.  The science is shaky at best, but the imaginative spectacle is marvelous:  scuba-diving surgeons battle white blood cells, tap the lungs to replenish the oxygen  supply, and shoot the aorta like daredevil surfers. The film took home a  well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Director Richard Fleischer, who turned  Disney's 195420,000 Leagues Under the Seainto one of the most riveting  submarine adventures of all time, creates a picture so taut with cold-war  tensions and cloak-and-dagger secrecy that niggling scientific contradictions  (such as, how do miniaturized humans breathe full-sized air molecules?) seem  moot.--Sean Axmaker