Fantastic Voyage (1966) [1002-80]



first off starting the film, after the 20th FOX logo i noticed that there is this text that is missing from the DVD.


interesting point is that at the end of the LD there is another screen of text that is used on the DVD.
so they removed and then re-placed.

getting to the film, it's one of my all time favorites, the one thing i always forget it that it's done pretty
much in REAL time, they have 60 minutes to get the job done before they start to grow again,
and it's pretty close to on time from when they start to shrink until the end of the film.

audio is mono with some light hiss here and there, nothing that bad and mostly when it's more quite during scenes.

image is slightly wider but cuts a sliver off the top compared to the DVD.

print is brighter and darker in some scenes, also some of the special effect scenes are more red than what is
on the DVD,
it's not that the LD is missing colors but seems that the DVD has added green, blue and yellow colors to some scenes
that are clearly not on the LD scenes.

image is not super clear but is nice overall for being an earlier LD release.

I'm glad your enjoying it.

I have to get my own my copy as I haven't seen it in around 30 years or so when it was on TV.

Too bad it's mono as the film was released theatrically in 4-track mag CinemaScope stereo.

IMDB needs to update their Tech Specs then. A 4.0 Dolby Digital release would be nice to listen to.

IMDB's tech specs, like Wikipedia, are often wrong. They still list modern Scope aspect ratios at 2.35:1 when Scope has been 2.39:1 since the early 70's. A minor point yes, but still wrong. And older stereo mag films never list that they used the 12khz switching tone on the surrounds to act as a primitive noise reduction. Films as late as Earthquake used the surround 12kHz tone for the 4-track 35mm prints due to the noise of the narrower surround mag track. On some DVD's like The Robe, you can hear the tone switch on and off - the original p/s stereo release of Earthquake on LaserDisc also had the switching tone audible.

Well maybe someday well have "Fantastic Voyage" in 4.0 Dolby Digital and with 12KHz tone I wouldn't mind that all. Sounds like a noise gating filter to suppress the surround into a mute mode and when active within a few few frames the 12KHz triggers it to become active.

Yep, you described it exactly. It's supposed to be suppressed in theaters with a roll off in the surrounds at 8 kHz, but hardly any theater bothered. And on home video, they usually just let it through. On The Robe DVD you can hear it clearly whenever the surrounds are on - and on the Pan and scan stereo NTSC LaserDisc of Earthquake. For Earthquake's showings the surrounds were disconnected so the Sensurround could provide the surrounds, but the surround track was present for non-Sensurround engagements.

i didn't understand after looking at the sleeve that said mono why they would spend so much money on the film
only to release it in mono, now it makes sense.

alright, have some screen shots of the LD and DVD.
LD is the top picture and DVD is the bottom picture.
you can see some image missing on the top of the plane in the DVD


once inside the body the colors have been altered on the DVD, they look nice but still altered.

I'm re-watching this for the first time in years on DVD. There's an extra Dolby surround track on here, but I'm guessing that's just the mono expanded. Those shots above seem as if the effects are better rendered but the colors seemed very off, with the skin tones going purplish in places.