Your basic Saturday-matinee movie of rear projection and rubber suits, Destination Inner Space takes place at an underwater research lab. Inside, scientists express concern over a blooping blip on the ol’ sonar. As the skipper up top (Radar Men from the Moon’s Roy Barcroft) puts it to hero Cmdr. Wayne (Scott Brady, Strange Behavior), “There’s something odd going on down there.”
And how! The blip leads the crew to an alien spaceship on the ocean floor. Automated to push a glowing triangle ice-cube thing from its wall, the craft contains a capsule shaped like a tablet of cold medicine. When they take the mystery container back to base and dare open it, they let loose a finned monster who could be the Creature of the Black Lagoon after years of eating exclusively at Steak ’n Shake. From there, the movie is reminiscent of It! The Terror from Beyond Space, but with establishing shots filmed in someone’s living room aquarium.
Also aboard Destination are Wende Wagner (TV’s The Green Hornet) as Wayne’s love interest, Mike Road (the voice of Race Bannon on TV’s Jonny Quest) as Wayne’s rival, Sheree North (Telefon) as a marine biologist who mostly tends to the men, and the legendary James Hong (Everything Everywhere All at Once) as the world’s preeminent mechanical engineer and deep-sea diver. Just kidding; ’60s sci-fi being the domain of Caucasian squares who all look ready to sip G&Ts by the hi-fi, the Asian Hong plays the SEALAB chef, complete with bird on his shoulder.
Although merely serviceable, Destination Inner Space excels in the department of subaquatic footage. Clearly, director Francis D. Lyon (Cult of the Cobra) is aware, repeating scuba-dooba scenes (like a two-man submarine in action) as often as possible to steer this ship to 83 minutes. —Rod Lott