INNERSPACE

INNERSPACE. Joe Dante, dir. USA: Amblin (prod.) / Warner (dist.), 1987. Steven Spielberg et al., exec. prod. 120 min. Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, stars.

Comedy with a premise similar to that of FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966), relevant here for the layering of superimpositions as Dennis Quaid's character remains in a submarine that gets miniaturized inside a large machine and then goes into a syringe, then into Martin Short's character, then a good friend of Quaid's character—and so forth. The thug working for the main villains has a Rotwangian artificial hand (see METROPOLIS through REPO MAN [1984]) and ends up in a heavy-metal SCUBA outfit inside a miniaturized sub inside Martin Short's character: for a decorously comic superimposition of the organic upon the mechanical upon the mechanical upon the mechanized organic. See under Background, the entry for H. Bergson.