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THE
ATOMIC SUBMARINE
Monsters
and Madmen Collection
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U.S.A.
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1959
Directed by Spencer G. Bennet
Starring
Arthur Franz
Dick Foran
Brett Halsey
B&W
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72 Minutes
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Not Rated
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC |
4-disc set)
Criterion Collection
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4
film/4-disc box set
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More
'50s Sci-Fi from Criterion
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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4
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9 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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•
One of the films in the Monsters
and Madmen Collection
• DVD Rating is for
entire set
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In the near future of the
1960s, the Arctic Ocean serves as a major commercial
sea lane —
huge submarines carry passengers and cargo on
the 'short' route to the Pacific beneath the North
Pole. When a series of maritime disasters befall
vessels plying this route, an emergency conference
is convened at the Pentagon's Bureau of Polar
Defense. Ships and subs are disappearing, without
trace, at an alarming rate. No known natural phenomena
could be responsible. Has some unidentified enemy
declared war under the arctic ice? Veteran naval
officer Capt. Dan Wendover (Dick Foran) —
skipper of the Tigershark, the most advanced
nuclear attack submarine in the U.S. fleet —
is ordered to take his boat to the far north,
discover the source of this mysterious threat,
and, "if humanly possible, remove it."
Summonses
are dispatched to immediately assemble the Tigershark's
crew, currently on shore leave. This hits the
sub's executive officer, Commander Dick "Reef"
Holloway (Monster
on the Campus' Arthur Franz), particularly
hard, since he's literally on the verge of scoring
with a hot date (platinum blonde bombshell Joi
Lansing) when the knock on his door comes. Also
joining the mission are two esteemed civilian
scientists (Tom Conway, Victor Varconi) and a
young oceanographer, Dr. Carl Nielsen (Brett Halsey).
There's bad blood between Holloway and the latter,
since Nielsen —
son of Holloway's Navy mentor and friend —
is a vocal, left-leaning pacifist. The men tacitly
agree to a truce for the duration of the voyage,
which is soon underway. (Insert stock footage
here.)
Our narrator —
the omniscient offscreen deity in most of these
'50s sci-fi cheapies —
ensures that they get to the arctic in fairly
quick order. Alas, once there we're treated to
a numbing procession of talky, static scenes,
with everybody dressed in matching khaki and shot
in black and white... Other than perhaps watching
paint dry, I can't think of anything else that
screams "DULL!" so resolutely. The attempt
to inject an element of human drama, via the Holloway-Neilsen
conflict, is completely dead in the water since
the viewer simply won't give a shit. Why couldn't
have randy ol' Reef sneaked the lovely Joi Lansing
aboard? Better yet, why couldn't she have been
an assistant to one of the scientists... the kind
who wears clingy sweaters and torpedo bras?
Happily
things pick up once the Tigershark makes
contact with the mysterious "object"
that's causing all the trouble: an underwater
flying saucer, clearly of extraterrestrial origin,
dubbed "Cyclops" for the eye-like turret
atop its superstructure. Defeated in combat when
the alien vessel neutralizes her weapons, the
Tigershark then rams Cyclops at flank speed
on the order of her determined skipper. Amazingly
they aren't destroyed; instead, the two craft
are locked together 200 fathoms beneath the ice.
The Tigershark's crew are astounded to
discover that Cyclops has repaired itself around
the point of impact... The alien ship is made
of living tissue! Via Nielsen's specially-designed
mini-sub, an away team led by Holloway gains entry
to Cyclops and makes contact with its commander
and sole occupant —
a telepathic octopus-like creature with a single,
gigantic eye. (Cyclops indeed.)
The rather haughty space alien makes clear his
malefic intent, leaving the Tigershark
crew scrambling for a means of destroying the
invader and saving their own lives.
Atomic
Submarine is extremely
low budget and most definitely looks it. Model
effects are laughably cheesy; it isn't helpful
that the Navy stock footage doesn't really match
well with the 'toy U-boat in a fish tank' sequences.
Tigershark interior sets look more like
the inside of a spaceship —
a '50s sci-fi one —
than a sub. Until the alien
is encountered (i.e., something happens), the
movie is merely a patchwork of flat dialog scenes
threaded together by the ominous (and sometimes
unintentionally funny) pronouncements of the narrator.
The acting isn't bad, being that the cast is mainly
populated by veteran has-beens (Foran was in The
Mummy's Hand; Conway played The Falcon in
a popular series of 1940s detective films), but
they and 'contemporary' stars Franz and Halsey
aren't able to make things the slightest bit interesting.
A pair of Navy frogmen, assigned to the sub just
before departure, function as the equivalent of
Star Trek "Red Shirts" —
natural cannon fodder, you know they're as good
as dead the moment they're introduced.
Yet amid all the hoary clichés
and boring dramatics are some imaginative concepts,
fairly unusual for the time. I don't think an
aquatic UFO had ever been depicted before on film,
nor an organic spaceship composed of living matter.
The alien creature is a more-than-obvious puppet
but somehow works in its very quaintness; the
minimalist sets used for the Cyclops interior
(due purely to budgetary constraints) are surprisingly
effective. Alexander Laszlo's theramin-flavored
"Electro-sonic" music score certainly
enhances the retro science fiction vibe.
I can't recommend this film
to anyone except dedicated fans of '50s sci-fi,
and even then you're in for a fairly dull ride.
Mercifully, at 72 minutes the movie is very short.
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Atomic
Submarine
is one of the four movies in Criterion's Monsters
and Madmen Collection, released
in 2007. At that time, EC covered two of the collection's
other titles, the topnotch Boris Karloff horror
vehicles Corridors
of Blood and The
Haunted Strangler (both 1958). I intended
to do a review of this film back then but never
got 'round to it until now, nearly two years on.
Which is just as well, I suppose, since the 4-disc
box set remains in print as of this writing.*
For coverage of the A/V
specs and extras for the Karloff films, I direct
you to our previously posted reviews. For its
part Atomic Submarine
looks and sounds terrific, or at least as good
as it ever will. The crisp black and white print
is practically unblemished, marred only by some
brief shimmering in one early scene and a few
seconds of scratch damage at the 19:50 mark. It's
perfectly natural for all that stock footage to
look softer and much grainier —
if you've seen any number of '50s sci-fi flicks
then you know the drill. The main audio track
is a clear-sounding mono, without issues. The
film itself is presented in unmatted, full-frame
(1.33) format, and although seemingly intended
for 1.85 theatrical exhibition, this only results
in a bit of extraneous headroom.
The
theatrical trailer and a still gallery, plus an
illustrated booklet of liner notes (with discussion
of Atomic Submarine
by Bruce Elder), nicely compliment the main supplements:
an audio commentary and featurette. The commentary
is a brisk but anecdote-filled session with producer
Alex Gordon (who passed away not long after recording
it) and B-movie scholar Tom Weaver, who has done
some yeoman work researching horror/sci-fi films
of the Golden and Silver Ages. Gordon tends to
stray from the subject at times, talking at length
about "Singing Cowboy" stars of the
1930s, but Weaver deftly steers him back on course.
In the 16-minute featurette Atomic Recall,
actor Brett Halsey sits down for an on-camera
interview about his early career, including work
on Atomic Submarine
and The Return
of the Fly. 1/07/09
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The set's fourth film is the dull sci-fi chestnut
First Man Into Space
(1959) — a sort of poor man's Quatermass
Xperiment which I seriously doubt we'll bother
reviewing. |
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