![]() The film’s saving grace is its finale, at which point you became thankful that Carradine is around. Truly typical of the late 1970s Hollywood disaster blockbuster movie – a big idea, a superhero leading man, an interesting cast, but ultimately just a bit too talky and melodramatic plus a wee bit dull to boot. Gray Lady DownĬharlton Heston’s nuclear sub runs into trouble on the bottom of the ocean David Carradine and Ned Beatty try to rescue it. Yates’ handling of the film’s off-beat ending is simple, but nevertheless effective. The survivor of a cowardly and cold blooded U-boat merchant ship massacre in the dying hours of World War II ( Peter O’Toole) doggedly seeks revenge on the submarine’s captain ( Horst Janson) and his crew, who are hanging around somewhere along the coast of Venezuela.Īs with Das Boot there are plenty of tense and sweaty moments for the submerged Nazis as they try to outwit their obsessed assailant who, in this instance, continues with his quest despite the fact the war has just ended. Nevertheless, it was the only film Dutch and his second wife Nancy made together plus the future US president delivers a watchable performance as the middle-aged, stoic, but partly renegade World War II naval captain who puts his money where his mouth is when, in an act of inexplicable bravery, he takes it upon himself to untangle the propeller of his submarine in Japanese-infested waters. Sorry to say it, but no amount of word care or nurturing could have saved this one from disappearing into the B-grade wilderness. Reagan himself called it a “might have been” in his first autobiography, complaining that the studio behind the movie (Columbia) “was more in love with the budget than the script”. Official Ronald Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, via a fictional alter ego, described this as “a turkey so many feathered it practically squawked off the screen”. This bang of an opening – arguably the best in all of Cameron’s oeuvre – sets in motion one of the great adventure movies of the late 1980s. ![]() The AbyssĪ fatal accident involving a US nuclear submarine and a previously-unseen underwater alien life form almost triggers armageddon. According to information gleaned from the web, the swimmer is 9. 1941ĭirector Spielberg starts the film with a jokey homage to his 1975 blockbuster Jaws when a naked blonde woman swimming off the Californian coast ( Denise Chesire, who played Susan Backlinie’s double in Jaws) finds herself being lifted from the water by the periscope of a marauding Japanese submarine.Īlthough she ends up getting away after the vessel submerges, Slim Pickens is not so lucky later on in the movie when he is kidnapped by the crew – a situation which results in some not-so-hilarious onboard hijinx involving himself, sub commander Toshiro Mifune and uptight German observer Christopher Lee. In this top 10 list, Mark Fraser takes a look at his favourite films where submarines play a central role. Torpedoes, periscopes, sweaty claustrophobia, rigid command procedures, heated confrontations that may lead to nuclear catastrophe and radars that emit sonar blips – a submarine movie has them all.
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