The Fast And The Furious (1955)

On her way to compete in a motor race in southern California, Connie Adair (Dorothy Malone) is car-jacked by Frank Webster (John Ireland), an ex-trucker and jail escapee wanted for murder after allegedly running another truck driver off the road. Learning that the race in which Connie intends to drive will be crossing into Mexico, Frank holds her at gunpoint and forces her to cover for him until the two of them have safely penetrated the park area where the race is to be marshalled. But the police, learning that Frank is likely to be driving a Jaguar, realise that the race area would make a perfect cover and seal off the park. Connie, coming to believe that Frank is innocent of the charges against him, pleads with him to give himself up, but Frank insists that his only chance is flight – and that he must drive in the race himself.... Well, this is it, folks: history in the making! A fair little actioner, The Fast And The Furious was the film that first sealed a deal between Roger Corman and the newly-partnered James Nicholson and Sam Arkoff. To the executives of the American Releasing Corporation, the film was saleable because of its (relative) star names, and it is certainly the performances of John Ireland and Dorothy Malone that put the story over. Even though she had been making films for over a decade, in 1955 Malone was still fighting to establish herself; a year later, an Academy Award would lift her well out of Corman’s price-range, at least for a time. John Ireland, conversely, was beginning the slide down from his own Oscar nomination. His acting services were secured by a promise he could co-direct, which he did alongside the film’s editor, Edward Sampson, who was presumably responsible for shaping the film’s lengthy motor-racing sequences. Ireland’s Frank Webster is a very noir-ish anti-hero: he may not be guilty of the original charges, but by the end he has strikes against him for escaping custody, assault, car-jacking at gunpoint, and running a police road-block. We rather doubt that things are going to be as simply resolved for him as the film’s upbeat ending promises. While no-one would hold this up as a textbook example of a “Roger Corman Production”, there are a few familiar touches here, and a few familiar faces, also. Perhaps the most typically Corman aspect of the film is its broadmindedness about gender roles: not too many films of this, or any other, era have a professional racing driver as their heroine! – or declare openly that women drivers are “often the best and the fastest” – although this is somewhat undercut by the film’s view of motor-racing as a rich person’s hobby, rather than a sport or a business; and by the fact than, when the various competitors reach the race area, they learn that the track has been deemed too dangerous for lady drivers, as they insist on calling them. (None of the “ladies” are anywhere near as POed about this as they should be.) Indeed, like her predecessor, Julie Blair of Monster From The Ocean Floor, Connie is more interesting in concept than in execution, although she is allowed to score some points late in the film, finally climbing behind the wheel of a car – not to race, but to go in pursuit of Frank – and then facing down the man damaged, cynical man who has become her lover. (“Who tipped off the cops?” “I did.” “How did you get out of the cabin?” “I burned it down.”) Stars aside, in the supporting cast we find Bruno VeSota as the trucker who sets the action in motion, coming on to Connie and then growing suspicious of Frank; former Keystone Cop Snub Pollard has a small role, as Chester Conklin would in The Beast With A Million Eyes; while co-screenwriter Jean Howell appears as another of the “lady drivers”. Howell was just establishing herself as an actress at this time, and would go on to have a lengthy television career. Of Corman’s personal team, both Jonathan Haze and Beast’s uncredited co-director, Lou Place, have bit parts, as does Corman himself, as a state trooper – and, evidently, as one of the other racing drivers; although like Mark McGee I suspect that the story of Corman repeatedly refusing to let John Ireland “beat” him is urban myth. Wasteful behaviour? Our Roger? Surely not....

Five Guns West (1955)

In the dying days of the Civil War, five condemned criminals – Govern Sturges (John Lund), Hale Clinton (Mike Connors), J.C. Haggard (Paul Birch), and John (Bob Campbell) and Billy Candy (Jonathan Haze) – are pardoned and sworn in by the Confederate Army before being sent on a dangerous mission: to intercept a Union-escorted stagecoach carrying a former Confederate spy turned traitor, a list of secret agents’ names, and $30,000 in gold. Even before they reach the rendezvous point, a swing station by a deserted former mining town, tensions are running high between the reluctant allies, each of whom has his own ideas about how to increase his cut of the gold. Those tensions boil over when the five reach the swing station and find it under the care not just of its manager, a borderline alcoholic (James Stone), but also of his beautiful niece, Shalee (Dorothy Malone).... History again, folks, as Roger Corman’s penny-pinching ways see him save on costs by promoting himself into the director’s chair for the very first time. The result is fairly perfunctory, with the rookie director unable to overcome his film’s threadbare production values. Still, thanks to the screenplay by R. Wright Campbell (the brother of William who, as Bob Campbell, also plays the “snake-eyed” John Candy), which manages some interesting situations and a few pungent lines of dialogue, Five Guns West never wears out its welcome. The film’s scenario, criminals recruited for a dangerous war mission, is one that would appear again and again in the future, most famously in The Dirty Dozen. Campbell would write again for Corman over the years that followed, including the screenplay for The Masque Of The Red Death. Dorothy Malone evidently emerged from The Fast And The Furious with no hard feelings, as she is back as this film’s token heroine. She is not as well-served here, however: her character suggests “foolhardy” more often than “courageous”, and the romance that develops between Shalee and Govern Sturges is hardly credible. John Lund is the cast’s weak link; he seems tired, and rather dispirited; possibly he resented where his career was ending up. The rest of the actors are more enthusiastic. Mike Connors – still billed as “Touch” – is convincingly slimy, and Jonathan Haze has a substantial role as the “tetched” Billy Candy. Paul Birch, soon to be another familiar Corman face, does a fair Walter Brennan impression. James B. Sikking makes his film debut as the Captain of the doomed Union escort.

She-Gods Of Shark Reef (1958)

Lee Johnston (Don Durant) – not his real name – flees the scene of a botched arms theft and the killing of a security guard and heads for the home of his brother, Christy (Bill Cord), on the far side of the Big Island, The two make a run for it in Christy’s boat, but a hurricane drives them onto a reef, where the two become entangled in kelp and almost drowned. Their lives are saved by the inhabitants of a small island, who pull them from the water. The two men discover that this island is the base of a pearl-diving operation, and that the female divers and their supervisor, Pua (Jeanne Gerson), are the only inhabitants. The brothers learn that in ten days, a boat from the company will be visiting the island. Lee divides his time between searching for another way off the island, in order to evade capture, and obsessing over the cache of pearls he knows is in Pua’s office, while Christy is attracted to one of the young divers, Mahia (Lisa Montell). Meanwhile, the ocean storms continue and the pearl yield drops; and Pua begins to consider ways of placating Tangaroa, the angry shark-god who lives near the reef.... In which Roger Corman takes a holiday in Hawaii, and the rest of us pay for it. After filming Naked Paradise, Corman & Co. stuck around for another few days and slapped together this tepid pseudo-adventure film. In a good print that would show off the scenery, She-Gods Of Shark Reef might be an acceptable time-waster, but as things are, it’s a real slog. Nothing much happens, and no-one is very interesting or likeable; even the usual compensating Corman marginalia is largely absent, although I did find myself increasingly intrigued by the workings of the mysterious “Company”, and the question of whether they deposited these women on this island in the first place, or whether they just removed all the men. As usual when sharks are being offered up as the Big Bad, they come out of it a lot worse than the people do (a knifing scene that I’m hoping was faked; the footage was certainly re-used, so I can give them that); the one on-screen shark attack, which is supposed to be our dramatic climax, is pretty ridiculous . There are a few other amusing touches along the way here – like the single flag semaphore system, and the stone head supposed to represent Tangaroa the shark-god – but they’re hardly worth it.

See El Santo’s full review here.

Atlas (1961)

In an effort to end a lengthy siege, King Telektos of Thenes (Andreas Filippides) sends out a proposition to the tyrant Proximates (Frank Wolff): the issue will be decided by a fight to the death between the local champion, Telektos’ son, Prince Indros (Christos Exarchos), and a challenger of Proximates’ choosing. While he has no intention of abiding by the terms of Telektos’ offer, Proximates agrees, asking ten days to withdraw and find his challenger – a period that just happens to coincide with the Olympic Games. In company with his mistress, former High Priestess Candia (Barboura Morris), and his philosopher-for-hire, Garnis (Walter Maslow), Proximates watches the reigning wrestling champion defeated by an unknown young man called Atlas (Michael Forest). When Proximates’ attempt to recruit the young man to his cause fails, he sends Candia to seduce him. Atlas finally agrees to become Proximates’ champion, although he insists he will kill no-one. He and Candia begin to fall in love. In his duel with Indros, Atlas is triumphant. However, true to his word, he spares his opponent, much to Proximates’ disgust. Proximates and his troops occupy Thenes, declaring a new era of friendship begun. But that night, a troop of Proximates’ men, disguised as Thenens, stage a mock-uprising, giving the tyrant an excuse to slaughter the local population.... Still more history! – Corman’s only peplum, made at the peak of the genre’s brief but hugely fecund existence. Atlas was shot on location in Greece, but sadly, available prints are both poor quality and badly pan-and-scanned, so that the benefit of its setting is lost. The main sense of this film is that Corman had bitten off much more than he could chew, although that wasn’t entirely his fault: on the day when the battle scenes were to be shot, only fifty of the five hundred Greek soldiers hired as extras showed up; a situation that forced some desperate recruitment on the director’s part, with Dick Miller (just there on vacation), screenwriter Charles B. Griffith and Corman himself pressed into service. Sharp eyes will spot the same very limited troops being marched back and forth before the camera, while the “battles” are all shot in extreeeeme close-up. (Hey, if it was good enough for Kenneth Branagh....) When, after the “rebellion”, Proximates declares that eight hundred people are dead, it is hard to suppress a guffaw. Still, if you can overlook its budgetary woes, Atlas isn’t without interest – and unusually for a peplum, chiefly at story level, with the film’s hero allied with the bad guys for much of the time and, after declaring himself a thinker and observer only, and declining to involve himself in the events unfolding around him – and indeed, trying to run away from them – finally being compelled to take a stand. Charlie Griffith’s screenplay is an odd mix of the erudite and the anachronistic, with correct historical references and topical jokes rubbing shoulders with moments like the one when Garnis warns Candia that if they don’t behave, they’ll both be “off the payroll”. Likewise, there is no attempt to disguise American accents (some of the locals are dubbed), nor is the language “archaic-ed up”, which is sometimes jarring, sometimes quite refreshing. The performances here draw heavily upon the MGM production of Quo Vadis? (probably a reflection of Corman’s unfamiliarity with the genre), with Frank Wolff doing his best to look and act like Peter Ustinov, and Walter Maslow’s tame philosopher likewise owing much to Leo Genn’s characterisation. Frank Wolff and Michael Forest are two of the less acknowledged Corman alumni, both men appearing in several other productions for the director prior to co-headlining in this. For the former, Atlas was a turning point: Frank Wolff subsequently remained in Europe and had a highly successful career that lasted until his sadly premature death. Michael Forest returned to America and spent the rest of the sixties working in television (including the Star Trek episode “Who Mourns For Adonais?”), before returning to Europe as both an actor and a dubber, then finding permanent employment as an anime voice actor. As for those reluctant “extras”, I can’t say that I spotted Charlie Griffith, but we are given a good look at Dick Miller playing one of the Thenens during the final battle scene (he gets a sword across the back of his neck – owie!). And yes, that is our Roger in a manskirt as one of Proximates’ captains: he’s the one with his helmet pulled right down over his face....

Decision Against Time (1957)

John Mitchell (Jack Hawkins) is a test pilot for an aeronautical manufacturing company whose survival depends upon the winning of a contract for its newly designed cargo plane. During a final test flight, one of the plane’s engines catches fire. The rest of the crew parachutes to safety, and Mitchell is ordered by company head Reginald Conway (Walter Fitzgerald) to ditch the plane and bail out. But with the company, its employees, his own career and his sense of self-worth on the line, Mitchell decides to try and bring it in.... This proto-disaster film was produced by Ealing Studios and directed by Charles Crichton, but is about as far from the other films emanating from those two sources as possible. Decision Against Time is quite a simple film, but well and sincerely executed. Prior to his dangerous landing attempt, Mitchell is ordered to empty some of the plane’s tanks. To achieve this, he must fly laps of the aerodrome for a full twenty-five minutes, while below, the employees of the company – including its owner, who is staring bankruptcy in the face but has no thought for anything but Mitchell’s safety; Peter Hook (John Stratton), Mitchell’s best friend and co-pilot, who bailed out only because Mitchell promised he would too; and Maine (Ernest Clark), who designed and built the engine that failed – can only stand and stare and wait. This sequence plays out in real time, and generates a remarkable amount of suspense just by, necessarily, doing nothing. It is interesting to compare this film to its American counterparts, in both attitude and execution; and it is fair to say, I think, that it comes to a very British conclusion. My favourite subplot here involves the reporter who will only get published and paid if the plane crashes (good news is no news); my favourite dramatic touch, that we never find out what is in the letter that Mitchell writes mid-air to his wife, Mary (Elizabeth Sellars). Jack Hawkins must carry this film, and does a good job. He is well-supported by, in particular, Walter Fitzgerald, and Eddie Byrnes as the representative of the company that may or may not be buying the cargo plane. I am also delighted to report that Donald Pleasence has a small role as a most reluctant parachuter.

Cone Of Silence (1960)

These days, the expression “cone of silence” has a variety of connotations, some of them comic, some of them political; some of them both. It can also refer to a refusal to discuss or acknowledge an issue; while in aviation terms, the expression originates from the early four-course radio range navigation systems, which broadcast Morse signals and allowed pilots to adjust their trajectory according to the strength and overlapping of the signals; when the signals dropped out altogether, the plane was over the transmission point. These last two meanings mesh in the film Cone Of Silence, based upon the David Beaty novel of the same name, which like No Highway In The Sky looks at an unhappy period in the early history of commercial air travel. Before the metal fatigue-related crashes of the de Haviland Comet jet airliners, there were others caused by the planes’ failure to become airborne at take-off, including the first ever fatal jet crash at Karachi Airport in Pakistan in March of 1953. These were ultimately determined to be due to a design flaw, but only after a battle that ruined reputations and cost lives, in which the crashes were blamed upon “pilot error” – and nothing but pilot error. Cone Of Silence opens with an inquiry into one such take-off failure that has killed the co-pilot of Captain George Gort (Bernard Lee), who emerges publically condemned by Sir Arnold Hobbes (George Sanders), the legal representative of the plane’s designers, and with a reprimand and a demotion on his record. After being put through a rigorous re-testing program, which he passes with perfect scores, Gort is cleared to fly again by Captain Hugh Dallas (Michael Craig); but Dallas’s judgement is called in question when Clive Judd (Peter Cushing) reports a near-miss after co-piloting for Gort, and when it becomes known that Dallas has become involved with Gort’s daughter, Charlotte (Elizabeth Seal). At Judd’s insistence, the head of the airline, Edward Manningham (André Morell) agrees to ground Gort, but his decision comes too late: filling in for another pilot taken ill, Gort is killed when his plane crashes on take-off in Pakistan. The inquiry that follows becomes a battle between Hugh Dallas and Elizabeth Gort, who are determined to clear Gort’s name, and Sir Arnold Hobbes, equally determined to defend the plane’s designers at all cost.... Cone Of Silence is a very low-budget film – it shows none of its crashes, and the airport in Pakistan looks like a diorama – but is nevertheless very effective thanks to a fabulous cast (which features, as well as those already mentioned, Gordon Jackson, Noel Willman, Delphi Lawrence and the late ‘Bud’ Tingwell), and its sheer sincerity. Although it somewhat blurs the circumstances of the actual Comet crashes, here putting as much blame upon the prevailing conditions at take-off as upon the design of the plane (or at least, upon the combination of the two), the film is heartfelt in its open-eyed examination of the ruination of one man’s life – particularly in the twist that reveals the real cause of George Gort’s unhappy fate: like the good company man he was, he did everything “by the book”.... George Sanders is perfectly cast as the unctuous Sir Arnold, smiling and smiling and being a villain; or at least, a company stooge willing to put lives at risk to protect his employers’ reputation. Noel Willman is the plane’s designer, torn between his hope that he isn’t responsible for the disasters, and the fear that he is. Peter Cushing has one of his rare unsympathetic roles as the rather spiteful Judd.

It’s wonderful, by the way, how much more unnerving a serious drama like this is – which features, among other unwelcome sights, two pilots squabbling in the cockpit and one disobeying the other’s instructions during landing – than an actual disaster movie.

Rendezvous (1935)

As America’s involvement in WWI escalates, the military suffers severe losses of their transports due to the enemy’s interception of their secret codes. A search is under way for the author of the definitive text on encryption and decryption, in the hope that his recruitment will allow the creation of an unbreakable code; but the government has no luck in finding the book’s pseudonymous author until Bill Gordon (William Powell), a former international correspondent newly inducted into the army, confides a secret to the girl he is falling in love with, Joel Carter (Rosalind Russell) – whose Uncle John (Samuel S. Hinds) just happens to be the Assistant Secretary of War. On the verge of his departure for France, a furious Bill is co-opted into the War Department, where he finds himself in a desperate race to crack the enemy’s codes and unearth a spy ring based in Washington, before more troop transports can be torpedoed.... Rendezvous is a fair spy thriller almost ruined by an astonishingly unfunny performance from Rosalind Russell, here playing one of the most unbearable characters ever passed off as a film’s “heroine”. Of course, this was 1935; a few years later, no American film would have dreamed of finding humour in a girl pulling strings to get her boyfriend kept from active war duty, nor indeed in her interfering in his work at every opportunity, when any delay in his cracking the enemy’s code will mean the death of thousands of young Americans. Truthfully, it is unlikely whether Joel’s blinkered and selfish obsession with Bill Gordon would have been funny at any time, but in context it is quite horrifying. One wonders how grafting (alleged) screwball humour onto a story about the sinking of troop ships could ever have seemed like a good idea. However, when Joel is out of the picture and the film concentrates on its dramatic content, it remains engaging, particularly the extended game of cat-and-mouse between Bill and a charming lady spy, Olivia Karloff (Binnie Barnes); the tension being significantly heightened by the fact that neither of the combatants knows quite as much about the other as they think they do. Rendezvous is also bolstered by a fine supporting cast, including Lionel Atwill and a very young and dashing Cesar Romero.

Magnificent Obsession (1935)

Helen Hudson (Irene Dunne) and her similarly-aged step-daughter, Joyce (Betty Furness), arrive at Brightwood Hospital to learn that Dr Wayne Hudson, Helen’s new husband and Joyce’s father, has died of a heart attack, the resuscitation equipment needed to save his life already in use saving that of playboy Robert Merrick (Robert Taylor), who almost drowned after a night of drunken revelry. In the aftermath of Hudson’s death, Helen finds that much of his great wealth has vanished; she subsequently learns of the personal philosophy that compelled him to give help to anyone who he encountered in need, always keeping the transaction a strict secret. Meanwhile, Merrick, aware that the staff blames him for Hudson’s death, flees the hospital. On the road he encounters a woman with car trouble, and stops to help. Smitten with the woman, he follows her back to the hospital, where to his horror he finds that she is Wayne Hudson’s widow. She, in turn, reacts with violent scorn upon learning Merrick's identity. Retreating into drunkenness, Merrick blunders into the house of a sculptor, Randolph (Ralph Morgan), who allows him to stay and sleep it off. The next morning, Randolph introduces himself as a friend of Hudson’s, and explains to Merrick the late doctor’s philosophy. The chastened Merrick decides to adopt it, and feels vindicated when, after helping a destitute man, he immediately encounters Helen, who begins to soften towards him. However, the rapprochement ends in tragedy when Helen is struck by a passing car, suffering a head injury that leaves her blind.... It’s more or less a case of whether you prefer your cheese mild or ripe. While just as full of tragedy and coincidence and self-sacrifice, this early filming of Lloyd C. Douglas’s best-selling novel is an altogether more streamlined and efficient affair than its deliciously overwrought fifties re-make, deliberately keeping its melodramatic moments low-key and earning credibility points thereby – and spoiling a lot of the fun. It is also, one would think, rather closer to what its author intended, inasmuch as it places the roots of Wayne Hudson’s philosophy, his “Magnificent Obsession”, squarely within the Bible and describes it as drawn from the teachings of Jesus, something the 1954 version is oddly skittish about. This film’s Bob Merrick is younger and more callow, a trust fund brat given no particular reason to grow up until his actions bring tragedy to others – inadvertently, it should be stressed: his near-drowning is just bad timing, while he is only tangentially responsible for Helen’s blinding. Indeed, the only really outrageous flourish here is that Bob, having resumed his abandoned medical career in the wake of Helen’s accident, devotes himself to neurosurgery and is ultimately rewarded for his efforts with nothing less than a Nobel Prize! Otherwise, Bob and Helen’s attempts to outdo each other with devotion and self-sacrifice play out with surprisingly little chest-thumping and hand-wringing – and, mercifully, with a complete lack of angel choruses.

It should perhaps be mentioned that this film’s production designer favoured Grecian figurines, rather than objets d’art resembling A Certain Ebon Deity....

[Edited to add: a recent edition of Video Watchdog (#149) has a review of Criterion’s release of Magnificent Obsession, which contains both versions.]

Madame X (1937)

Jacqueline Fleuriot (Gladys George) breaks off her adulterous affair just a little too late. Witness to her lover’s murder by another woman scorned, Jacqueline escapes to her home to find her young son taken ill and her furious husband, Bernard (Warren William), all too aware of her absence – and the reason for it. Jacqueline pleads for another chance but the outraged Bernard turns her out of the house, forbidding her to approach their child again and telling the boy his mother is dead. Later, Bernard repents and instigates a search for Jacqueline; but she, misinterpreting the police interest in her, flees from them, taking refuge where and with whom she can – and thus beginning her long slide into alcoholism, degradation, and murder.... Well, it was certainly a big week here for thirties dramas with hysterical fifties re-makes; and even more so than John M. Stahl’s version of Magnificent Obsession, this filming of Alexandre Bisson’s perennial tale of self-sacrifice, redemption and mother love is very unexpectedly restrained. Its only lapse into melodramatics comes during the classic courtroom finale, when Jacqueline – “Madame X” – is being defended by the son who doesn’t know her under the horrified eyes of the husband who spurned her, when Raymond (John Beal), lacking evidence, witnesses and a client willing to defend herself, does the only thing a lawyer could do: he lays on the sentiment with a shovel. Otherwise, this is a pleasingly cool rendering of the tale – and is, besides, surprisingly frank about Jacqueline’s sexual misadventures and drinking, particularly for a post-Code movie. Gladys George seizes this actress’s dream-role with both hands and barely gives anyone else a look-in. The supporting cast includes Reginald Owen, Ruth Hussey and George Zucco, but the only other actor really to register is Henry Daniell, wonderfully slimy as a complete skunk with blackmail on his mind, and who ends up with a bullet in the back. And rightly so.

Treasure Of The Jamaica Reef (1975)

Some people whose identities I didn’t really catch, for reasons that were never quite clear (hey, blame overloud music in the expository scenes), travel to the West Indies to search for a famous sunken galleon and a long-lost cave supposedly containing treasure from it, after securing sole international salvage rights for the operation. However, two other people (never quite clear about them, either) get wind of the arrangement and plan to let the salvagers do all the hard work before stepping in to relieve them of any finds. Things don’t do quite to plan for them: hand-grenade + boat = explosion so powerful it doesn’t even leave debris. This movie was shot on location, and it is evident that the actors enjoyed the experience very much; the production also had repercussions for two of its participants, inasmuch as the Cheryl Stoppelmoor “introduced” here later married her co-star David Ladd. However, about 80% of this film consists of scuba-diving scenes, so approach with caution. The film has the expected leisurely pace, but does manage to build some suspense when, forced by circumstance to take on the grim task of recovering occupied coffins from a sunken liner, one of the salvagers becomes trapped in the wreck with a very limited supply of air. Stephen Boyd, Chuck Woolery and David Ladd are the main salvagers, with Rosey Grier lending a hand; Darby Hinton is a young hanger-on; and Ms Stoppelmoor provides set decoration by wandering around in a skimpy bikini. On all the available evidence, no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture. However, a visit to the IMDb would suggest that my print was cut, as there are references there to a murder scene that never happened (and yes, reading the fine print we see a credit for “re-editing”). As things stand, film’s alternative title, Evil In The Deep, makes no sense whatsoever. Possibly the film was re-named at a later date, to cash in on....

The Deep (1977)

David Sanders (Nick Nolte) and Gail Berke (Jacqueline Bisset) are on a dive holiday in Bermuda when they come across a wreck not listed in the guidebooks and decide to investigate. Both come away with a souvenir: David recovers what appears to be a silver coin possibly centuries old, while Gail finds a glass ampoule containing a brown liquid. When they return their diving gear, the two are told to stay away from the wreck, which is of the Goliath, a military transport containing munitions and the site of several fatal accidents; it is not in the guidebooks for that reason. Unable to identify the coin, David and Gail take their find to renowned treasure-hunter Romer Treece (Robert Shaw), who is also puzzled by it, as the Spanish fleet on which it must have been transported is recorded as having sunk near Cuba. Treece can, however, identify Gail’s ampoule: the Goliath was notoriously carrying nearly 100,000 vials of morphine, none of which were ever recovered. Word of this find leaks out, and David and Gail find themselves targeted by Haitian drug lord Henri Cloche (Louis Gosset Jr). Treece strikes a deal with Cloche, offering to recover the morphine for payment; in reality, using this dive as cover for a search for the Spanish treasure that he comes to believe is buried at the same site. But spies are everywhere.... Some people watch it for Jacqueline Bisset in a wet T-shirt; I watch it for the moray eel. Lightning conspicuously fails to strike twice in this filming of Peter Benchley’s literary follow-up to Jaws. Like most scuba-diving films, The Deep is being pretty slow going, and not helped by the characters constantly shouting at each other underwater in an effort to communicate. (A failed effort, I’m inclined to add, but that might just be my print.) The biggest problem, though, is the lack of sympathetic characters, or even a sympathetic quest; I’m sure we’re supposed to be dazzled by those jewels, but the willingness of David and Gail to go on risking their lives, particularly after the attack upon Gail, just makes the pair of them seem greedy and rather stupid. However, a reasonable amount of tension is built during the climactic sequence, with fuses burning down, and various people being deprived of their oxygen supply at different points; and there are a few other bright spots amongst the slog, as well – primarily, of course, “The biggest moray eel I’ve ever seen!” The Deep tells just as many lies about moray eels as its predecessor did about sharks but failed to have the same detrimental effect on their worldwide population, so I am able to forgive it. I find the shark sequence here, in which Cloche’s henchmen chum the water while the treasure-hunters are down below, one of the film's highlights, chiefly because it is so screamingly obvious that no-one is in any real danger for as much as a moment; this would be “danger” as an Informed Attribute^©, I guess. The voodoo attack on Gail is diverting (if completely gratuitous), and the cricket interlude was also welcome. The Deep was later re-made as Into The Blue but without a moray eel as Deus ex machina, so really, what was the point?

Beneath The 12 Mile Reef (1953)

A Greek sponge-diving community in the Gulf of Mexico struggles as the sponge supply begins to dry up. A good crop is to be had by the dangerous 12 Mile Reef, but the Petrakis family considers this area off-limits after the eldest son was killed there in an accident. Instead, Mike Petrakis (Gilbert Roland) and his younger son, Tony (Robert Wagner), venture into the Glades off Key West, traditionally the diving grounds of the local Anglo-American population. Mike brings on board a good haul, only to have it pirated by Thomas Rhys (Richard Boone), his sons, and his right-hand man, Arnold Dix (Peter Graves); the crew can only stand by helpless, as Dix threatens Mike’s airline with an axe. Refusing to take the incident lying down, Mike and his crew follow Rhys and his men into Key West, where Mike takes some physical revenge upon Arnold Dix, and Tony sparks a romance with Gwyneth Rhys (Terry Moore), Dix’s almost-fiancé.... Romeo and Juliet in Florida. Not that the film entirely follows its model: the Montagues have no problem with Juliet; Capulet turns out to be a fairly decent guy; it’s Tybalt, a right bastard, who causes all the trouble; and anyway, the film contrives a happy ending for its young lovers. Beneath The 12 Mile Reef was an early “combat television” film, and exists primarily to show off its technology: this was one of the very first productions to be shot in Cinemascope, and Edward Cronjager’s Technicolor cinematography won an Academy Award. The underwater photography is very nice, which is just as well, because there’s a lot of it. The acting is nothing to write home about, though, and the plethora of distinctly non-Greek “Greeks” becomes increasingly hard to take, particularly Robert Wagner with his hair dyed black and all bouffant, trying desperately to look “ethnic”. Dramatically, the film is slow-going at the outset, but picks up the pace once the clash between the Montagues and the Capulets has become a blood-feud. What’s more, the climax has Tony Petrakis, on his first deep dive, battling a honking big octopus, and as we all know, there’s no film that isn’t improved by the inclusion of a honking big octopus. A few molluscs become stew over the course of the film, but otherwise there are no underwater casualties.

Black Water Gold (1970)

This made-for-TV movie, the last one I watched in my mini-odyssey of underwater films, plays very much like a cross between Treasure Of The Jamaica Reef and The Deep, while pre-dating both of them. It kind of makes you wonder.... While poaching tropical fish in a marine preserve off Nassau, Ray Sandage (Aron Kincaid) is witness to a startling chain of events: at the surface, a boat destroys a smaller one; two men dive into the water and try to swim away, but are shot dead. A leather pouch sinks in the confusion. Ray claims the bag and the name-plate of the boat. On shore, he finds to his astonishment that the pouch contains coral-encrusted gold artefacts. Knowing he needs expert help, Ray takes the objects to Christofer Perdeger (Keir Dullea), a marine archaeologist grounded after rupturing his eardrums in a diving accident. Needing knowledgeable help from someone who can dive, Perdeger in turn recruits Alejandro Zayas (Ricardo Montalban), a local historian who bears a grudge against Perdeger for publically dismissing his work as “amateur”. The two men are in agreement that the artefacts can only have come from a legendary Spanish galleon, the Hidalgo; they enter into a guarded partnership to search for the treasure that was on board. Meanwhile, Ray’s inquiries about the destroyed boat attract the attention of criminal millionaire Lyle Fawcett (Bradford Dillman), who is in pursuit of the Hidalgo himself, and was responsible for the murders.... This is an enjoyable little movie, thankfully offering more action than most of its watery brethren – although, yes, there are plenty of scuba-diving scenes. What budget this film had was clearly spent on the location shooting in Nassau, which is attractive; its other pleasures come from its cast. Bradford Dillman is hilarious as the flamboyant Fawcett – although I honestly couldn’t tell you whether he’s just flamboyant, or, you know, flamboyant. (On in-film evidence, he may just be Bostonian.) Keir Dullea and Ricardo Montalban are both solid in their textbook opposition roles. (After much intellect-versus-heart sparring, they decide – duh! – that they need each other.) I was worried during the opening sequence that Ray the poacher was going to be sold to us as the hero, but thankfully that never comes to pass; and if Ray doesn’t exactly reform by the end of the film, at least he’s rich enough to give up poaching. Lana Wood and France Nuyen appear in supporting roles. Some small sharks also appear in minor roles, and all make it out alive. And as a final bonus, Black Water Gold also has a wonderfully unnecessary theme song (“Black waaaa-terrr, black waaaa-terrr....”).

Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963)

Tarzan (Jock Mahoney) is summoned to Thailand and given the task of escorting a small boy, Kashi (Ricky Der), to the holy site where he will become his people’s spiritual leader. Sworn to stop him is Khan (Woody Strode), the brother of the current leader, who believes that his people must be forced into modern ways and is determined to usurp the leadership. Tarzan successfully negotiates Khan’s attempts on the boy’s life and delivers him to the temple where he is to be ordained, only to have Khan evoke an ancient law and challenge formally for the throne. Kashi begs Tarzan to be his champion, and the ape-man finds himself pitted against Khan in a test of strength and speed that ends in a battle to the death.... This follow-up to Tarzan Goes To India was, like it, shot on location, which adds some needed colour to an overly-familiar story-line. This is a film best in its marginalia, such as the nods to Tarzan’s “two worlds” origins: having him arrive in Thailand by parachute, then immediately donning his loin-cloth; and similarly, a throw-away late-film exchange (“You seem uncomfortable in our city.” “In any city.”) Jock Mahoney is an interesting Tarzan, sitting somewhere between Bruce Bennett and Christopher Lambert, but circumstances intervened: Mahoney became seriously ill during shooting, and lost over 50 pounds. By the time of Tarzan’s showdown with Khan, Mahoney was so thin and tired-looking, the whole premise is undermined....although it does help that the final conflict involves things that Tarzan would naturally excel at: bungee-jumping – the real kind – river-swimming, and a deadly test of balance and agility. The usual mid-sixties attitude to all-purpose ethnic casting applies here, with Khan played by Woody Strode (Woody Strode!? – although otherwise it’s a pretty good role for him), Kashi’s nurse and protector by Japanese actress Tsu Kobayashi, and Mang, the monk who becomes Tarzan’s guide, by the Bermudan Earl Cameron. (Cameron, now a British citizen, is not only still working in television, but was awarded a CBE in the last Honours for services to drama.) Meanwhile, the influence of the previous year’s Hatari! is felt in the unnecessary presence of an exceedingly annoying baby elephant.

Devil Winds (2003)

This thing was in my rental queue so long – “short wait” my butt – that by the time it arrived, I’d forgotten whether it was a horror movie (emphasis on “devil”) or a disaster movie (emphasis on “winds”). It turns out to be the latter, with Oklahoma taking yet another pounding; Oklahoma being to tornado-themed disaster movies what New York is to every other kind. (And yes, yes, I’m very well aware of NYC: Tornado Terror, so don’t bother bringing it up.) Devil Winds begins with a feint to make us think we’re in estranged couple territory, à la Twister, but then offs the female half in its opening scene, leaving the newly widowed Pete Bensen (Joe Lando) suffering tornado-trauma.... à la Twister. Pete was, of course, a tornado-chaser, and was out in the field when the twister turned towards his own home town, leaving him with the usual burden of guilt. He responds by running off to Portland (where he “becomes” a police detective), and we cut forward ten years to Pete reluctantly returning home for his daughter’s college graduation. (The film tries to bluff us into thinking that the young Kara has died as well as her mother, but come on. The obligatory estrangement is consequently father-daughter.) Kara (Erica Durance) is a scientist, working at an environmental disease control centre built upon the remnants of the tornado-destroyed town....in a building that her fiancé, Dr John Tedesco (Brad Turner), has just discovered wasn’t built to code. Back home again after so many years, Pete finds himself falling back into his old routine, including going tornado-chasing with his former partner, Robert Booker (Peter Graham-Gaudreau). On one of these missions, Pete recognises the same danger signs that were in the air ten years earlier – and this time the twister is heading for a building harbouring stores of deadly bacteria.... A scientific disaster move!? Oooooh!! Not that Devil Winds is really anything to get worked up about, except that if you’ve seen as many of these things as I have, any tweaking of the material is welcome. (Tornado disaster films seem even more hamstrung by their tropes than most other kinds.) This is acceptable made-for-TV fare. No-one is terrible, and the cast features a number of genre faces in the supporting roles. (You can tell the film’s pedigree by the actors’ mutual TV credits; Supernatural, Smallville and Stargate: Atlantis being particularly prevalent. [Also, although it isn’t kind of me to mention it, Brad Turner was in Alone In The Dark, and Erica Durance was in House Of The Dead.]) The CGI twisters are never remotely credible, but I guess they’re an improvement over Tornado!’s tactic of just fading to black at the critical moment. The laboratory scenes were filmed in a real lab in Vancouver, so at least they look right; but unfortunately no-one involved knew anything about the right behaviour. The script’s notion of the storage of bacterial samples is hilarious, as is the fact that this enormous lab keeps all of its samples together in a couple of smallish canisters. (Isn’t anybody working with those?) However, my favourite touch when they try to convey Kara’s dedication by having her wear her lab-coat every single moment she’s at work....and thus violating any number of regulations by wearing it out of the bacteriology lab and into the general office area. Ah, well....

The Man From Hong Kong (1975)

Oh, dear lord, how I love this movie! – one of the Golden Harvest/whoever co-productions that tried to find ways of taking Asian cinema to a world that wasn’t quite ready for it; and, in my opinion, the best of the lot. Not even its insistence on playing “Visit The Tourist Trap”, something that ordinarily makes me cringe, can abate my affection for The Man From Hong Kong, since it is all done in that “outsider-eye” kind of way that manages to make even the most obvious location seem suddenly unfamiliar. The other thing that this film really has going for it, given its vintage, is its attitude to, well, attitudes. It is only the film’s bad guy who displays a genuinely racist mindset. Hugh Keays-Byrne as Morrie Grosse offers a few tasteless jokes, but they are jokes; when he says something and, clearly, isn’t joking, Jimmy Wang Yu’s Inspector Fang, and the film itself, immediately calls him on it. Aw, hell! – I can’t review this film, not in any meaningful way; all I can do is react to it. Let’s see, what have we got? WANG YU! LAZENBY! I love that Madman Entertainment thought that was the best way to advertise it. I love that they were right. And co-starring Uluru as “Ayres Rock”. Ayres Rock with one tourist bus!? Whoa, orange paper $20 notes!! Hey, Sammo! Sammo trying to evade The Authorities by running up Ayres Rock! The Authorities in shorts and long socks!! Ayres Rock Fu!!! Jimmy Wang Yu with billing, yes! Stone alumni, and soon-to-be Mad Max alumni, as far as the eye can see. Hang-gliding! Sorry, kiting. Jigsaw doing “Sky High” over the opening credits – ahhh, acid flashback!! Best cute-meet ever. Jimmy Wang Yu demonstrating what’s so special about the Special Branch. Pillow-talk: “You’re my first Chinese! Do you often take white girls to bed? “Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” The Australian cops’ standard welcome. Subtle Chinese torture. Hey, Grant Page! Owie, right in the man-boob! Gaping unalerted bystanders. The world’s most pathetic police cars. Hey, Paddington! The Sydney equivalent of, “Fruit cart! Fruit cart!” A gaping unalerted dog. That same bloody motorcycle! Kitchen Fu!! Foster’s – yecchh!! Chinese squirrel grip! Cornflakes? Split pants! (I hope those were stunt pants, Grant.) Disinterested restaurant patrons. Restaurant Fu!! Fish Tank Fu!! Exceedingly belated police presence. “A master of kung fu! – but he used his art for an evil purpose.” The Moustache. Australian fashion, circa 1975 – OH GOD MY EYES!! The world’s most dramatic slow-motion kung fu knock-down. Frank Thring!! “Security!!” “This is Australia, mate! – not 55 days at Peking!” A sexy Australian bachelor pad, circa 1975 – OH GOD MY EYES!! Jimmy Wang Yu’s pyjamas – OH GOD MY EYES!! The Princes Highway, circa 1975 – oh, dear lord. Hey, Stanwell Tops! William Tell at a garden-party! Harbour views. White Shoe Fu!! God, no, not the seafood platter!! “The” Martial Arts Centre? Why do they always attack one at a time? Hey, he was gunna fall over! What’s Chinese for, “Oh, crap...”? “Miss Joyce, Ladies Hairdresser →” Elevator Fu!! “If you were a dog or a horse I’d know what to do with you.” Bill Hunter, circa 1975 – hee, hee, hee! And a cat provides the best bit of acting in the film. A sexy Australian bachelorette pad, circa 1975 – OH GOD MY EYES!! Oh, lord, the romantic montage – complete with water splashing. (At least they don’t eat ice cream). A man is a man is a man.... Aaaand Jimmy bags another one. “Asian flu”? Hey, that’s that stretch of road we used to use during family holidays!! Bye, Rebecca; that’s what you get for sleeping with a furriner. Australian car chases: too much is never enough! Nice of them not to kill absolutely everyone. An industrious Australian council-worker! Two fingers? – this film is old. Now, now, Jimmy, that wasn’t nice. Hey, subtle foreshadowing! Now that’s a phone! Orange curtains? – he deserves to die. “Talk about the bloody Yellow Peril!” Sydney, circa 1975 – aww, it’s so tiny. “Hey, you!”!!?? – some security guard, George. Hey, don’t shoot Buddha! Aaaand there goes the glass table. Orange Furniture Fu!! OW-OW-OW-OW-OW-OW-OW-OW!!!!!!!!! A souvenir, Jimmy? Uh, I think this counts as “coercion”.... MORE exceedingly belated police presence! Greatest villain exit EVAR!!!! “What do you do for an encore?” KER-BLAMMO!!!!!! Jigsaw doing “Sky High” over the closing credits – ahhh, acid flashback!!