If you have an insatiable fondness for the offbeat, the preposterous or the outlandish, then this is where you will find them… in the Bizarre Movie Zone.
Other than outer space, the most remote part of our immediate environment is the world underwater. Ignoring the Jules Verne and Atlantis stories, there are several movies that have posited the notion of sustaining human life underwater, and they are all pretty wacky in one respect or another. Examples follow.
Terror Beneath the Sea (1966) ✪
This Japanese-produced monster movie depicts how a mad scientist establishes an underwater base off the coast of Japan where he is transforming humans into a new race of gilled people. They look like the Gill Man from the Creature From the Black Lagoon, except with much cheaper, rubbery costumes. A reporter (Sonny Chiba) and his pretty American girlfriend (Peggy Neal) are captured by the gilled people and brought to the lab, where they are to be transformed. Fortunately, the Navy is nearby and well armed.
Naturally, this is pretty silly stuff, especially when the gilled people walk around shooting people with spear guns despite having webbing on their hands that precludes their doing anything dextrous. The scientist controls them with one knob with three controls: Work, Sleep, Fight. Why fight? Why would you want your special creations to fight? Why, to impress the pretty American visitor, of course!
War-Gods of the Deep (1965) ✪ ½
Also known (far more accurately) as The City Under the Sea and City in the Sea (this title is the same as Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, upon which the film is loosely based), this uneven blend of horror, suspense and comedy takes place almost entirely indoors and underwater.
On a windy British coast, the locals are bedeviled by a strange sound from the sea that precedes death. Visitor Tab Hunter begins his own investigation, along with artist David Tomlinson and his pet chicken, Herbert. They head underground when beautiful Susan Hart is kidnapped by a Gill Man and find a subterranean, undersea world ruled by Vincent Price. This city was built by the Gill Men, but is in peril due to a nearby, increasingly active volcano.
How this preposterous plot ever evolved from a Poe poem is, I suppose, a purely Hollywood gambit. The Gill Men are not convincing at all, even in an extended, boring underwater sequence. David Tomlinson is involved solely as comedy relief, as is Herbert. I kept thinking during their underwater escape that Herbert was witnessing things never before seen by a chicken. What a lucky chicken!
Hello Down There (1969) ✪ ½
Of the various underwater habitat movies, it is Hello Down There that takes the kelp. Never before and never since has a movie been quite this, well, fishy. I saw it once a long, long time ago and could never expunge it from my memory; now it is on DVD and you can see for yourselves.
The head researcher for the Underseas Development Company has, according to his boss, wasted $200,000 to construct an undersea house. As there is no significant or immediate benefit, as he sees it, the boss wants the house torn down at once. But the researcher, Tony Randall, bets that his own family can stay in the house for 30 days to prove its scientific value and practicality. Boss Jim Backus agrees, only because he believes the experiment will be extremely short-lived.
So Randall moves himself, wife Janet Leigh and teenage son Gary Tigerman and daughter Kay Cole, along with their two band-mates, Richard Dreyfuss and Lou Wagner, into his groovy underwater pad. They lie to the parents of Dreyfuss and Wagner because the whole undersea vacation thing is top secret, of course. But they are not the only ones underwater. Nearby, operating a dredging machine for Backus is Ken Berry and his assistant, Arnold Stang. Somewhere along the line Stang leaves, because he’s not around later for Randall to rescue when the dredger overturns and floods.
Everybody is cool living underwater except for Janet Leigh. She screams like she did in Psycho whenever the Green Onion (as the house is called) tilts precariously (due to Berry stealing its air), Gladys the seal takes a shower, sharks prowl the area, her kids steal the submarine in the middle of a hurricane or any other old reason. Why do the kids steal the submarine? The four of them comprise a rock group, “Harold and the Hang-Ups,” and they have a date to appear on the Merv Griffin show to perform.
The other subplot (yes, another) involves the U.S. Navy hearing the music on their sonar and not being able to explain it, leading to the entire Pacific Fleet being put on alert. Funny stuff, indeed.
The movie was produced by Ivan Tors, a Florida-based filmmaker with lots of underwater credits, including the TV shows “Sea Hunt” and “Flipper.” This was an attempt by Tors to mix his love of the sea — featuring shots of turtles, eels, sharks, manta rays and lots and lots of fish — with the music-loving young generation. Harold and his Hang-Ups lip-synch to such standards as “I Can Love You,” “Hello Little Goldfish” and “Glub,” the last two songs inspired by their experiences living under the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The songs are promoted by long-haired producer Roddy McDowall and premiered — underwater, of course — by Merv Griffin himself on his TV show. It’s all in the movie, of course; I can’t make this stuff up.