Here we have another staple of the weekend "Science
Fiction Theater" programmer; which had one scene which was
breathlessly related to me over and over in that Stephen King "it
was sooooooooooo gross!" way. Yet I somehow missed it
in my childhood; my only encounter with it was a boss picture of
the alien published in Famous Monsters magazine. These two
caused me seek out the movie as an adult.
Waitaminnit. Did he say alien? Yep.
Once again we are Getting Ahead Of Ourselves. So settle back, dig
into that bowl of popcorn Mom made, and follow along.
First, the Narrator (with whom we shall become very
familiar) tells that by the late 60's, atomic-powered submarines
transport cargo under the Arctic ice cap with great regularity...
at least until they start blowing up with equal regularity. The
authorities are predictably stumped, even if we aren't... we already
know that it's an underwater flying saucer doing the dirty work.
The Powers That Be decide to send in their finest
killer sub, the Tiger Shark, under the command of Capt. Wendover
(Dick Franz), to find out what's making ships go boom. Tiger
Shark has been in drydock, undergoing speedy modifications for
this mission, not the least of which is the installation of atomic
torpedoes and 
missiles
- these guys are serious. The crew of Tiger Shark
is immediately called back to duty under a veil of secrecy, including
our apparent hero "Reef" Holloway (Arthur Franz), the
second in command on board the Tiger Shark (and I bet we
don't want to know how he got that nickname). Reef is interrupted
in an evening of sin with a hot 50's vixen (Joi Lansing, grrrrrwl!)
by the arrival of his orders.
Reef arrives at the Tiger Shark to find that
they're also hosting some visitors, not the least of which is Sir
Ian Hunt (Tom Conway), whom Wendover recognizes as "the winner
of the Nobel Prize for Oceanography". This impresses me not
only as an odd bit of information to be carrying around in one's
head - I'm a writer, and I would be hard pressed to tell you this
year's Nobel Laureate for literature - but I'm also pretty sure
there is no Nobel Prize for Oceanography.
Also joining the party are two underwater demolitionists
(Richard Tyler & Kenneth Becker), who are referred to constantly
as "the Frogmen". And Reef finds himself sharing his cabin
with the pilot of the deep sea craft the Lungfish - it's
docking 
module
is another modification. At first Reef is overjoyed because he thinks
it's the Lungfish's developer, his old CO, "Skipper"
Neilson. No such luck. It's the other guy who designed the Lungfish,
the Skipper's peacenik son, Carl, whom Reef despises for his thoroughly
yellow political philosophy, providing us with a preview of the
country's upcoming divisiveness over Vietnam. When Wendover advises
Reef to look at things from Neilson's side, Reef replies, "What
side? He's all front and no back!"
Tiger Shark soon finds out what we've known
all along, and Sir Ian christens the underwater UFO the Cyclops,
'cause it looks like it has one big ol' eye on top of the saucer.
They then proceed to chase the sinister spheroid, but always arrive
at the stock footage of nautical destruction too late. This goes
on for a month, or so the narrator tells us, as cartoon maps delineate
the meandering course of the submarine.
One
of the eggheads on board finally manages to figure out that the
Cyclops always returns to the North Pole after one of its attacks,
probably using the magnetism to recharge its batteries. After this,
it's a simple tactic to wait until the next attack, then position
the Tiger Shark between the Cyclops and the Pole, hopefully
catching the powerful craft in a weakened state.
We all knew it was only a matter of time before they
wheeled out those atomic torpedoes. Wendover fires both tubes at
the Cyclops; the first one misses (and no one seems terribly concerned
about a loose nuke zooming through the ocean depths), and the second
is enmired in a gel-like substance extruded through the rim of the
saucer. Wendover, feeling enough is enough, orders the Tiger
Shark to ram the Cyclops. The sub buries itself deep in the
side of the saucer. All its lights blink out. But that same gel
has flooded from the ruptured hull, and the Tiger Shark,
locked in place, is carried with its adversary to the bottom of
the ocean.
In a case like this, the only course of action is
an EVA, and Neilson pilots the Lungfish over the eye of the
Cyclops, which everybody agrees is the airlock. The Lungfish,
incidentally, is some sort of self-propelled bathysphere with some
really ungainly control mechanisms. Leaving Neilson to guard their
escape, Reef, the Frogmen and some guy who might as well be wearing
a red shirt explore the saucer.
Finding the nose of the Tiger Shark, our away
team sets about to cutting it loose with some really small cutting
torches. 
Reef
eventually hears a Voice In His Head, and discounting Rapture of
the Deep, follows the Voice. Red Shirt tags along. Left to their
own devices, the first Frogman wanders off, only to be cooked by
some sort of radiation. The other Frogman panics, and seeing a door
irising shut, tries to get through it - and only makes it halfway.
Chances are he was crushed to death, but the implication is he was
cut in half (they're pretty thin doors). This is the scene that
fueled the nightmares of my friends in their younger days.
Reef, meantime, has found the source of the Voice,
and its that alien I saw in FM, the whole reason I sought out this
movie. As 50's sci-fi monsters go, this one is pretty goddam cool:
unlike most of its filmic ilk, it is determinedly unhumanoid
- we're talking about tentacles, a long hairy stalk of a neck, and
a single hairy eyeball atop that stalk. Seems Sir Ian knew what
he was doing when he named the enemy the Cyclops (him being a science
professor and all).
The
alien apparently hails from the Cliché Galaxy, as his mission
is to find suitable worlds for conquest, and Earth is predictably
the coolest planet he's found. Red Shirt takes a few shots at Popeye,
and gets microwaved for his troubles. This Evil Eyeball tells Reef
that he, and a few other Earthlings, will accompany it back to its
home planet as Test Subjects. Proving itself to be no whiz kid,
the Cyclops answers Reef's question of "Won't you have to see
to navigate?" with a resounding, "Yes! Of course!"
BLAM! After shooting out Señor Ojo's most prominent feature,
Reef beats it back to the Lungfish.
Meantime, on the Tiger Shark, it has been discovered
that the saucer is functioning again, and is starting to move towards
the pole, submarine and all. On board the Lungfish, Neilson
notices the airlock door irising shut, and throws himself into it,
proving that a pacifist scientist is stronger than a highly-trained
Navy SEAL. "Where are the others?" asks the scientist.
"Fortunes of war!" snaps Reef, a perfect blend of the
cryptic and the callous.
Good enough, as the Tiger Shark pulls itself
free, but that allows the Cyclops to speed away to the Pole (The
Ominous Orb has grown its eye back). The Eggheads have to (for some
reason) race the clock, installing a torpedo's guidance system in
a water-to-air missile. Of course, they finish just in time, blowing
up the escaping Monsieur Monocle. Invasion over.
Back at the docks, Reef notices Neilson staring up
at the stars, wondering which is the one they need to worry about.
Reef discovers that he lost his Little Black Book on the Cyclops,
and shakes his fist at the sky. The end.
That's a potent final image: a military man shaking
his fist in anger at the stars. An image befitting a movie telling
the tale of the eternal clash between man's ancient militant side
and his newer, more spiritual side, and how this dichotomy must
blend into a unified whole against the fabled Other, the Not Us,
the Eternal Enemy. Yes, it is a fine closing image for such a movie.
Too bad that movie isn't The Atomic Submarine.
A major problem with the flick is its over-reliance
on the Narrator, who is used to advance the story over the first
hour. Until
Reef and the Doomed-ettes board the Cyclops, the Narrator breaks
in every few minutes with his helpful animated graphics to tell
us what is happening, instead of employing the actors and dialog
to advance the plot. This is just lazy storytelling.
The constant verbal donnybrooking betwixt Neilson
and Reef is, on the other hand, quite well-written, if weighted
toward Reef's militarism in a late 1950's sort of way. Perched from
the lofty heights of the current day (and as a recovering hippy
myself), I of course side with Neilson. Reef's points are quite
valid, but his constant chivvying and harassment of the son because
"he broke his father's heart" are quite off-putting. And
God forbid Reef should admit that the peacenik was actually brave,
or thank him for throwing his body in that closing door....
As
far as the visual elements go, predictably, much use is made of
stock footage, which never quite matches the film's footage - the
stuff filmed on board an actual submarine looks cramped and utilitarian,
whereas the movie elements tend towards the roomy and high-tech
sterile. My favorite slice of stock footage occurs during Reef's
arrival at the Tiger Shark; the editor needed to transition
from one scene to another somehow, and for some reason inserted
a shot of the cook pulling a pot roast from the oven. It is a sublimely
non-apropos image, startling in it's mundanity.
The miniatures are fine, but all too noticeably miniatures
- the propellers on the subs are moving a bit too fast without any
discernible wake to fool the eye. And then there is the other problem
with any movie that takes place underwater - the very environment
causes everything to move at a slow, balletic pace. Thank goodness
there are no scuba scenes, usually the signal for a trip to refrigeratorland
while characters take five minutes to go from point A to Point B.
A good director can make the ponderousness of underwater vehicles
generate genuine suspense or claustrophobic tension -witness The
Hunt for Red October and The Abyss - but unfortunately,
what we have here is Spencer Gordon Bennet.
This is not to take away Mr. Bennet's achievements
- a glance at his filmography
at the IMDb will net you a total of 107 films he directed,
including some serials beloved by many - the 1949 Batman
and Robin and The Purple Monster Strikes, to name two.
Bennet wants to get to the meaty scenes on board the saucer, and
gets us there with efficiency. With, say, a Robert Wise at the helm,
this movie would have been an entirely different experience - the
time spent hunting the Cyclops, would have made a nice midsection,
slowly building audience expectation, rather than passed off with
a voiceover and a slideshow.
Blame for this must also be parceled out to writer
Orville H. Hampton, who has a similar body
of work - the year Atomic 
Submarine
was released, Hampton had four other scripts produced. More
telling, perhaps, is his later work, most notably for the Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt
Hour. But with over 40 produced scripts to his credit, we can't
say that Hampton was a bad writer - he probably worked very cheaply,
yes, but he's not bad. As I've said, the polemics of Neilson and
Reef are good, even if they never reach the depths (or heights)
of similar philosophical set-tos in films like It
Conquered The Earth.
But few characters are well-developed - in fact, only
Reef truly has a personality (even it is an onerous one). The narration
eventually grates, and only serves to
make the brave men of the Tiger Shark look like nitwits.
It took them a month to figure out they kept crossing the
North Pole? Besides the Narrator, Hampton employs the Alien to explain
everything else that is going on. The Alien talks entirely too much,
going on and on and on until we've seen way too much of him.
And let's face it - I've used the word "predictably" three
times in this review - that should tell you something.
The
Atomic Submarine is a sturdy, workmanlike film. It entertains,
in its own fashion. Oddly, the thing this movie most reminds me
of is a couple of episodes from the unfortunate second series of
the original Outer
Limits: "The Probe" and "Nightmare"
- the interior scenes in the saucer evidenced the same spare, structure-free
aesthetic and moody slashes of light - very budget-minded of the
ET's. And just like some of those episodes, sadly, the story and
characters just weren't up to the quality of the Bear.
