One can readily concede that the 1971 Irwin Allen-directed made-for-TV sci-fi film CITY BENEATH THE SEA is dated in a lot of ways: acting (overripe at times); plot (old-fashioned); special effects (extremely dated, especially if one thinks of special effects only in terms of CGI). And yet there is still a fair bit to recommend about this TV endeavor, which can be seen as the bridge between Allen's own TV series "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea" (which ran from 1964 to 1968), and the pair of big-budget disaster films (THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE; THE TOWERING INFERNO) he would produce in just a few short years that would make him Hollywood's "Master Of Disaster", for better or worse.
The basic plot, set in the year 2053, involves a vast underwater city named Pacifica, watched over by a veteran admiral (Stuart Whitman). Whitman is then charged by the President (Richard Basehart, returning from "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea") to take care of a large gold supply (which is about to be stolen by his underhanded brother, played by Robert Wagner), and a supply of the highly explosive H1-28. To add to his responsibilities, in a turn that predates films like METEOR, NIGHT OF THE COMET, Armageddon, and DEEP IMPACT, a planetoid of considerable size is on a collision course with Earth, and Pacifica specifically.
All of the aforementioned is, by our 21st century standards, ridiculously old-fashioned, even in comparison to what we'd get from Allen in his disaster films. But in the ensuing years and decades, as the special effects have gotten more and more spectacular, and the films have gotten more and more expensive, reaching ridiculous budgets of $250 million at times now, are the plots really any better than something as "cheesy" as an Irwin Allen TV pilot like this? Having seen this a number of times on TV as a re-run, I'd have to say "Not necessarily." There's no question that CITY BENEATH THE SEA is predictable to a large degree, but the same can be said for most everything being made today for the big screen, whether in IMAX or 3-D. It still works all the same, if one is willing to accept it as a relic of its time.
This is why I'm giving CITY BENEATH THE SEA a 7 out of 10.
The basic plot, set in the year 2053, involves a vast underwater city named Pacifica, watched over by a veteran admiral (Stuart Whitman). Whitman is then charged by the President (Richard Basehart, returning from "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea") to take care of a large gold supply (which is about to be stolen by his underhanded brother, played by Robert Wagner), and a supply of the highly explosive H1-28. To add to his responsibilities, in a turn that predates films like METEOR, NIGHT OF THE COMET, Armageddon, and DEEP IMPACT, a planetoid of considerable size is on a collision course with Earth, and Pacifica specifically.
All of the aforementioned is, by our 21st century standards, ridiculously old-fashioned, even in comparison to what we'd get from Allen in his disaster films. But in the ensuing years and decades, as the special effects have gotten more and more spectacular, and the films have gotten more and more expensive, reaching ridiculous budgets of $250 million at times now, are the plots really any better than something as "cheesy" as an Irwin Allen TV pilot like this? Having seen this a number of times on TV as a re-run, I'd have to say "Not necessarily." There's no question that CITY BENEATH THE SEA is predictable to a large degree, but the same can be said for most everything being made today for the big screen, whether in IMAX or 3-D. It still works all the same, if one is willing to accept it as a relic of its time.
This is why I'm giving CITY BENEATH THE SEA a 7 out of 10.