User Reviews

Something about a U-boat that sinks with a million dollars in gold bullion. After the war, the skipper enlists the help of an amoral floozie and an expert underwater diver (Ralph Bellamy) to retrieve the gold. They inveigle their way into the crew of a ship that is on a scientific expedition, with Fay Wray a prominent scientist and underwater photographer. The ship sails to the location of the gold. The scientists go about photographing underwater beasts from their diving bell while the undercover gold seekers continue their conniving. Bellamy, a thorough scoundrel, finds himself strangely attracted to Fay Wray. And who wouldn't? Bellamy must have seen her in the previous year's "King Kong," popping up out of the water en déshabillé, tumbling out of her torn slip. The libidinous swine.

Fear not, though. He teaches her how to use his diving suit -- one of those old-fashioned encumbering types with a round metal headpiece, now replaced by SCUBA gear. In return, she teaches him how to be a gentleman.

Towards the end of this shipboard romance/adventure, the German skipper and the amoral floozie double cross Bellamy by drugging him, then setting off to recover the gold and make an escape by themselves. Meanwhile, below the sea, the diving bell containing Fay Wray and some inconsequential male member of the cast is attacked and brought into lethal embrace by a giant octopus. Bellamy recovers from the drug in time to don his suit, drop to the sea floor, and amputate the octopus's arms with a cutting torch. He and the others barely escape. But the German doesn't escape at all. A loop of the heavy retrieval chain wraps around his ankle and when the trunk of gold falls apart, everything is yanked overboard. Full fathom five, the skipper will now guard the gold buried in mud for all eternity, while Fay Wray will live happily ever after with Ralph Bellamy, at a point in his career when he was capable of getting the girl.

I felt kind of sorry for the octopus. Did you ever see a movie in which an octopus was presented in a positive light? No. No, you didn't. On a beach near Pago Pago a recently speared octopus (fe'e) was thrown into my lap. There it lay, too pooped to move, but flashing different colors in a frantic but futile effort to match its surroundings, an agony that lasted almost five minutes. I would have released it, having been in its position a thousand times myself. I'm convinced that they have feelings too. Later, it was unceremoniously boiled stiff and then eaten in chunks dipped into its own ink.

There's not enough to this movie to either recommend it highly or to criticize it harshly. It must not have taken long to write since the plot progresses by the numbers. But it's kind of fun to watch the ship at sea. I would guess those scenes were shot off Catalina. Bellamy tries on a gruff, half-articulate personality that doesn't seem genuinely his, and Fay Wray is shrill but beautiful.

Not a masterpiece but a diverting Hollywood product of the early 30s.

While "Below the Sea" is a relatively low-budget film and Ralph Bellamy seems oddly cast as a real rogue, this is a dandy adventure film--one I almost gave an 8. But, occasional lapses (such as the doll that was used in underwater shots in an aquarium full of gold fish or a small octopus!) keep me from giving it a higher score because of a few rough edges.

The film begins with a prologue where a German sub is sunk in 1917. However, two members of the crew survive--and they know that the sunken ship was carrying gold! Here is where you get an idea of what sort of hard-edged film it is--as the Captain shoves the only other survivor off a cliff in order to preserve this secret! Many years pass and the Captain is working to get a diver who can help him retrieve the treasure. The man he gets, Steve (Ralph Bellamy), is a real creep--and the slimy pair also work with a nasty dame to get the gold. But, this expedition is doomed and the ship sinks! A few years pass. Now, the Captain and Steve try another approach--they latch on to a scientific expedition funded by an unusual heiress (Fay Wray) and you'll just have to see what happens next yourself.

There was a lot to like in the film. As I mentioned above, there is a real hard edge to the film you just won't find in Post-Code films (films made after mid-1934)--when Hollywood was forced to make its films more family friendly. I like this edge--particularly at the incredibly cool (and rather gruesome) ending! I also loved that for once Fay Wray was given a real decent part--not some screaming lady or bubble-head but a woman who is all woman! Well worth your time.

****SPOILERS**** Among the great underwater scenes in the movie "Below the Sea" what you also get is a chance to see Fay Wary's as rich socialite Diana Tempelton's cleavage which a year later would have been banned by the Hollywood Code or Hayes Commession when it came into effect. Fay or Diana is attacked together with her photographer friend Burt Jackson, Paul Page, by a giant octopus and has deep sea diver Steve McCreary, Ralph Bellamy, risk his life saving both of them. McCreary at first had no use for Diana in feeling that as a women she was hampering as well as endangering the crew but later fell in love with her and forgot all about it.

Diana was in fact sponsoring an expedition under the sea to photograph the sea life that has never been seen by human eyes and almost ended up getting killed because of it. As for McCreary he was only interested in recovering some 3 million dollars in gold that was sunk together with German U-Boat 170 in 1917 that the German U-Boat Captain Von Boulton now calling himself Karl Schlemmer, Fredwrick Vogeding, wants to get his greedy hands on. But as much as Schlemmer hates it he'll need an expert deep sea diver like Steve McCreary to do it and split the gold with.

Knowing what a back stabbing creep Schlemmer really is McCreary still goes along with his plan to recover the gold in that he's the only person who at first knew where it is together with the remains of U-Boat 170. But in he end the master back stabber Karl Schlemmer did himself in together with the 3 million in gold bullion by leaving, after having him drugged, McCreary out of the loop and on board. That as he and his floozy partner Lily, Esther Howard, went after the underwater gold on their own without the services of an expert deep sea diver like Steve McCreary.

****SPOILERS**** As things soon turned out the gold ended up at the bottom of the sea together with Karl Schlemmer but Steve McCready ended up with something or someone far more precious. The girl who at first had no use for but since fell in love with,as well as ended up saving her life, the beautiful as well as rich Diana Tempelton. Now how's that for a trade off!

P.S In her having to be saved from the grip of a giant octopus in the movie "Below the Sea" actress Fay Wray was soon to end up in the crutches of "King Kong" which was released less then two week later.

Ralph Bellamy looks uncomfortable playing a tough deep-sea diver instead of his usual dork-who gets-dumped. He is Mac McCreary, a pipe chomping man of action in this one. His sneaky partner is Karl Shlemmer, former German U-Boat captain, who knows where the gold is and doesn't plan to share it with anybody. Fay Wray is the rich babe who finances the expedition on a boat that looks like a royal yacht. Then there is Lily, a tough waterfront babe who adds little and somehow gets lost along the way. If you can believe all this, how about Miss Wray--rich, beautiful, educated--falling for hunky but dumb, poor, and inarticulate Bellamy? The ending (HERE'S THE BIG SPOILER) is reminiscent of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when the almost retrieved gold falls back into the ocean, never (for unexplained reasons) to be found again.

Perhaps the 20 minutes missing from the edited print of this film contains the key to what was necessary to explain some absent elements of the plot which would have made this seem more concrete to me. What remains makes this merely a confusing, loud shell of a plot, with the first 10 minutes of the film explaining the elements of the plot that lead up to the last three quarters. It deals with the battle between a German U-Boat and a British ship hiding guns, and after two Germans end up on an island, one of the men (Frederick Vogeding) simply tosses his fellow surviving German over a cliff as he stares at an obvious treasure map. Fifteen years or so go by, and now Vogeding wants to find the treasure he obviously didn't find in those missing years (or missing 20 minutes) and is out at sea with Ralph Bellamy searching for it. A reporter (Fay Wray) ends up on board with a photographer, and much of the next 50 minutes deals with Bellamy below the sea searching for the treasure while Wray and photographer Paul Page photograph him. Bellamy and Wray spar for much of the voyage but it is apparent that there is a romance growing. Nothing much really happens other than their love squabbles (him looking on jealously from the depths of the sea as Wray kisses Page) and Vogeding's occasional grumbling. The sparring scenes between Wray and Bellamy do provide some amusing moments, particularly when Bellamy dumps Wray's poofy dog into the helmet of the sea suit he is trying to get Wray to put on. The photographic effects are pretty good (especially the filming of a giant sea crab trying to camouflage itself), but not much in the way of story.

"In Old Oklahoma" director Albert S. Rogell's "Below the Sea" qualifies as a top-notch Pre-Code epic as well as a forerunner of John Huston's more celebrated "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." About 30 minutes or so into this sea yarn, the leading lady, Diana Templeton (Fay Wray of "King Kong"), ushers her leading man, a roughhewn galoot (Ralph Bellamy of "His Girl Friday"), into a laboratory, has him peer into a microscope and illuminates the theory of evolution to him. These two work up some steam in this scene as well as in several more as they exchange some mildly salacious dialogue. You can always spot a Pre-Code by the saucy relationship between the hero and the heroine as well as it amoral storyline. The protagonists struggle to pull a hoard of gold from Davy Jones' locker in this black & white classic that treats its audience to some mature melodrama. The surprise ending foreshadows the finale in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," except our heroes and heroine don't tangle with slimy Mexican bandits but a giant octopus similar to the creature in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) with Kirk Douglas.

This thrilling as well as provocative adventure unfolds in 1917 during the First World War as the German U-Boat 170 unleashes her firepower on a British sailing vessel. Although the British must abandon ship, a hearty gun remains aboard long enough to swap enough ordinance with the Germans to sink them. Von Boulton (Fredrik Vogeding), the skipper of the U-170, takes this opportunity mark the spot of his sinking ship because he has a crate load of gold ingots aboard which amount to $3-million dollars. The skipper and one mate survive, but the treacherous Von Boulton pushes the poor soul off a cliff to his death. Fifteen years have elapse, and the despicable Von Boulton has adopted the alias Karl Schlemmer. Now a captain of his own ship, this scheming dastard still possesses a hasty drawn map with the whereabouts of the sunken bullion. One thing prevents him from latching his avaricious hands onto that treasure. Namely, he needs a deep-sea diver who can descend into the murky ocean depths and locate the loot for him. Greedy as he is, Schlemmer promises a hard boiler oyster, Steve McCreary, that his unique services are required. Already, the evil ex-U-boat captain has included a villainous dame, Lily (Esther Howard), in his small circle of conspirators. She behaves with the same lack of scruples as Schlemmer. Before he agrees to be a part of their enterprise, McCreary insists Schlemmer split the gold three ways. Naturally, the two-faced Schlemmer agrees without argument. In any case, the German has no intention of honoring his agreement.

Eventually, Schlemmer charts a voyage with a scientific expedition, similar to what the famed French scuba diver Jacque Cousteau would do in a series of televised documentaries about the world's oceans. Diana Templeton is the primary investor in this seagoing expedition. Initially, grouchy McCreary wants to kick her off the ship, but that is out of the question. Since she is footing the bill for the project, she is going along. It turns out to be love at first sight for these two. McCreary wants Diana to teach him to be a gentlemen, but she doesn't want a gentlemen, she wants a brute like him! "Below the Sea" is a blast!