The Atomic Submarine

Infobox Film
name = The Atomic Submarine


caption = original film poster by Reynold Brown
director = Spencer Gordon Bennet
producer = Alex Gordon
writer = Irving Block
Jack Rabin
Orville H. Hampton
starring = Arthur Franz
Dick Foran
music = Alexander Laszlo
cinematography = Gilbert Warrenton
editing = William Austin
distributor = Allied Artists Pictures Corporation
released = flagicon|USA November 29, 1959
runtime = 72 min
country = United States
language = English
imdb_id = 0052587
amg_id = 1:3246

"The Atomic Submarine" is a 1959 science fiction film starring Arthur Franz, Dick Foran and Brett Halsey, with John Hillard as the voice of the alien. The film was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet, the script was adapted by Orville H. Hampton from a short story by Jack Rabin and Irving Block. The film is an alien invasion story that showcases the then new technology of nuclear submarines.

Plot

The film begins with a brief prologue. The film's narrator (Pat Michaels) describes how in 1919, Robert Peary had a world of trouble reaching the North Pole. He postulates that Peary would have been amazed that in a few decades that same pole he had such trouble reaching had become a major thoroughfare for civilian and military shipping. The prologue ends when the film tells of a futuristic prediction of cargo-carrying atomic submarines. One of those submarines is shown being destroyed by a mysterious undersea light. The loss of this submarine and several other ships alarms the world. Governments temporarily close the pole to traffic and convene an emergency meeting at The Pentagon.

Present at the meeting is Captain Dan Wendover (Dick Foran), the captain of the atomic submarine "Tigershark". and Nobel Prize winning scientist Sir Ian Hunt (Tom Conway). The United States Secretary of Defense Justin Murdock (Jack Mulhil) leads the meeting. He explains all that is known about the disasters in the Arctic. The Secretary then describes the high-tech capabilities of the "Tigershark". These include a special hull and a mini-sub, the "Lungfish", that can be stored inside the larger sub. The Secretary finishes the meeting by telling Captain Wendover that he is to take Hunt and the rest of the "Tigershark"'s crew to find the cause of the ship sinkings and, if possible, eliminate it.

The next several scenes introduce the audience to Commander Richard "Reef" Holloway (Arther Franz). Also shown is how a submarine gathers its crew together on short notice and sets sail. Commander Holloway is told that he will be bunking with the inventor of the "Lungfish", Dr. Carl Neilson. At first he is thrilled. The Commander believes that his bunkmate is Dr. Neilson Sr., a scientist he reveres. To his dismay, Holloway learns that his bunkmate is instead Dr. Carl Neilson "Jr." (Brett Halsey), a pacifistic scientist he dislikes.

The scenes after that show day-to-day life on an atomic submarine. After a time, the submariners do finally find the cause of the disasters: a saucer-shaped underwater craft with a strange light coming out of an eye-shaped window. The window is located at the top and in the center of the ship's upper dome. One of the "Tigershark"'s scientists, Dr. Clifford Kent (Victor Varconi), briefly shows a photo of an Unidentified Flying Object taken from his days as a UFO investigator for the Air Force. Investigaging such phenomena was his job in those days. Because of that photo and its similarity to this vessel, the submariners began to realize that their quarry is an extraterrestrial lifeform. Inspired by the eye-shaped window, the crew nickname the spacecraft "Cyclops".

Captain Wendover orders the submarine's most powerful torpedoes fired on the saucer. The torpedoes reach the saucer, but are stopped short of it by a gel-like extrusion from the saucer, and they do not explode. While dismayed by this failure, the captain knows that he has to do something to stop the ship sinkings, so he orders the "Tigershark" to ram the spacecraft. The submarine's nose breaks into the lower side of the saucer and becomes trapped there.

Commander Holloway and Dr. Neilson then lead a team aboard the "Lungfish" and enter the spacecraft. Once inside, Commander Holloway and crew find dark hallways with little illumination. It is then that Holloway gets his first telepathic message from the spacecraft's sole occupant, an octopus-like creature with only one eye. Holloway meets the creature "face to face". In the course of their conversation, the alien proves its hostile intent by savagely killing the other members of the away team. The creature further proves hostile by announcing to Holloway that it plans to bring several human specimens back to its home planet and eventually return with more of its kind to take over the Earth. Now realizing that he has a lot more to worry about than a few ship sinkings, Commander Holloway attacks the alien by firing a Very pistol into its eye, temporarily blinding it. He races back to the "Lungfish" and returns to the "Tigershark" with Dr. Neilson. The "Tigershark" then breaks away from the saucer.

Holloway than tells Captain Wendover, "Captain, if that thing ever gets back to where it came from, the Earth and everyone on it is doomed." The submariners remember that their weapons failed the first time that they were used against the spaceship. They have an emergency meeting where "The Tigershark"'s group of scientists develop a plan to turn one of their ICBMs into a ground-to-air missile. Their plan is carried out with the agreement of Captain Wendover and the aid of several crewmen. When the saucer rises from the ocean and attempts to return home, the "Tigershark" fires the missile and destroys the saucer and its occupant, thus saving the Earth. In a postlude, Holloway and the young Neilson are reconciled, with the latter realizing that his pacifism was not match for hostile aliens.

Background

This film was made at a time when nuclear submarines were very new, shortly after the USS "Nautilus" made the first undersea crossing of the polar ice cap in 1958. Atomic submarines caught people's imagination as the embodiment of the idea of harnessing the power of the atom.

The trailer and movie posters for the film suggested that it was a more traditional military action movie by playing down the science fiction elements and focusing primarily the novelty of the nuclear submarine. The extraterrestrial spacecraft is alluded to only obliquely as the unspecified dire threat to the world which the crew of the submarine must overcome, but it is not clearly seen or called a flying saucer or UFO in the trailer.

The movie's few futuristic elements include cargo-freighter nuclear submarines and a mini-sub within a submarine. The impression conveyed was that the events in the film take place in the very near future.

The 1950s are often called the Atomic Age because people were very enthusiastic about the promise of atomic power. The word "atomic" meant "high-tech and powerful", even if it was used to describe breakfast cereal. People of the day imagined a bright future where atomic power became cheap and plentiful. It must have been very topical at the time to imagine nuclear submarines that were inexpensive enough to be used to carry freight under the North Pole.

The film's special effects were not high-tech, being typically of low-budget films of the time. Stock footage of submarine actions is matched with unconvincing underwater and missile sequences.

Related films

Two later science fiction films also 'starred' nuclear submarines: Irwin Allen's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" in 1961 and the Japanese film "Atragon" in 1963. In all three films, a high-tech nuclear submarine of the near-future travels to the deepest part of the ocean in order to save the Earth from destruction.

Coincidentally, Arthur Franz, who played Cmdr. Holloway in "The Atomic Submarine", guest starred on an episode of Irwin Allen's 1964 " Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" television series.

Cast

References

Bibliography

* Wingrove, David. (1985). "Science Fiction Film Source Book". Longman Group Limited

External links

*
* " [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atomic_submarine/ The Atomic Submarine] " at Rotten Tomatoes
* [http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=366&eid=515&section=essay Criterion Collection essay by Bruce Eder]
* [http://leonscripts.tripod.com/scripts/ATOMICSUB.htm/ Atomic Submarine screenplay]