Wednesday, August 6, 2008

WAR GODS OF THE DEEP (The City Under The Sea) - Stanley Black "Sea Weed" (1965)

"War Gods Of The Deep" directed by Jacques Tourneur, was one of the last films in genius composer Stanley Black's very long and distinguished career!! He had been involved with music in films since 1937 when he served as arranger on the film "Rhythm Racketeer" and had his hand in so many classic films we love, like "The Crawling Eye" and "Blood Of The Vampire" just to scratch the surface!

Every person in the world's dream home!! Now, how the Hell do you get to it?

Oh, I get it, all you need is a boat, and a bunch of pirate buddies!!

Tab Hunter rocks this movie! He smiles at all the wrong times, and looks like he's having a great time despite the difficulty of whatever they throw at him!

Here's one of the first glimpses we see of the sea creature that will resurface in "Space Monster" in the years to come!

I never have been able to figure out what Tab Hunter did to deserve this!

This is David Tomlinson and the chicken known as Herbert! Why and who ever decided they needed this kind of character in these movies would, and should be a good candidate for a firing squad! Having a silly character in a small role is one thing, but after awhile, and I'm not talking that long, it really gets old!! The bonus feature of the annoying chicken didn't help any!!

Vincent Price is spendid as always, and really, the best reason to see this film is to hear him read Edgar Allen Poe!

Tab Hunter, David Tomlinson and Susan Hart! What an awesome trio! If Susan looks familiar, it's because she worked in horror and surf movies and was the ghost in "The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini!"

This movie is just like Nostradamus, coming before Lothar and The Hand People's "Machines" release by at least 3 years!

One downer is that for me these creatures always looked masked because of the eye and other face holes. Still, not as good as The Creature by any means, but not completely bad!

Groundbreaking neat adventures in odd places predates Indiana Jones by quite a few years too!

Wow! There is a way out!!!!

"War Gods Of The Deep" is based on a story written by Edgar Allen Poe, and is just interesting enough to not only have a title card, but to also have an ending card, which in this case is much brighter and happier reflecting hope for the future!!!

3 comments:

Greg Goodsell said...

I would start to watch this movie over and over again as a kid and it would always put me to sleep. Better you catch Vincent Price in MASTER OF THE WORLD instead.

August Ragone said...

Love your blog! Killer selections of music from some fantastic films — dig it!

Interesting that the shot of the machines was cribbed from Ishiro Honda's ATRAGON (1963), released by AIP in 1965. I guess since AIP owned it, they could use whatever they wanted. They also cribbed the Missile Attack scene from GODZILLA VS. THE THING for DR. GOLDFOOT AND GIRL BOMBS (1966).

Keep up the fang-tastic work!

Cheers,
August
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND GODZILLA

Eegah!! and Tabonga! said...

We're honoured that you dig our blog August, and it's quite ironic, but "Atragon" will be the next Japanese film in the spotlight in the next week or so!

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