Inferno

When yet another atomic scientist goes missing behind the Iron Curtain, a private submarine expedition is put together to trail a freighter suspected of being able to lead the crew to what is believed to be the place where the Chinese are conducting nuclear research in preparation for a war. Former submarine commander Jones is contracted to lead the exhibition with a ragtag crew and a submarine in need of maintenance time that is not available to him. With Professor Montel technically in charge with his (female) assistant Professor Gerard by his side, the boat sets out on the mission of observation but with the ever present threat of danger in the hostile waters.

A bit of a romp this one as it revels more in the gaudy sweep of the telling rather than the tension from narrative detail. The plot doesn't really matter so much as it is a simple device for the voyage. Along the way we get personal conflicts, crew tensions and underwater stand-offs as well as some fire-fights. At no point was I hooked but it is rather entertaining in the way that school-boy adventure stories are – full of tough men, sacrifice and action. In this regard it suits the people making it and Fuller directs with simple but bright colours – easy to understand and engage with even if they are too simple to be real. So it is with the characters and plot but it still works. The romantic side of the story is a flop and I didn't see why a female character couldn't just be a character and had to be a love interest (well, obviously I understand why this decision is made, but I didn't see the value of it in the story).

The headlining of Richard Widmark is rarely a bad thing and he fits this tough action drama with his stern delivery and commanding presence. There is no doubting that Darvi is sexy and a good presence when it comes to being coy and flirtatious however when more is asked of her she is found wanting as she lacks the range. The rest of the cast fit in well around them – nobody brilliant of course but everyone able to be at the level required by the material.

Not that intelligent or complex a film but a solid enough wartime action film which will do the job if that's all you're looking for.

This unusual Cold War adventure features a star whose life off-screen was far more fascinating than her roles on-screen.

Ex-submarine commander, Adam Jones (Richard Widmark), is hired by an international consortium of scientists, statesmen and concerned citizens to command an old WW2 Japanese sub to track down a group of nuclear scientists who have disappeared in a remote area north of Japan.

Like Cagney before him, Widmark always seemed to be shaping up to the world, and so it is with his Commander Jones who assembles a crew straight out of the Hollywood Submariner Stereotypes Manual. He also takes along a professor and his assistant, Denise Gerard (Bella Darvi).

The action doesn't stray too far from the Twentieth Century Fox sound stages, but does have a couple of exciting sequences with pretty good special effects - even if the atomic explosion at the end doesn't look like it had the scale to disrupt peak hour traffic.

Over the 60 years since it was made, I have learnt more about the stars and the filmmakers, and a reason for revisiting the film was to see Bella Darvi in another movie other than "The Egyptian".

She was Darryl Zanuck's mistress back in the day and he was besotted with her. Much of this is detailed in Leonard Moseley's "Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon", but there is plenty of information on the Internet.

Zanuck put her in three movies but the public did not take to her. The critics shredded her performance as Nefer in "The Egyptian" claiming that her acting was wooden. I didn't mind it at all, although she was fairly unanimated. "Nefer was" was the bitchy comment from one co-star - being topped-off with a red fright-wig also didn't help.

But in "Hell and High Water", made before "The Egyptian", she is completely different. Warm and radiant, she displays a range of emotions as well as a sexy French accent; it is here that you can see the charm of the women who caused such turbulence in Darryl Zanuck's life. No doubt, the difference in the performances had a lot to do with the directors, Sam Fuller in this case.

Like other tragic stars, it is sad knowing that aged 42 she turned on the gas in her Paris apartment and exited a life that had probably always been on a downward spiral.

"Hell and High Water" is a competent piece of filmmaking from the Silver Age, but knowing a little about the stars and how it was made makes it far more compelling.

I thought the movie was good for it's era. Much better than some of the other fiction movies of it's time. The submarine scenes were very good. Especially the detail of water trickling down the periscope cylinder when they were submerged.

I too wondered where they were disposing of the buckets of water when they were supposed to be running silent. Again the scene was out of sequence.

Also the scene where Richard yells periscope up to look for the enemy sub, and they are surfacing. I thought it looked funny seeing the sub on top of the water and Richard is looking out the periscope.

Again good movie for it's time.

Richard Widmark {Capt. Adam Jones} stars in this Cold War thriller as the leader of a submarine expedition to the frozen depths of Alaska. His mission is to thwart the communist Chinese who are intent on kick starting World War 3.

Hell and High Water is one of the multitude of pictures that serve only as studio efforts made for made's sake. Take your leading actor, surround them with jobbing actors, and mold a picture together as best as you can. Sometimes a film can break free of its B and C movie roots to truly surprise, but others flounder to only serve as time fillers on terrestrial television. This film falls some where in between the two, not particularly bad exactly, but outside of a couple of tight sequences, not necessarily good either.

It was actually in premise, building up to be a promising film. Then we see a shapely pair of legs coming down the submarine stairs and we just know that this film will lose its edge, and sadly, where it's all going to end up. The insistence of many writers and film makers to shoe horn in a love interest in the grittiest of places rarely works, and here it most assuredly doesn't either. Not that Bella Darvi {owner of those shapely legs} is poor or is at fault for the film being average, it just takes the film in a direction that it didn't need to go. Tension is built up, with one face off submarine sequence being particularly hold your breath inducing, but the preposterous romantic angle on a submarine death mission is badly misplaced.

Tidy but unmemorable, and cribbing from Crash Dive released eleven years earlier, it's probably one for Widmark purists only. 5/10

I saw this movie when it was released in theatre. I still remember how much fun it was to watch a submarine crew try to bring down a big bomber carrying the Atomic bomb with every weapon they could muster, including handguns. It had plenty of action for the time, although those used to long periods of action may find themselves disappointed. There are a couple of fairly exciting firefights, not including the final desperate attempt to save the US from being blamed for dropping an A-bomb on Korea and starting WW3. I'd like to see it again but haven't seen it in a long time..Hope it can be repeated on TV .I would definitely buy it if I had the chance..