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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.

Yeah, it telegraphs all of the big "reveals", it has some overly dramatic acting, the major plot points are easy to see coming, the "red shirts" are obvious, the scenes are kinda cheesy, the characters are all one-dimensional, the plot motivators are simple ("he needs fresh air" or "we didn't have time to test the torpedo tubes") but dang I loved it! It was almost like a bond movie without the gadgets, the unbelievable stunts, or the bad double entendres. It is an instant classic in my book; it is just on the edge of something that you can take seriously. If you go in not expecting much and you realize that this was made many years ago before all of the methods used in it became trite due to overuse, then you will walk away with a smile. There are many worse submarine movies, some of which consist of "I'm in charge!"..."No I'm in charge", while this one has some strategy, some minor humor, some action, and some larger-than-life threats, and some explosions.. all in all worth the rental.

While I was earnestly waiting for some of the moments of hilarity one of the reviewers wrote about (which I never found), I thought it would be worthwhile to point out some of the sillier criticism also made.

First of all the bucket scene happened before the ramming scene - not after. Plus, submarines have buckets on them. Isn't that strange. It seems the makers of submarines sort of figured stuff like that out - sometimes subs take on water and it must be moved. And yes, they would have lots and lots of buckets. More than one sub in WWII was saved because of them. The reviewer may also not have seen the part where the buckets are being returned.

He also comments on if the sub was already underwater, where were they taking the water. Again, submariners got that one figured out too. They were taking it to a place where there was a working pump to pump the water off the sub.

Overall it was a decent diversion. But then I'm a fan or Richard Widmark so I may be biased.

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