September Storm

I can recall seeing Joanne Dru many times in films while I was growing up, noticing that she always seemed to have a rather large mouth. Time has changed things. Her mouth looks rather normal now, but her beauty has increased quite a bit. She has never looked better! The film, however, needs some work. The photography is simultaneously good and bad. Good underwater work, but overall it's grainy. The story, about lost treasure, and the acting by everybody else is so-so at best. Joanne did well. Still, I can recommend this film on the beauty of Joanne and the underwater scenes, which were very well done. I gave it a 7.

Pleasing skin-diving adventure, simple-minded but satisfying, has a young native of Majorca attempting to woo a pretty New York model with big talk of the boats he owns; turns out he's just the caretaker of the sailing vessels, and ends up stealing one for a three-week jaunt after two adventurers convince the couple that a million dollars' worth of gold coins went down with an African ship in the Mediterranean. Based on Steve Fisher's uncredited book "The Girl in the Red Bikini", the film (originally presented in CinemaScope and 3-D) allows Joanne Dru to let her hair down for once. Ofttimes cast as a frontier wife or nurse, Dru proves to be an attractive partner in the plan, even as male-female tensions aboard ship threaten to erupt. The action is slow in coming (a rather sleepy shark swims by twice, and a Portuguese Man of War stings Mark Stevens somewhere on his body), but the colorful locations and underwater photography make up for the lack of plot and wooden line-readings. ** from ****

Low-ish-budget adventure film from twentieth century fox. Sexy anne (joanne dru) and manuel (asher dann) meet up in majorca, and were doing okay. But along come treasure hunters joe and ernie and really louse things up. Eventually they all rent a boat to look for pirate gold, but so many set backs. Storms, lovers quarrels, jealousy and fighting. Even stinging jellyfish. Will they ever find the gold? Or will all the fighting keep them from ever getting to it? It's okay. Co-stars mark stevens, robert strauss. Stevens looks and sounds JUST like dean martin. Directed by byron haskin. He was nominated for FOUR oscars in the 1940s, and was given a technical achievement award in 1939.

but my family and I watched part of it being filmed in Mallorca. I was in love with Joanne Dru and blown away by the huge lights and a camera about a hundred times the size of our Bell and Howell, all mounted on a barge, as they filmed the principal actors on a diving board. Many takes, each time with the assistant director screaming "Silencio Po favor" to all the tourists on the beach. The funny thing was that we all did fall silent.

One of the actors had to spin a coin in the air and catch it. He kept dropping it in the water, the director would shout "Cut" and a boy would be dispatched into the water to retrieve what was supposed to be a gold coin. Such a waste of a large crew's time must make producers crazy and directors nervous, let alone the poor actors.

For a 3D movie with a giant shark on the poster, it's amazing how much time's wasted at a Spanish (i.e. Spain-set) nightclub, which includes an extremely drawn-out Flamenco dance. All viewed by the four main characters that consist of two important pairs...

The first begins the picture: An extremely perfect-looking young Spanish guy who pretends to own the yacht of a vacationing millionaire (his boss), and a pretty yet slightly aged American model who he's making up the lie for: They go diving when the other two check out the vessel...

Actor Mark Stevens usually preferred directing adventurous b-pictures. This one a treasure hunt with only one shark... made of what looks like Styrofoam. His partner is a joke-around rummy familiar in sea-set Neo Noirs, and it's goofy Robert Strauss playing this very goofy character, and an extremely creepy one too...

That only Anne, played by red-head in a red bikini Joanne Dru... once they're all board the yacht and set out after a cache of buried gold coins... is partially aware/suspicious of...

Meanwhile, she's shying away from gigolo Asher Dann (from New York but looking genuinely Spanish) and it takes Stevens' maverick Joe Balfour to get badly injured for her to fall in love... or at least like...

Stevens the Humphrey Bogart from AFRICAN QUEEN type of sweaty-chested scoundrel, but his character's pretty dull, leaving Strauss as sidekick Archie to keep refilling the comic relief, even through the titular storm that mostly occurs at night, and is hardly visible to the audience...

Then there are the usual treasure seeking double-crosses and 11th hour greed-driven mad-impulse. But SEPTEMBER STORM, while a pretty dull cinematic tempest, is pretty fantastic to look at... and feels, for better or worse, like hanging out under the early 1960's Technicolor sunshine.