Ghost Diver

The star of a TV adventure show promises his viewers he will recover a lost treasure, and accompanied by his secretary (the brains of the operation) and his son (struggling to live up to his father's reputation) encounter an unscrupulous and deadly adversary in the person of their native guide, and an exotic love interest and manhood test for the son. A pair of romances, some jealous scuffles and similar domestic struggles liven things up a bit, but you know if it is a diving movie you can expect a lot of scenes of people in scuba gear swimming past the camera. That is exactly what you get. In addition to cave diving there is also cliff diving to add novelty appeal. People scuba dive in caves, and dive off cliffs into the ocean, but not at the same time. There is some puzzle solving with the placement of an idol in an underwater temple to reveal the hidden treasure, and a sort of a ghost diver maybe, but the grand finale comes completely out of left field and caused this viewer the most excitement, bafflement and consternation of anything in the film. No, you have to sit through this yourself if you want to know what it was but believe me it is a real surprise. A fairly okay B movie is made weird by its semiprofessional co-writers/directors' ideas of where a plot ought to go, and it seems they never did it again. This occupies the time fairly well, but rarely gets exciting until that one minute or so of "what the heck is THIS?" that almost makes the preceding events worth sitting through. Not a real recommendation, I know, but if you are the type who likes this sort of challenge, it is okay to see once.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Richard Einfeld and Merrill G. White; Produced by Einfeld, for 20th Century-Fox release. Screenplay by Merrill G. White; Photography by John M. Nickolaus Jr.; Edited by White; Music by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter; Art Direction by Ernst Fegte; Stuntwoman: Diane Webber. Starring: James Craig, Audrey Totter, Nico Minardos, Lowell Brown and Rodolfo Hoyos Jr.

Supernatural revenge is heaped upon a greedy heavy who kills for a treasure. Nice underwater big jugs shots (of Diane Webber from "Mermaids of Tiburon") highlight this cheapie.