Il tesoro sommerso

...about 10 minutes before the end of this fun movie, the lead actors are struggling underwater, when all of a sudden Richard Egan (..or his stunt double) reaches across the front of Jane Russell (..or HER stunt double) to free her from some impeding disaster, and as he pulls away his hand he pulls down her bathing suit ever so briefly and exposes the right nipple...

THIS is what HDTV wide screen technology can do..stuff that got by the editors years ago is now there for detailed and easy to see review.....DVDs make it even easier, but you have to catch UNDERWATER on cable..(..of course you can Tivo it and freeze frame whatever...)

**MINOR SPOILERS** Midly entertaining sunken treasure adventure movie that's only kept afloat by it's star Jane Russell, Theresa Gray, who's constantly competing in the movie with the breath-taking Caribbean scenery off the coast of Cuba. Finding some underwater artifacts that suggest their from a Spanish Man of War it's decided by the sunken-ship treasure hunters Johnny & Dom, Richard Egan & Gilbert Roland, to get a bigger boat to go back out at sea to recover the hundreds of gold bars and box-loads of priceless gems submerged there.

It takes a while for Johnny to first get his wife Thereas to go along with his, what seemed to her, water logged plan. It's then that Lady Luck struck him and Dom when looking to rent a 50 foot boat from this guy Robinson they finds that he checked out of town and left his boat over to his totally land-locked minded young secretary Gloria, Lori Nelson, who's more then willing to let the two treasure hunters use it.

There's a number of unexpected event happen to the quintet with a local padre Father Cannon ,Robert Keith, coming on board who's only interested in recovering a life size solid gold Virgin Mary statue studded with diamonds to be returned to her rightful owners in the little church in Panama where she originally came from. Later there's this boat-load of shark hunters headed by the scuzzy-looking Rico, Joseph Caileia,looking for garbage from John's boat to use as bait to attract the underwater predators. Rico smells a rat, or a gold bar, when John tells him he and Dom are only looking for underwater rocks to be studied by the professors and students at Havana University.

The movie "Underwater" comes to it's very predictable conclusion when after reaching the underwater sunken treasure site Johnny is left by himself with Dom suffering from the bends. It's then when we finally get to see Theresa or actress Jane Russell, who we earlier briefly saw in a swimsuit, put on her bathing suit and dive underwater to help and possible save her husband, Johnny, from either drowning or getting eaten up by sharks. Theresa for all her efforts gets stuck in the sunken ships wreckage where we then have Johnny making it back to the boat to get her an extra oxygen tank. You wonder why all this was really necessary when Theresa has those two giant natural air supply tanks that can easily keep Theresa breathing for at least a week!

With Johnny and Theresa as well as Dom who heroically came to both their aid, risking his life doing it, back on the boat their again confronted by the shark-hunters who were disarmed and left on shore by Johnny & Dom just a while earlier. We then have another boring battle between them and Johnny & Dom which ends with everybody shaking hands and becoming friends> This happens when one of the shark hunters got very religious, which quickly affected the rest of his crew-mates, over the the fact that all this violence was over a golden statue of the Virgin Mary the mother of the Prince of Peace!

Nothing that you wouldn't expect or want in a movie like "Underwater", except hoping to see a lot more of Jane Russell in a tight swimsuit, with a happy ending without anyone in the film getting killed. With the most seriously injury among the cast being that they got a bit wet under and between the ears and,in the case of Dom, a very bad case of the Caribbean cramps.

I saw this movie, the first time, in NYC at one of the big screen palaces, as a child. I remember distinctly my father calling one of his friends afterward and telling him he HAD to go see this movie because near the end, you got to see Jane Russell's bare breast for an instant. 50 years later, watching this on Turner Classic Movies, I saw he was right. However, it may have been Ms. Russell's stunt double, as I'd read she'd used one during the diving scenes. Yes, I did TiVo it and yes, Egan clearly exposed her nipple for a second. Subliminal? I bet the editor and director, on the Moveola machine DID know this and left it in!

Howard Hughes was a producer that had a lot of talent for discovering beautiful women that went on to have better careers with other vehicles than the ones he decided to create for them. That seems to be the case of this John Sturges' 1955 film "Underwater!" in which the curvaceous Jane Russell starred for the last time for Howard Hughes.

The film is a curious one. We are introduced to Johnny and Dominic, two underwater divers who are searching for those sunken ships in the Caribbean, especially this one, not too far from Cuba. As they stumble into the old Spanish galleon, they find a man that appears to be a sort of pirate awaiting for them because it's obvious they are after those treasures.

As Johnny and Dominic go back to Cuba, we are introduced to Theresa, Johnny's wife, who is dead set against spending money chasing his dreams. But when Dominic meets Gloria, by chance, she tells him about the yacht she has been left with by a departing old flame. So the four friends, and a priest who knows about those sunk ships, go in search of the riches trapped underwater.

The film doesn't bring anything new to this film genre. In fact, it's pretty tame stuff we see in a predictable story we know how it will end. The best reward for the viewers of "Underwater" is the beautiful Jane Russell at her best. She was one of the sultriest women working in films during those days. The problem is the male stars who give by the numbers performances. Joseph Calleia is the only one that shows any spunk as the man who wants the riches from under the sea.

I enjoy this movie very much and try to watch it periodically. As someone who took up SCUBA diving the year before this movie was made, I'd like to call attention to the fact that it is the first full length feature movie in which SCUBA was used. In fact, it was so early in the development of equipment that the tanks that they were using were smaller than the 72 cubic foot tanks that became standard for steel tanks.(There were other sizes.) Also, note the two hose regulators that are all but obsolete, the early flipper designs, and the primitive back packs. To some, the story may seem a little corny, but so were early aviation pictures and early submarine pictures. This considered, I think that the movie deserves look.