Tesouro Submarino

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 ****

I was very surprised to see the terrible reviews this film got on IMDb. I also saw this film at 6:00 a.m. on American Movie Classics and I was hooked from beginning to end. The whole movie just has a good feel to it and the underwater photography is gorgeous and at times, breathtaking. The shark attack may not have been "Jaws" material, but that's not the point of the movie. The acting was fine, regardless of what anyone says, and although it may not have been the most original movie ever, people need to just start enjoying movies for what they are. STOP ANALYZING MOVIES!! OR JUST DON'T WATCH THEM!!!! The movie has enough entertainment value to keep you interested and if for nothing else, see it for the underwater sequences. This movie is not half as bad as people make it out to be.

Surprisingly good adventure film featuring Joanne Dru, as captivating as ever. Actually she's even better than usual.

An old-fashioned treasure hunt in a Mediterranean setting. Perhaps I have a soft spot for this largely forgotten film because it takes me back to vague childhood recollections of vacations spent in and around the Ballearic islands. Watching it now is like taking a holiday back to those simpler days.

A few twists and turns in the plot keep things interesting; some are variations on familiar themes and story lines, but ultimately September Storm takes on a life of its own. Let down somewhat by a few of the special effects, but if you can suspend your disbelief somewhat, you'll find a film that could have used some extra finesse, but is essentially well put together.

Gorgeous settings and underwater photography have been poorly cropped by pan and scan and as a result the action doesn't read as well as it should. Much better than expected overall. A very pleasant piece of escapism.

You have to see it to believe it!

Tonight at the Museum of Modern Art, the people who supervised its 3-D restoration explained that Leonard Maltin gave this a Bomb rating and speculated that it was because he had seen it in a flat pan-and-scan version on TV; if one saw it as the film makers intended, in a theater, in 3-D, it was pretty good.

Yes and no. Anything with a screenplay by W.R. Burnett will have my respectful attention, and I have long liked Joanne Dru, well more than her career calls for; her appearance in two John Ford westerns and RED RIVER is more than enough in the way of credentials for me. Also, Byron Haskins uses the 3-D cameras to record underwater Technicolor like nobody's business. As the first half of the story progressed, I was uncomfortable with Asher Dann's monotonic performance as Majorcan eye candy for the girls, but could see the way that Burnett's script was leading the cast into a sordid tale of cross and double cross, with a fight over sunken gold and Joanne Dru. true, Robert Strauss as the dumb wisecracker he had played in STALAG 17 couldn't manage a decent line reading either, but at least Miss Dru and Mark Stevens could... and some of the lines were stinkers.

Still, it was going along well enough. Until the intermission, and when we returned, three sailors couldn't figure out how to get sea weed out of the propellers. Nor do Portuguese man-of-wars act like that. So long as the plot dealt with human greed and weakness, it was fine. Apparently Burnett has no interest in the sea, its flora nor its fauna, even though that's about half the movie.

As a result, my opinion of this movie went from "Very good. Maybe excellent" to "Watchable". It stayed that way for the rest of the picture, even as I noted the sharks made of rubber and the plot holes; the camera-work remained great.

Which means that the fellows were right. It didn't deserve the Bomb rating that Maltin gave it. But neither should you watch it except in 3-D.

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.