Le démon des eaux troubles

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.

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.

Although she didn't make but three major Hollywood motion pictures, Bella Darvi had magnificent screen magnetism that made a man's pulse beat red hot. In this campy picture (her first film), she does a fine job in her first effort as a film actress, displaying good technique cinematically. She was, as they say, a natural.

The French accent, the smooth skin, the sharp facial bone structure, those arched eyebrows, that smoldering stare, and that oh-so-sexy slightly cross-eyed look just made a guy want and wonder. Her voice was strong and yet soft at the right moments. There was something about her that made a man want scoop her up into his arms and say, "Hey, baby, it's gonna be okay!"

It's too bad that she was perhaps a victim of her own sexuality as it is rumored that Mrs. Darryl Zanuck discovered there might have been some hanky-panky with Mr. 20th Century Fox.

Richard Widmark is fittingly commanding and cantankerous as the sub skipper, and Cameron Mitchell does what he did so well in playing the comic relief sidekick sonar guy.

The script and it's dialog is something straight out of a comic book, but you've got to love it. It's got all of the marbles in one bag: submarines, underwater battles complete with ramming full speed ahead, a silent running sweatout, crash dives, commando shore raids, evil Commies, a spy guy named Chin Lee, a B-29 bomber, and just to put the cherry on the Boston cream pie, the obligatory nuclear explosion.

Check Bella Darvi out opposite Kirk Douglas in "The Racers". There again, the lady is smokin' hot!

So, if you want a good time, pop some corn, pull up a chair, and watch "Hell and High Water"!!!

Hell and High Water is a great Fifties film with Richard Widmark and his handpicked crew of WWII veterans trying to foil a dastardly Communist plot to start WWIII.

Widmark is a former submarine commander who's been hired to check out a secret base that the Communist Chinese seem to be building in the islands north of Japan. The group that's hired him is some kind of consortium of western scientists who seem to be operating as a secret society. Like Captain Midnight or heaven forfend, the Tri-Lateral Commission.

Parts of the plot and definitely some of the footage is taken from another submarine picture that 20th Century Fox did, Crash Dive. It's so obvious, especially when you have Richard Widmark's voice with no closeups, over the footage from the previous film. That also concerned a secret Nazi base in the Atlantic and the submarine crew that went to clean them out.

Along for the ride in the submarine are scientists Victor Francen and his assistant Bella Darvi who was Darryl Zanuck's main squeeze at the time. Ms. Darvi had a short and tragic life and her story would make a real interesting picture.

Far more interesting than this, though I will say the submarine special effects are outstanding.

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.