September Storm

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.

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.

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.

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.

September Storm is obviously one of those kind of movies they just don't make anymore. In the 1950s and early 60s, the ingredients for an adventure movie were an exotic locale, a handsome hero, a sassy and pretty girl and a couple of bad guys. This movie has all these ingredients and they are mostly put to good use. The story itself is simple: two shady characters convince a Majorcan sailor to use his boss's yacht to recover sunken gold. A lovely American model is thrown in to keep things interesting. The voyage leads to cross and double-cross as the men quarrel over the money and the "dame". Underwater scenes are actually filmed very well considering the period, although the use of a rubber shark is unconvincing. There are several cringey moments of sexism in the dialog that are reflective of the period. Perhaps the most outstanding is when the bad guy says something to the effect of "Why do I gotta cook? - we gotta woman".

There is some glaring unevenness in the characters. One moment they are literally trying to kill one another and in the following scene they're all one big happy crew. The ending is kind of open-ended and a tad unsatisfying but at least nobody got killed.