Raiders from Beneath the Sea

A cross between beatnik frantic-bongo jazz and a ball game organist grinding between innings, the background music's not fully intended to be paid attention to: As it starts and stops again and again, louder than even the external noises of an apartment building or one street on Catalina Island's Avalon...

Where the RAIDERS, not really FROM BENEATH THE SEA - the title making this b-caper heist-thriller sound like some kind of aquatic creature feature... But leading crook Ken Scott, a tall, handsome, square-jawed part-time diver and full time building manager plans on wearing frogmen scuba gear in order to, well, at first the plan, conceived in various rooms by Bill and his ragtag, thrown-together "gang" consisting of a professional yet timidly reluctant old diver (like someone from a Hemingway story, or some kind of Pulpy Bogart Florida Keys adventure) and his polar opposite flip-side in a young and shirtless, flirtatious, beer-drinking loser who spends his life hanging around wives of tenants and especially yearns for big Bill's beautiful girlfriend...

Enter the sole ingenue and our titular starlet, Merry Anders: this is her smallest second-billed (which she usually is) role and yet, she alone gives this b-movie a touch of Film Noir element in that she knows what's about to "go down" and then has to come to moral grips with it, which can ruin the entire score... So, given her frustrating lack of screen-time, she's actually pretty important...

For a "bad movie" BENEATH, directed by one of our favorite drive-in auteurs, Maury Dexter, isn't too shabby, randomly adding a spooky horror/science-fiction orchestration during particularly suspenseful moments without dialogue...

Or, like some of his biker flicks later on, a bongo-driven avalanche. But there's mostly talk going on here, with conversations about the heist, especially when the inspired idea-man who'd discussed it a year earlier, Booth Coleman's Purdy, seeming like the token monologue actor (as opposed to tough guy reactor), fills space as the second act flows neatly into the extremely anticipated caper - that's where the jazzy organ grinder really comes alive...

You can almost feel the cool salt wind of Avalon's bright daylight as two of the frogmen, Bill and veteran actor Russ Bender as Tucker - the diving expert who's boat they're using while Coleman and the drunk kid wait on board - walk with harpoons like rifles up to the nearby bank...

But the real, most palpable suspense already peaked when the vapid punk almost screwed the entire deal by trying to do that very thing with Anders' put-upon Dottie... And finally, to equal his muscular and tall, square-jawed persona, here we got to see just how strong Bill really is, practically knocking the kid's life-lights out entirely...

As we all know, in the Noir genre, which RAIDERS is a Matchbox Car rendition of the Indy 500, "Crime Never Pays" and so the turnout, while predictable and anti-climatic, just might raise the viewer's pulse rate with some last minute violence providing this groovy 1964 programmer a little glimpse of 1970's exploitation drive-in fare - and would've actually worked much better had it been made a decade later... Perhaps timing's the real problem.

No. 1: A nice tour of Santa Catalina Island as it was 50 years ago. It is no doubt a bit more crowded now. No. 2: An unbilled guest appearance by the S.S. Catalina, aka The Great White Steamer. Great shots of the lady in her fortieth year, still looking young. At age 50 she retired to Mexico and was allowed to rot away, another seminal icon lost to neglect. So many Southern Californians, maybe as many as 25 million, rode her to Avalon By the Bay and I was one of them. And we saw the flying fishes play! No. 3: A good chance to see Miss Merry Anders at her best. Not too long after this she gave up on Hollywood and began working at Litton Industries in Van Nuys, CA. I also worked there (27 years) and saw her for many a year as she was the receptionist at the main entrance. She was very elegant in her business suits and became even more beautiful in middle age. An extremely nice lady.

Raiders from beneath the Sea is a low budget crime movie from the 1960's. Four men plan to rob a bank and then escape via scuba diving.

It's an easy to follow plot and although the actors aren't great I found their performances strangely fascinating. There was a good chemistry between Ken Scott and Merry Anders as well as over a foot difference in height!.

It all gets strangely surreal towards the end and it must feature the first and only bank robbery with full scuba gear.

This is not a great film by any means but it is something different and kept me watching for it's full duration. I loved the ending.

Although I appear to be in a small minority, I really enjoyed it.

The only thing that keeps this from being 1 out of 10 stars is Merry Anders looking fairly decent in a 1960s style bikini. Terrible,terrible movie... The pseudo-jazz score offends all the senses. It is almost a blessing when there is no dialogue. But then the viewer is tortured by some kind of jazz recital with a Hammond organ and a set of bongos. Do not miss the scene in the bank. Bad writing/acting/music all meshed together in one short scene. It is no wonder that Merry Anders retired from acting a few years later. She is a pretty girl and has talent, but she deserved better than this.

Amazingly bad movie.

I was expecting Raiders From Beneath the Sea to be good for some cheesy B movie chuckles. To my surprise, this film has some qualities that raise it a notch or two above the usual fare. 1. Overall, the acting decent, with an especially credible performance from Merry Anders. 2. The cinematography is better than average for a B movie. 3. Some (not all) of the dialogue is snappy film noir, especially the lines delivered by Russ Bender as Tucker. This film isn't a keeper, but it has enough going for it to set it apart from the laughable B movies. I watched it back-to-back with Rocket To the Moon (formerly known as Cat Women of the Moon, as described in the titles), and this one provided the cheesy laughs I was expecting. Marie Windsor, the Queen of the Bs, must have recognized the movie is so bad it isn't even campy, because she didn't put much effort into her performance, although Victor Jory, and, oddly, Sonny Tufts rose above the material.