Submarine Seahawk

Submarine Seahawk is one of those films that you or I could put together with some stock footage and a knowledge of all the clichés involved in making a submarine motion picture.

The U.S.S. Seahawk has a mission and it looks like a suicide one. Under new skipper John Bentley, they're to go into a secret Japanese base and report when the task force is being refitted. Then the Americans are to pull their own Pearl Harbor.

For reasons only the writers know, the purpose of the mission is kept secret from the crew. Why, God only knows, because where's everybody going to go and tell once they're at sea. So the crew is grumbling why they're going out of the way to avoid engaging the enemy.

John Bentley, Brett Halsey and the rest of the no name cast deserve some kind of medal for wading through this tripe and delivering some kind of decent performances. All the clichés involving submarine films are alive and thriving in Submarine Seahawk.

Will they come home from the mission? Watch the film if you dare and care.

"Submarine Seahawk" is the sort of war film that should be pretty awful. After all, it reuses some footage from another film, is made by American-International Pictures, a couple of the characters are indifferentlbroadly written and the budget is minimal...with mostly no-name actors. Yet, despite this, it's surprisingly effective and worth seeing...even if it does currently have a paltry 4.9 overall rating.

The film begins with the crew of the Seahawk sinking a Japanese ship with their final torpedo. But instead of meeting up with a nearby supply depot for more torpedoes, the ship is ordered to Pearl Harbor. Once they arrive, they learn why. The ship's commander is being given a promotion to a desk job and the cold and generally disliked Lt. Commander Turner is being given command. While the skipper wanted one of his other officers to receive command, he was informed that Turner is needed because he is so knowledgeable about Japanese ships....and their next mission is NOT to sink boats but to do reconnaissance. It seems that the Japanese have pulled all their best ships out of action and the US command wants to know where these boats are.

With these orders, the crew is not happy. After all, they want to sink ships. And at least initially, they hate that Turner is avoiding fights and is only interested in relaying his reports back to Pearl. What's next? See the film.

Apart from a couple characters who are one dimensional, such as Lt. Shore and the nerdy seaman, the film actually worked well. The prior footage was integrated well and despite the cast being unknowns, the acting was pretty good. Underrated and worth seeing.

The story isn't much, but the miniature footage is pretty good for an AIP quickie and the stock footage is quite well integrated for once. It won't set your world alight but it's certainly better than some of the other AIP war films (Paratroop Command, Tank Batallion, etc.)

For an old movie, this movie did not interest me like the World War II movies starring John Wayne. The acting is iffy, there is not much action, and the dialogue is not funny and makes the story even more boring. There are better movies than this out there.

dumb dialogue, lousy acting, silly story, overly dramatic background music. It ends up being a satire or caricature of all the good submarine movies even though they were being serious when they made it.

It uses every cliché of a submarine movie, crew members going nuts, sneaking thru minefields, torpedoes that miss, the captain following orders in conflict with the crew, getting depth charged, having to make repairs while the enemy is around.

It's not a crew I would want to go to sea with, untrained, undisciplined. The main plot is implausible. I could see a movie of this quality coming out 20 years earlier when they cranked out propaganda movies for the war. The character development needs a little work. I'm not surprised the actors are unfamiliar to anybody.