Le Guerrier sous-marin

"Underwater Warrior" is a very unusual film for Dan Dailey. While he was known as a song and dance man for Twentieth Century-Fox, here following the end of his Fox contract, he's starring in a film for MGM about a famous Naval diver, Commander Francis Fane. Fane was responsible for modernizing the Navy's diving program through dangerous experiments during the 1940s-50s.

This is definitely a film fans of his musicals might strongly dislike. After all, it's a biopic...and no trace of singing or dancing! As for me, I really enjoyed it because I am a reasonably experienced diver with a couple hundred dives to my credit. I found it fascinating to see how primitive the equipment was as well as some of their assumptions. I thought it was funny when Fane was doing an underwater dive from a submarine and the Captain of the sub didn't want to let him and his dive partner go because the water was infested with barracuda. At the time, they didn't know that these fish are among the most curious and will follow divers but never harm them unless they do something stupid like try to pet them or if the divers are wearing flashy jewelry. I love diving with the fish...and sometimes they follow you during dives out of what seems like genuine curiosity.

I liked this film for many reasons...not just because I love diving. For the most part, the film really is pretty accurate. Also, I was thrilled the movie was NOT packed with crappy stock footage and the underwater scenes were well made. Overall, a very good departure for Dailey and a fine picture.