THE FROGMEN |
|
Review by Chuck "Ribbit" Dixon |
|
|
|
Another "sleeper" DVD that may hae slipped beneath
your notice and certainly won't be found at Blockbuster.
This 1949 war movie about the Underwater Demolition Teams of WWII (precursors to today's SEALs) was a childhood favorite of mine. Channel Six in Philly showed it constantly. If a Phillies game got rained out you could be sure that one of three movies would be shown; Blood Alley, Hell and High Water or The Frogmen. The movie is a straight-up, stow-the-nonsense story of a team of divers led by new team commander Richard Widmark. Widmark is an unsentimental task master replacing the team's beloved former skipper who's been killed in action. Lots of tension which Widmark always plays so well. The highlights of the rest of the team are Dana Andrews, Jeffrey Hunter and Harvey Lembeck. Lembeck is playing a character named "Canarsie" instead of his usual "Brooklyn" You can only wonder how he dealt with the change in his performance. And we have Gary Merrill (at the time he was Mr Bette Davis) as the captain of the transport ship our heroes call home. There are several tense scenes as the boys skin-dive to the shores of Japanese-held islands and, under fire, spy out beach fortifications and plant explosives. The scenes of the rapid drop-off and pick-up boats are performed in the movie by the cast as well as real U.S. Navy divers. The U.S. Navy also provides some spectacular "special effects" by shelling the living hell out of the Hawaiian atole where the movie was filmed. The best scene in the movie is a very tense disarming of a Japanese torpedo which is stuck unexploded through the ship's hull. I won't ruin it by describing it any more. But the scene has three levels of tension going for it and feels very real. You also get your climax with our heroes going up against Japanese divers in a hidden sub-pen. Lots of struggling in flippers and close-work with diving knives. It all comes in at a trim 96 minutes and paced for diversion throughout. A perfect example of the kind of sturdy second feature Fox made under Zanuck -- all meat and no filler. And not a dame in sight. Probably one of the reasons I liked it so much as a kid; no "kissing" scenes to get in the way of the bloodthirsty stuff.
|
©2005 by Chuck Dixon. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced without permission. |
|
|
|