Underwater Shenanigans

 

So I watch the 1973 movie The Neptune Factor on YouTube and I kind of like it. So I decide to do a blog post about it, alerting my thousands of devoted readers (don't disillusion me!) to the movie's existance.

Except now that I'm writing about it, the flaws in the movie are starting to become more apparent. This doesn't retroactively prevent me from having enjoyed watching the movie, but the flaws are real.

The movie is about an undersea lab, with three men aboard, that's knocked into a deep trench by an undersea earthquake. An experimental sub--the Neptune--is sent down to see if the lab is still intact and the crew rescued.

The sub is cool and the underwater photography is quite good. Also, I like the cast, especially Ernest Borgnine as a diver and Yvette Mimieux (who played Weena in George Pal's The Time Machine) as a scientist. Ben Gazzara (an actor I normally like) puts on a very unconvincing Southern accent as the sub's designer/pilot, but he's still good in the role.

When the sub gets close to the remains of the lab, the crew discovers the deep waters are infested with huge sealife. Rescuing the crew, who are rapidly running out of air, means running a gauntlet of giant moray eels.

This is all pretty cool. The problems with the movie are:

1. Why is there sunlight this deep?

2. How can the divers so casually leave/enter the sub this deep without worrying about water pressure?

3. The "giant" fish are regular fish shot in extreme closeup without any effort to give them a sense of scale.

These problems were obvious when I watched it and more obvious now that I'm writing about it.

But, gosh darn it, I like the sub. And I like Ernest Borgnine. I watched this whole movie and I don't regret it. 

I've read of a Sean Connery rule--a rule that states if Connery was in it, the movie is worth watching no matter what its quality is otherwise. Should there be an Ernest Borgnine corollary to this rule?

Decide for yourself. Here's the movie: