<\/p>\n
I was with James in yet another of those weird suburban bars that
\ndoesn’t have a name or any obvious indication that it’s meant to be a
\npublic place. It was a Thursday night, so we were each approaching our
\ntenth beer when conversation turned to what Jezebel had done for
\nGreatsociety.org lately. Whenever we get to talking about Jezebel, we
\nalways end up talking about submarine movies.<\/p>\n
I had recently seen the David Twohy horror-fest Below<\/em>, I’d decided not to review Below<\/em> for gs.org because, I’m biased against Twohy because he wrote Waterworld<\/em>. But you can forgive him that. He gave us Pitch Black<\/em>, Below<\/em> is creepy enough to stick with me weeks later, sitting in Compared to the granddaddy submarine movie – Das Boot<\/em> – the sets are positively luxurious. They’re not as bad as the U-571<\/em> Besides, a submarine in the Pacific should make you think of Run Silent, Run Deep<\/em>. Das Boot<\/em> is, of course, the best of the best. A three year But Below<\/em> isn’t a submarine movie. It’s an uber-creepy ghost story. It’s Sixth Sense<\/em> meets Pitch Black<\/em> filmed on the Alien<\/em> set.<\/p>\n Now, if only the ghost stripped off Olivia Williams’ clothes and there Talking of extensive, sticky sex scenes always gets me talking about
\nwhich is about an American sub full of goofballs and freaky ghosts
\nbeing hunted by a German destroyer in 1943. It’s full of historical
\ninaccuracies that would make my old college professor throw up blood,
\nbut it’s still about 18 light years better than U-571<\/em> in terms of filmmaking and capturing the mood of the era. Of course, Troma’s upcoming Zombiegeddon<\/em> is likely to be 18 light years better than U-Not Very Well Done.<\/p>\n
\nfrankly, I find the writing method for reviews confining and
\nrestrictive. That’s strange. Whenever I talk about things that are
\nconfining and restrictive, I always end up talking about Jezebel.<\/p>\n
\nwhich makes this the perfect time to embarrass Rotting Corpse by saying
\nthat he’s often told me that Vin Diesel made him seriously consider
\nhomosexuality. I don’t know what’s wrong with that crazy faggot. I’m a
\nBruce Campbell man, myself.<\/p>\n
\na dark bar with James, and jumping whenever I see pale faces in the
\nshadows. In fact, I’d suggest you put it on your short list. It’s got
\nthe lovely Olivia Williams as the skirt, and every submarine movie
\nneeds a skirt. The rest of the cast is fine, as well, but I must
\nconfess to a strange preoccupation with Olivia every time she’s in a
\nscene. The plot holds water (har-har) and all of the scare moments grab
\nyou the way they’re supposed to. Look for when Lt. Brice’s stuff is
\nthrown out of the cabin onto the floor of the hallway. That’s a grand
\nscare moment right there. In fact, just talking about it made me scream
\nand fall to the floor with glazed eyes. But James says that’s just
\nbecause I drank more beer than I have blood in my body.<\/p>\n
\nsets which were borrowed from “Seaquest 2050” or whatever and painted
\nbattleship grey. Twohy did a good job keeping the technology of the sub
\nto late 40’s standards, though he really should have set it in the
\nPacific Theater. Then again, I’m a stickler for things like that…and if
\nit was in the Pacific, you wouldn’t have gotten Olivia Williams in a
\nlife raft. Additionally, Twohy admits to fiddling with the history in
\nthe excellent commentary track, and even compares Atlantic sub warfare
\nto Pacific sub warfare. So – forgiven. James says anything based in the
\nPacific would have brought up McHale’s Navy jokes, anyway. I reminded
\nhim that the original pilot for McHale’s Navy was a serious drama where
\nBorgnine and his wacky crew were stranded on an island, ruled the
\nnatives with an iron fist, took women brutally and even murdered their
\nrescuers who had come to arrest them. Seriously. There’s this long,
\ndisturbing scene where Borgnine throttles an officer. Never watch the
\nMcHale’s Navy pilot if it ever comes around on TV Land. It’ll make you
\ncry.<\/p>\n
\nRobert Wise directing Gable and Lancaster. You can’t go wrong. Well,
\nyou can, actually, when you have spacious, air conditioned subs where
\nthe entire crew remains clean shaven and dapper throughout their long
\nvoyage. It’s my favorite Moby Dick tale, though. Mad Clark Gable is
\nobsessed with hunting down the Jap destroyer that sunk him a year
\nearlier. Lancaster thinks he’s lost his mind…and tempers flare as they
\nget their asses kicked.<\/p>\n
\nodyssey led to the creation of that movie, based on the book written by
\nBuchheim (Lt. Werner in the movie). His experiences on U-96 and at a
\nport in France towards the end of the war were enough to make him a
\nrabid anti-war fanatic, and you see why in Das Boot<\/em>. Nothing beats it, and I think it’s an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t try to outdo that film.<\/p>\n
\nwas a long, 45 minute sex scene… Ah, yes. That would have made for a
\nfull Saturday of frame by frame screen grabs.<\/p>\n
\nJezebel, so I’m going to cut myself short. Besides, James just came
\nback to the table with an unlabeled bottle of…I don’t know what.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,179],"class_list":["post-2450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-james"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2902,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions\/2902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}