A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer (Widmark) to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III. Mixes deviously plotted schoolboy fiction with submarine spectacle and cold war heroics.Run Time: 103 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: NR UPC: 024543436645 Manufacturer No: 2243664
Two reliable genres--submarine adventure and the threat of World War III--come together in director (and co-writer) Samuel Fuller's Hell and High Water, a 1954 film that remains surprisingly relevant more than half a century later. When an enormous nuclear explosion is traced to somewhere between the tip of northern Japan and the Arctic Circle, followed by the disappearance of a prominent French atomic scientist (Victor Francen), it's clear that something's up. Did the prof defect to the dark (actually, the Red) side? Was he abducted? As it turns out, he's actually part of a group of scientists, businessmen, and other distinguished gentlemen planning to send a sub to check out the scene and determine the extent of the threat. Enter Capt. Adam Jones (the redoubtable Richard Widmark), who agrees to helm the private, very secret mission for a hefty cash reward; enter also the professor's "assistant" (Bella Darvi), herself a skilled scientist who goes along for the ride, thereby quickening the pulse of every able-bodied sailor on board the sub, especially the captain's. Hell and High Water was filmed in Technicolor and CinemaScope, as studios tried to induce audiences to abandon their TVs in favor of movie theaters; it also earned an Oscar nomination for its special effects, and considering the relatively primitive state of that art at the time, they're not bad. Fuller does a nice job of depicting the cramped, funky confines of our heroes' craft, a vessel of dubious seaworthiness captured from the Japanese during World War II. The plot, involving the Chinese's dastardly plan to incite a nuclear conflagration and blame the U.S., is preposterous; yet if you substitute North Korea or Iran for China, the notion of a rogue nation with atomic capabilities is no less timely now than then. Fuller largely avoids political flag-waving; his main point lies in a speech delivered (more than once) by the French professor: "Each man has his own reason for living… and his own price for dying." Extras include an interesting biography of Widmark from the A&E show of that same name. --Sam Graham
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