Underwater! (1955) coming from WAC

[McCrutchy]

Coming in January 2020:

NEW 2020 1080p HD MASTER FROM 4K SCAN OF ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE!

UNDERWATER! (1954)
Run Time 99:00
Subtitles English SDH
Sound Quality DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English
Aspect Ratio 2.0:1 16 X 9 LETTERBOX
Product Color COLOR
Disc Configuration BD 50

From masterful director John Sturges (BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, THE GREAT ESCAPE) comes this RKO romantic action adventure set in the exotic world of the Caribbean! Hollywood beauty Jane Russell is Theresa, girlfriend of ship operator Johnny (Richard Egan), who teams up with perennial rainbow chaser Dominic (Gilbert Roland). They hunt for fabled treasure lost in an old Spanish galleon off the Cuban coast. Amid the threat of rapacious sharks and the hazards of underwater salvaging, the adventurers work against time. They must raise the gold from its ghostly grave before the rotting old ship’s hull slips off the ledge where it has rested for centuries. If that weren’t enough, the group must also outwit a local pirate. This thriller is photographed in Technicolor® in a beautiful setting of lush tropical ports and unfathomable undersea locations, now restored to its original Superscope glory!

[McCrutchy]

Super excited to see this one. I understand it's not that good, but how can Jane Russell in Technicolor and a bathing suit--from a new 4K scan of the OCN, no less--not be worth a day one purchase?

[revgen]

WAC seems to be restoring their problematic RKO library. Good to see.

I'll be grabbing this. I saw it on TCM some years ago and I enjoyed it.

[whiteberry]

Nice surprise...I thought we were going to be stuck with the ancient VHS/laserdisc forever.

Underwater! (1955) trailer - YouTube

Hopefully, The French Line will be released in the near future too.

The French Line - Movie Trailer - Jane Russel - 1953 - 1950's - YouTube

The French Line (Jane Russell) Original Trailer - YouTube

[whiteberry]

Its premiere took place underwater and was crashed by a then-unknown Jayne Mansfield:

For the world premiere in January 1955, the film was projected on a submerged movie screen in Silver Springs, Florida. Invited guests were encouraged to don aqualungs and bathing suits so that they could watch the picture while swimming.

In the above photo, United Press writer Aline Mosby (right) and Jane Russell prepare to submerge for the premiere. Miss Mosby wrote of the premiere, “Except for fascinating fish, seaweed, bubbles and wriggling reporters floating by, we could have been in Grauman’s Chinese Theater.”

https://remindmagazine.wordpress.com...with-the-gold/

It was produced by RKO, which was owned by the wealthy and eccentric Howard Hughes, and released in 1955. Geared to produce widespread publicity, which it did, the idea behind the premiere was for Russell and Eagan to actually view the film under water.

The viewing lasted just a few minutes, but that short episode, close to approaching a farce, resulted in widespread stories and pictures in major newspapers and magazines for a long period of time.

A sidebar to the event was the unscheduled plunge into the springs by the then-unknown Jayne Mansfield. Shivering in the cold air after emerging from the water, I offered her the sport coat I was wearing. (The coat proved to be a bragging right until it finally wore out.) Earlier in the day she had paraded around the attraction wearing the skimpiest bikini seen in this area to that point.

Her bid to gain publicity and hopefully enhance her career paid off. Pictures taken by the large contingent of photographers appeared in newspapers across the country the next day, paving the way for the buxom blonde to land a role in a Broadway show, in turn leading to stardom in Hollywood.

https://www.ocala.com/entertainment/...t-big-premiere

[ravenus]

Who is the brunette person on the right?

[McCrutchy]

Originally Posted by ravenus

Who is the brunette person on the right?

Jane Russell.

[canucksam]

At least we know where they got the idea from.

[Swissangel4616]

finally on blu... never seen this before... blind buy. but might be definitive better than the coming up german "DVD" in 4:3 Format

[Swissangel4616]

Originally Posted by ravenus

Who is the brunette person on the right?

is this question meant to be serious?

[whiteberry]

The website's review is up:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Under...259094/#Review

[McCrutchy]

I got my copy today and just finished watching it now. I thought this was a cute movie, but I can see how others would find it weak or boring. For me, I just love Jane Russell and oh my, does this movie deliver her in spades! She must wear a dozen different outfits in the film, including a pair of red short shorts and briefly, a couple different two-piece bikinis, although her main swimwear is a red one-piece, and not the red two-piece shown on the posters which never does make an appearance. I mention this because I was so busy looking at Jane that I may have been less aware of the film's shortcomings. And yes, there are one or two revealing wardrobe moments, which I wasn't looking for, but noticed all the same.

One thing that is certain is that the film is really light on plot and there is barely any conflict until the end, although that made for a sort of relaxing travelogue experience. I suppose if you don't like Richard Egan or Gilbert Roland you might find the film tortuously boring, but I really enjoyed Roland's happy-go-lucky character and I thought he and Joseph Calleia stole the show in terms of what little narrative the film actually has.

The Blu-ray is absolutely stunning. Obviously, the underwater shots look a bit less clear, especially when on location, but most of the close-ups, which I assume were shot in a tank, look stellar, in fact, they look so good that you can now tell that Gilbert Roland is not in most or all of the underwater footage. Indeed, for whatever reason, Roland's character is clearly played by a Caucasian diver whose hair and skin tone is nowhere near Roland's sunburnt skin and considerably hairy body. I assume the same is true at least most of the time for Egan and Russell (in one underwater scene, Russell's character is sporting red nails when in the film, she actually has clear nails), although at least some of their close-ups underwater on the wreck look like it could be them, particularly at the climax.

Above the water, however, it's virtually all pin-sharp. A handful of shots look to have come from a source a bit further away than the negative, but that's only noticeable because so much of the film otherwise looks pristine. The red of Jane Russell's short shorts and her brunette hair, the orange-brown of the frequently topless Gilbert Roland, and of course. the blue-green hues of the water come through with incredible clarity. We really are incredibly lucky to get films remastered to this level for Blu-ray in this day and age, and this film is worth the price of admission just to see WAC's superlative remastering efforts come through once again--that is, if Jane Russell isn't enough.

[Walrus Gumboot]

Great review! As it's a blind buy for me I'm hoping it's in a similar vein to "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" made two years earlier and also staring Gilbert Roland. Twilight times release of that looks great. I'm thinking this movie will sit very well next to that one. There's a great sub plot in "Beneath the 12 Mile Reef" that involves an onary giant octopus... Not sure if there's a giant octopus in "Underwater" but there looks to be sunken wrecks and treasure, which is the next best thing. Oh, and of course not forgetting the lovely Jane Russell!

[PRO-630HD]

So this is a BD-R?

[John Hermes]

Originally Posted by PRO-630HD

So this is a BD-R?

No. Pressed.

[zepol]

Originally Posted by Swissangel4616

finally on blu... never seen this before... blind buy. but might be definitive better than the coming up german "DVD" in 4:3 Format

Promoted as RKO's first production in SuperScope, like all the rest of the so-called "SuperScope" productions, this was filmed in the standard academy ratio of 4:3, then cropped top and bottom in the Technicolor labs for wide screen "SuperScope" presentation. No special cameras or lenses were used for this process.

[zepol]

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

I got my copy today and just finished watching it now. I thought this was a cute movie, but I can see how others would find it weak or boring.

It's a movie for historical viewing of the 1950s'. It's not THE DEEP.

[Mose Harper]

^ And that's exactly how I enjoyed it. Part of the pleasure of seeing something like this, produced decades before I existed, is the pop culture archeology aspect of it all.
Hell, even The Deep is too dated for some( most?) audiences at this point (almost half a century on ).

FWIW, I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. It wasn't any forgotten classic, but it was an entertaining programmer, with decent production values, from a simpler time.
Not to mentioned presented very well by WA.

[RalphoR]

Originally Posted by whiteberry

Its premiere took place underwater and was crashed by a then-unknown Jayne Mansfield:

[Show spoiler]https://remindmagazine.wordpress.com...with-the-gold/



https://www.ocala.com/entertainment/...t-big-premiere

They don't make 'em like this anymore.