Stuart Whitman is Admiral Michael Matthews, who is ordered by the President of the United States to retake command of Pacifica, a large, underwater scientific research facility. Upon his arrival at the city beneath the sea, he is besieged by crises, including sabotage, espionage, various disgruntled colleagues, and a rogue comet that is going to collide with Earth right above his sub-oceanic seabase! In addition, Pacifica is in the process of receiving the U.S.' entire gold reserve from Fort Knox (shipped by rocket!) and a group of thieves (including Matthews' own brother - played by Robert Wagner) have an elaborate scheme in place for stealing all of it!
I don't recall seeing City Beneath The Sea on television in '71 (I was only six), nor did I catch it on TV in the years between then and now. Fortunately for me, it is available as part of the Warner Archive Collection, both as a manufactured-on-demand DVD and on their online streaming service, which is where I finally caught up with it. I enjoyed it considerably (as you probably guessed), but then, I'm a big fan of the Voyage to The Bottom Of The Sea series and Allen's other 60s shows. I'll definitely be adding the DVD to my 70s sci-fi library one of these days.
As for Irwin Allen, he may not have sold City Beneath The Sea as a weekly series, but he continued to do pretty well as a producer of theatrical films (and TV movies) during the decade, becoming the king of 70s disaster epics, with such hits as The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, The Swarm, and others.
As a boy in the '70s, I watched this film on a television in the mid '70s before I ever saw reruns of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea beginning in 1977. I loved that they reused the Flying Sub.
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I can't begin to tell you how many aquariums i attempted to build "Pacifica" in as a kid because of this movie! I bought it from Warner Archive about a year ago and really enjoyed watching again for the first time in over 35 years! I LOVED the whole undersea genre back in the day, including Voyage ttBotS, Man from Atlantis (which owes a small bit to the fella in City Beneath the Sea that is almost exactly Mark Harris) and Sealab 2020 which i also just got from WA a few weeks back.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've always loved underwater sci-fi too - traveling beneath the sea in a submarine isn't all that different from flying through space in a starship. :)
DeleteI remember watching this when I was a kid and really enjoying it. I was always a fan of Irwin Allen's television series.
ReplyDeleteI'd LOVE to see this flick somewhere, I don't recall ever having watched it as a kid.
ReplyDelete"Yeah, I've always loved underwater sci-fi too"
ReplyDeleteYou must have been one of the dozen people you watched SeaQuest DSV!
As much as I can appreciate many of these semi-cheesy 60s/70s shows, I can't find anything in my heart but a deep, abiding indifference to SQdsv.
(ironic catcha phrase "sonar PT"
Actually, I've tried a few times to get into SeaQuest, but just found it joyless and dull. Even the worst episodes of Voyage to The Bottom Of The sea were more fun.
DeleteGeorge Pal didn't seem to fare any better during the '70s. I remember seeing his art for a proposed Time Machine sequel in Starlog that never materialized.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen this in decades, and remember very little about it. I do have an unaired ( and cheesy ) pilot short that was included on the "Fantasy Worlds Of Irwin Allen" documentary disc.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, forever hold a grudge against this movie for one reason: So Irwin likes to reuse props and models for new productions, and repurposes the Flying Sub in this one? Fine and dandy. What I'm not cool with is that he took one of the original Jupiter 2 miniatures ( complete with Alpha Control Launch pad ) and had the FX guys hack extra windows in it, so it could be used as a f@*&ing background building for the undersea city! I don't even know if it's visible in the finished film, but I've seen pictures of the butchered model when it was auctioned off by Fox as they were cleaning house in the '80s.
I also feel the same way about Allen's "New Adventures Of Captain Nemo" because one of the original "Seaview" miniatures had it's nose hacked off and was redetailed to be Nemo's "Nautilus".
I know that the producers and studios never used to have the reverence for these pieces that the fans did, and they were simply looking to save some money by retooling models they felt had no further value, but as a fan who grew up loving these things, it sickened me to see them butchered so thoughtlessly.
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The Seaview nose -- the "medium" model, used for underwater scenes -- exists; you can see it on many websites. I'm with you, I wish it had been saved, but on the other hand, in the TV producer's eye, these are not collectibles, but tools to create a show with. The model looked great on TV, and we can still see it on film, DVD.
DeleteThe original release of CBTS was 98 minutes, but the DVD is only 93 minutes. 5 minutes have been cut without explanation and the DVD has no special features or deleted scenes to show what's missing.
ReplyDeleteI believe the missing minutes has a scene of Lia Holmes children in a classroom being taught by a computer....could be wrong, but I think that might be what I remember from the original airing in 1971, on NBC.
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