Raiders from Beneath the Sea

In 50+ years of movie going this is one of my finalists for WORST film ever. Watching the bandits stroll up the street in full scuba gear -with fins-so as to escape notice is a high point. This is a great candidate for a film to watch without sound and provide your own dialog. Don't worry you'll improve on the original.

With the possible exception of Merry Anders who did some films with known players and who had a television series based on How To Marry A Millionaire, I doubt you will know anybody else in the cast. That's good because I'm sure they wanted to stay anonymous.

Although this sounds like a science fiction title Raiders From Beneath The Sea is really a caper film about two guys, Ken Scott and Russ Bender, who decide to use their scuba diving skills to rob a bank in Catalina. Scott is married to Anders and went bankrupt in a bad business venture. Now he just basically lives off his wife's charity managing her apartment building.

His brother Garth Benton lives off the both of them and he horns in on the deal. So does small time crook Booth Colman complete with one lousy cornpone accent.

Not much to recommend it. The acting is terrible, the direction non-existent, the photography looks like it was shot with my father's old Belle&Howell home movie camera. The music soundtrack in which someone decided to blend bongo drums with an organ is off the wall.

What else is there to say?

This film has to rate badly because the acting and writing are woeful - but as daft action adventure films go, it's not the worst I have ever seen. There is a semblance of a plot - two buddies plan to emerge from the sea clad in diving gear and armed with harpoons, then proceed to rob $250,000 from a bank in an arcade before returning to their watery escape route... It could actually have been a decent germ of a cunning heist, if only the thing hadn't got bogged down in a poor melodrama between a David and Goliath of a couple (Ken Scott and Merry Anders) as she tries to fend off the unwanted attentions of his mate "Buddy" (Garth Benton) and a really dreadful (and I really mean dreadful) soundtrack. Nice shots of the island help a wee bit too, but yes - it's just rotten. Sorry.

I was expecting Raiders From Beneath the Sea to be good for some cheesy B movie chuckles. To my surprise, this film has some qualities that raise it a notch or two above the usual fare. 1. Overall, the acting decent, with an especially credible performance from Merry Anders. 2. The cinematography is better than average for a B movie. 3. Some (not all) of the dialogue is snappy film noir, especially the lines delivered by Russ Bender as Tucker. This film isn't a keeper, but it has enough going for it to set it apart from the laughable B movies. I watched it back-to-back with Rocket To the Moon (formerly known as Cat Women of the Moon, as described in the titles), and this one provided the cheesy laughs I was expecting. Marie Windsor, the Queen of the Bs, must have recognized the movie is so bad it isn't even campy, because she didn't put much effort into her performance, although Victor Jory, and, oddly, Sonny Tufts rose above the material.

No. 1: A nice tour of Santa Catalina Island as it was 50 years ago. It is no doubt a bit more crowded now. No. 2: An unbilled guest appearance by the S.S. Catalina, aka The Great White Steamer. Great shots of the lady in her fortieth year, still looking young. At age 50 she retired to Mexico and was allowed to rot away, another seminal icon lost to neglect. So many Southern Californians, maybe as many as 25 million, rode her to Avalon By the Bay and I was one of them. And we saw the flying fishes play! No. 3: A good chance to see Miss Merry Anders at her best. Not too long after this she gave up on Hollywood and began working at Litton Industries in Van Nuys, CA. I also worked there (27 years) and saw her for many a year as she was the receptionist at the main entrance. She was very elegant in her business suits and became even more beautiful in middle age. An extremely nice lady.