Undersea Girl

By the ending of UNDERSEA GIRL, Mara Corday's titular character gets kidnapped by HOT CARS villain Ralph Clanton, above water, making navy investigator Pat Conway the real underwater star: although it's never that exciting since things are so slowed down down there...

Making this b-thriller a hybrid of revolving stories: one concerning Corday's feisty Nancy Drew-type reporter wanting the background-scoop on a suspicious dead body she finds while diving... leading to the crime-noirish aspect with Clanton's backstabbing gang slowly recovering their stolen loot...

Making the most worthwhile ingenue femme fatale/moll Florence Marly, whose seductive gaze and alluring attitude, flirting with a younger crook behind the old kingpin's back, isn't given enough time to matter since, like heroine Corday herself, Marly sort of randomly comes and goes...

All while Conway and hefty reliable cop Dan Seymour have backroom meetings about what the gang will do next, or how the stubbornly determined Girl-Friday might get in the way... of what's supposed to be her very own picture.

Ace reporter Valerie Hudson (Mara Corday) and her friends discover a submerged body while scuba diving off the California Coast. When U.S. Bills are found on the victim that match the serial numbers of those that supposedly went down on a sunken ship, Hefty police Lt. Mike Travis (Dan Seymour) jumps on the case. When the Navy catches wind of the situation they bring in their own man, Lt. Brad Chase (Pat Conway), who as it happens is Hudson's ex-boyfriend. When our trio traces the bills back to the crew of a tuna fishing vessel the scene is set for a sub-aquatic crime-fest.

Though the movie has sort a of a cool period piece vibe it fails to create much energy. Despite the title Corday doesn't spend a lot of time under the sea. Beyond finding the aforementioned body and another junket where she finds herself in peril during the obligatory shark encounter, she rides out the movie on dry ground. The forced injection of a battle-of-the sexes match-up between Corday as the tough woman reporter demanding respect and Conway as the glib Navy lieutenant wears thin quickly and doesn't provide much lift. The movie hints at different sub-plots and situations which ultimately stall out. Superfluous lounge singing number launched midway through the movie adds little more than time killing filler.

Undersea Girl has no pretense about what it is, a low budget B double biller. Even so Nacirema Productions doesn't come close to clearing the bar that they set for themselves with their previous film, the similarly named Hot Rod Girl. Instead this looks like an attempt to springboard off the relative success of that film. While certainly no masterpiece, Hot Rod Girl had a sense of fun about it which is absent here. Other than the location shots and some okay underwater photography there isn't much to recommend.

A diverting Allied Artists quickie (whose executive producer David T. Yokozoki name sounds like an anagram) with a final underwater battle that anticipated by eight years the one that concluded 'Thunderball'.

Despite the title and the heroine's professed enthusiasm for skindiving Mara Corday spends most of her time on dry land as the girl reporter who when the first of several corpses turn up and she asks if it was murder detective Dan Seymour pays her the backhanded compliment of telling her "You say that like most girls say mink!; while although people get harpooned the most eye-watering violence is probably when she bites the villain on the lip.

Sadly Florence Marley - equidistant from the twin peaks of playing female lead to Bogart in 'Tokyo Joe' and the title role in 'Queen of Blood' - as the moll to Mr. Big doesn't get much opportunity to join in the fun.