Terror Beneath the Sea (1966)

directed by Hajime Sato

Japan, USA

79 minutes

3 stars out of 5

----

After hearing about Sonny Chiba's death from covid the other day, naturally I wanted to watch something he'd been in. I am not much for martial arts movies, but he's also been in a whole ton of cheesy old sci-fi/horror, which is of course my favorite thing. Terror Beneath the Sea (a Japanese/American co-production originally titled Kaitei Daisensô) is not a terribly good film, nor is it anything groundbreaking, but Sonny Chiba does make it better. Also worth mentioning is Hajime Sato's earlier Ogon Batto, which I watched, loved, but didn't review, and which features both Sonny Chiba and a superhero who is an ancient skeleton mummy.

Although 1966 is, to me, a little bit later in the game than most movies capitalizing on the whole "what's up with this nuclear energy thing and how many weird ghouls can it create?" hype, and a lot of its other themes also seem more suited to the previous decade, Terror Beneath the Sea is every bit the 1960s science fiction poster child. It begins with the Navy unveiling their newest precision submarine technology, which eventually leads two photographers to an underwater investigation of a Mysterious Creature Sighting™, which eventually leads to them getting captured by a sinister mad scientist bent on creating a new race of mind-controlled super-soldiers under his command, who will conquer and repopulate the Earth. I'm a fan of the specific term - "Processed Man" - they use to describe these engineered post-humans. It just sounds like such a deeply mid-century sci-fi turn of phrase.

The way the movie goes about reeling out its plot is where I felt like this was a little different from others of its ilk that I've seen. Aside from the finale when all the good guys are trying to escape from the bad guys in their underwater lab that's under siege by Processed Men gone haywire, there's not a lot of terror to be felt in this. It just kind of... drifts, a lot of the time. It's like it starts off telling a story, but then it gets distracted whenever it comes time to show anything cool, and it focuses on that for a while instead. Like a special effects demo reel that's trying really hard to be a whole movie. During the transformation sequence that introduces the mad scientist's method of turning normal humans into his yucky bio-engineered fishmen, even though they kept cutting to the main characters' disgusted and horrified reactions, I didn't get the same vibe as I usually do when I watch a horror movie. It just felt like the movie was trying to show me how cool its practical effects were. Long, slow shots of the two leads scuba diving had the same effect, especially with that score that was more "funky space age cocktail party" and less "under threat from mutant gillmen". Those scuba scenes where absolutely nothing was actually happening gave the whole movie a different vibe.

This is also surprisingly progressive for its time in certain ways with regards to gender, but par for the course in other ways. Even though the woman photographer has to wear the sexy legless scuba suit while her boyfriend just wears a regular one, and even though she's the one who supplies most of the screams of horror, she's still treated like a co-lead instead of just somebody who's tagging along. I particularly liked the way Sonny Chiba's character defends her reputation to a couple of jerks trying to write her off as hysterical after the first Mysterious Creature Sighting™. Disbelieving her account of what she saw, the men turn instead to the man with her, asking if he saw it, and he gets angry with them and says "No, but she did". He backs her up 100% at every turn. I've seen this, I've experienced this, and as a man, that's what you do in that situation. When other guys start trying to get you to talk over or speak for the woman you're with, you stonewall them and redirect them right back to her.

(Then again, when the mad scientist captures the photographer and starts his process of gillman-ifying her, apropos of nothing he feels the need to mention that one of the effects of his process is "elimination of sexual distinction". Because the most terrifying scenario imaginable to a man is a woman losing her boobs.)

I guess ultimately the most disappointing thing about Terror Beneath the Sea is the lack of more monster stuff. There's a veritable army of those mutated guys running around and sometimes they have guns and try to kill people, but after the initial novelty of seeing their goofy-faced design wore off, I was left wishing there was more - maybe some neat miniature sets getting blown up (I've been watching nothing but Toho stuff lately so excuse me), or failed attempts at creating the mutants, or something else that would have opened up the opportunity to show off more than just monster suits. The meandering shots of monsters being made that I mentioned earlier are absolutely golden and I am as enthusiastic about them as the film itself seems to be, but I needed a little more of that for this to keep my attention.