SUBMARINE MOVIES

In the deep darkness the tension is almost unbearable. Far above our heads there is the relentless drone of the engines of the hunter killers, the destroyers, the bringers of death. Down here, just one sound could bring doom upon us all. We already know that we are lucky to still be alive. That last blast from that final depth charge knocked out all the power and we sank like a stone, far beyond the recommended crush depth, far beyond the point at which the pressure would cause rivets to start to burst out of the metal plates, and the seals in the steam pipes would rupture. Then there was a lifeline; a sand spit held out its hand and cradled us to it instead of letting us plunge into the bottomless trench and oblivion.

I look around me. We are a sorry sight, with our shabby, filthy oil-soaked clothing and the sweat pouring from our brows. There’s nothing we can do but sit it out in the unbearable silence and wait for the destroyers to give up their search. The whites of nervous eyes twitch and flicker in the darkness as we try to avoid looking at each other and betraying the fear we all fear. My captain is sitting just a few yards away in this world where we are all truly equal now. Our lives end at the limits of this metal cylinder. Beyond it there is nothing. The captain is just sitting there, staring into the nothingness of eternity, not daring to betray one emotion to the men under his command. He notices me looking at him and for a moment our eyes lock. He smiles just the tiniest of grim smiles and winks to reassure me.

Then, just for a split second, the kind of awful moment that can mean the difference between life and death for every one of us,  all hell breaks loose as somewhere in the dark depths of the engine room, an engineer drops a spanner and we all tense again as those faraway engines seem to be getting closer and closer until the pounding seems to be inside our heads…

God, I love a submarine movie!

I can’t remember when it was that submarines themselves started to interest me. I had a couple of toy ones once upon a time to which you attached a tube which meant that they would submerge and resurface in the bath or basin, paddling pool or washing up bowl, depending upon where I’d been let loose on that day. I suppose toy boats and other bath toys were a way of persuading grubby little tikes like me that having a bath wasn’t quite the worst idea in the history of the world, and I guess it must have worked occasionally.

My first contact with a literary submarine came with my Walt Disney “Donald and Mickey” comic which, alongside the tales of Uncle Scrooge McDuck and the like ran a very grown up comic strip version of Jules Verne’s “20,000 leagues under the sea” during its first few editions. Nemo’s submarine, the “Nautilus”, as designed by those terribly clever folk at the Disney studios just looked like the best for a submarine design ever with its sea-monster eyes and its fish scale plating. I drew it time and time again in my little drawing books (I didn’t know them as sketchbooks yet…) and to me, it remains the benchmark by which all other fictional submarines are judged.

Around about the same time two or three other rather fabulous and fantastic submersibles were appearing on my TV screens. “Stingray” was another thing of beauty which I drew quite often, its blue and yellow lines racing through the depths in the pursuit of the Terror Fish piloted by the Aquaphibians. Better still was the “Seaview”, that sleekly engineered vessel featured in the Irwin Allen series “Voyage to the bottom of the sea” and its equally beautiful offspring the “Flying Sub” that seemed to make a cultural reappearance flying high over Diarmuid Gavin’s gold medal winning garden at Chelsea this year. Finally, the clincher was the “SkyDiver”, the half-aircraft, half-submarine design marvel as seen in Gerry Anderson’s rather wonderful show “UFO” which also featured the most beautiful trucks ever known to man, the three “Mobiles”. I will have to mention in passing the existence of the little yellow runt of the litter that was Thunderbird 4, but Gordon Tracy’s little runabout was unlikely to inspire a lifelong fascination with submersibles.

With all these incredible futuristic machines to inspire me, was it really any wonder that I grew up watching a lot of submarine movies? There are those that will argue, quite convincingly, that all submarine movies are essentially the same, it’s merely the wars that change, but I think that this is to rather miss the point. There are some basic essentials that make a mere submarine movie into  “proper” submarine movie, it’s true, many of which feature in the first couple of paragraphs written above, but it is the constant variety within those restrictions that make them so endlessly fascinating (although they do get extra points if “Little Johnny Mills” has to demonstrate his stiff upper lip), and I defy anyone not to be wrecked from the sheer tension of sitting through the full, unedited German language version of “Das Boot” (We “hilariously” insisted upon pronouncing it just like the Wellington…). I first saw that on my black and white portable whilst I was a student, and for the week it was on, all thoughts of  going out on the beer were suspended as we followed the epic tale of the crew of the U-96.

There are certain things that make a run-of-the-mill submarine movie into a great one. Popping rivets, and uncontrolled plunge to the sea bed (preferably “beyond crush depth”), an enforced silence as the destroyers circle around overhead, and little Johnny Mills obviously, but also there should be a good periscope sequence or two, an excellent scene on the conning tower, a meal with the captain, a crash dive where one of the sailors struggles to get into the hatch in time, the old trick of releasing some the diesel oil, debris and perhaps a body or two to fool the enemy into thinking you’ve been sunk, a good old fashioned torpedo run, an attack by a passing fighter plane, a scene where someone has to seal his comrades into a flooding compartment to save the ship, someone attempting to use the escape kit to reach the surface, someone else going mad and trying to open the hatch whilst still submerged, and a shattering depth charge attack, preferably leaving the engines in need of repair. Put any or all of those things together and you’ve got one hell of a great movie.

In the post-war period, tales of brave submariners featured in a number of films featuring both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres of war, but the era of the great submarine movies was comparatively brief. There was a brief resurgence in the 1960s, and some great modern “Cold War” takes on the subject like “The Hunt for Red October” and “Crimson Tide” resurfaced in the 1980s, all of which were not only fine examples of the genre, but rather excellent movies anyway, and it is probably no coincidence that possibly the greatest of the “Star Trek” movies, “The Wrath of Khan” is essentially a submarine movie in structure, especially during the final battle sequences.

Despite my endless fascination for the genre, and the fact that I find them to be beautiful things to look at, I’ve never actually been inside a submarine and, if truth be told, I’ve never wanted to. There was once an opportunity to go inside the one on display at San Francisco harbour which was used in the filming of the Kelsey Grammar movie “Down Periscope”, but I declined. It looked an awful place. In fact I’ve nothing but the greatest of admiration for those service personnel who actually fought real battles whilst locked inside these cramped steel tubes, with casualties and fatalities that sometimes are estimated to be as high as an almost unbelievable 80%.

I know I couldn’t have coped, and would probably have ended up being that idiot spinning the hatch wheel and trying to get out with my upper lip wobbling like a jelly. I think I’m far better off in my role of just watching the movies in my living room, possibly whilst munching quietly upon a submarine roll, because even that sort of tension can be quite unbearable enough sometimes.