In the 1960’s the influence of the James Bond films were inescapable. They were making so much money that it seemed like every film studio around the world wanted to get in on the action with their own international man of mystery. When the good people at the Japanese studio Toei decided to try their hand at it, they did what Japanese studios do best. They weirded it up.
Terror Beneath the Sea starts with our heroes Ken Abe (Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba) and his special friend Jenny at an unaccountably detailed show-and-tell being given by the U.S. Navy. The Navy officers explain in almost pornographic detail how their new homing torpedoes work by firing them at a remote controlled submarine. If it seems odd that the American military would hold a press conference for a largely Asian press corps about a weapon that should presumably be kept secret, consider that Jenny is the lovely Peggy Neal (The X From Outer Space, Operation Crazy Gold). Secrets schmecrets!
The demo is interrupted when a human silhouette swims in front of the camera and the press goes berserk. This being the ’60s it’s a controlled, polite sort of berserk, but the presentation of military might is clearly over, despite a few moments of panic when the torpedoes looks as if they might turn back on the originating sub. One might well ask what kind of sub has a press briefing room, but haven’t we digressed enough in the first 300 words? Commander Brown, clearly miffed at being upstaged by some rogue weaponry and the murky profile of an underwater Sasquatch, posits that perhaps what they saw was a drowned body. Apparently those are thick as flies in Navy testing ranges.
Cut to the next day. A bunch of the reporters, including Ken, are sitting around at a beach-side resort laughing and drinking. Jennifer walks up and asks Ken if he’s ready to leave, and Ken stands up and… DEAR JEEBUS, Sonny Chiba is wearing some small, tight swim shorts. Besides being able to tell his religion (The First Church of Ass Kickery, if you’re interested), we have to think that Ken was in fact a Kenny when he was a child. The happy couple walk away from the camera in their Escher-patterned swimsuits, leaving us and their cola-drinking compatriots to ponder their backsides.
“Where are they going?” one of the companions wonders aloud.
“Obviously skin diving,” replies another.
“Skin diving,” in this case, consists of swimming in full quarter-inch hooded wet suits and SCUBA tanks. Hardly the gear you need in a climate that supports palm trees, but it sure does look cool. Besides, they saw it in a James Bond movie. In any case, Ken and Jenny plan to go scuba diving in the area of the torpedo test. While heading out Ken suddenly realizes that the test site is right next to the “atomic waste center,” which makes perfect sense. Explosives and drums of nuclear waste, what could possibly go wrong?
Jenny and Ken dive in the area looking for clues. Jenny drops her camera, and when she retrieves it she’s surprised by a goofy, cross-eyed gillman. Paint the Creature from the Black Lagoon silver and hit him hard in the face with a frying pan and you’ll get the idea. Our lady reporter manages to get off a picture before she drops the camera (again?) and flees for the surface. Back at the resort Jenny tries to convince Commander Brown that she actually saw a monster, but it’s slow, sexist going.
Jenny: “But I saw him, commander. I saw him”
Reporter: “Take it easy, Jenny.”
Jenny: “He was covered with scales all over. He chased me. It was horrible. Just horrible.”
Brown (swaggering): “Mr. Abe, did you see this thing too?”
Ken: “No I didn’t, but Jenny did.”
Brown (to Jenny): “Weren’t you under the water longer than you should have been?”
Jenny: “And what exactly do you mean by that? You mean that it’s just the wild hysterical imagination of a woman, don’t you?”
Brown (agreeing) : “I’m sorry.”
Refusing to give up, Ken and Jenny head back to the test site to find the camera. After more slow-paced diving scenes they find an underwater grotto and passage. They explore it a bit, and are soon attacked by more gillmen.
Later Ken and Jenny wake up in a futuristic underwater city run by Dr. Moore (Enric Nielsen). Dr. Moore is a man with a dream, and that dream is to rule over a population of water-breathing reptile people in an undersea utopia. In pursuit of that dream, Moore has developed the arty stop-motion methods that allow him to convert normal human beings into silly looking Creature from the Black Lagoon rejects. Moore has also perfected the means to control his creations via “supersonic signals.” When we see the main control console for the gillpeople it’s just some dials, and the only settings we see read “work” and “fight.” The mind boggles as to what the other ones may be. Probably “love” and “boogie.” It gets lonely in those underwater cities, especially when spend all your time transmogrifying humans into abominations.
If Jenny had a say in the supersonic signal controls, they would probably read “swoon” and “scream,” because that’s about all she does the entire movie. The reasons Moore kidnapped Ken, however, is because of the reporter’s background in “propaganda.” Apparently Moore thinks that all that’s needed to get people to volunteer to be mindless reptile drones is a catchy slogan. Ken is having none of it, and the usual Bondian escapes, shootouts, and inexplicable self-destruct devices ensue.
If you’re a fan of the surrealistic corners of Japanese cinema, you may find Terror Beneath the Sea a warm and reassuring exercise in nostalgia. It’s got bad model work, terrible costumes, and uncomfortably close close-ups of Caucasian actors who really shouldn’t be seen that close. It has a young Sonny Chiba, dubbed of course. And it has a disconcerting score that a certain kind of viewer will recognize as being by the same composer who did Gamera vs. Guillion.
What the picture doesn’t have, however, is much of a sense of humor. Ken, Jenny, and the rest face their fates with the utmost seriousness throughout the film. Okay, so maybe the film isn’t called Levity Beneath the Sea, but even Godzilla vs. Megalon managed to give us a few minutes to laugh at the hippies before the aliens invaded. If the film were any kind of competent action movie it might not matter so much, but it really isn’t. It’s just another lame James Bond rip-off, weirder than most.
