Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Scr: Charles Bennett/Louis M.Heyward | Cast: Vincent Price, David Tomlinson, Tab Hunter, John Le Mesurier, Henry Oscar, Derek Newark | Sci-fi/Adventure 85 mins
By the early sixties Jacques Tourneur was working mainly in television; but he made two more feature films for AIP, ‘The Comedy of Terrors’ (1963) and this, both inevitably starring Vincent Price, with whom Tourneur had not previously worked. (A projected film of Wells’ ‘When the Sleeper Wakes’ was not made).
Vividly designed, and shot in colour and widescreen during four weeks in Pinewood by veteran cameraman Stephen Dade (who had recently returned from making ‘Zulu’ in the Transvaal), it is framed by a poem by Poe (who is included in the credits) sonorously delivered on the soundtrack by Price, but obviously influenced by the recent fifties adaptations of Jules Verne (such as the ‘hilarious’ inclusion of a chicken named Herbert).
Our heroes discover a lost underwater city where the inhabitants are kept immortal by the strange quality of the air but die when exposed to ultra-violet light and are living next to a volcano now stirring back to life… from which you can probably guess the rest.
In America it was retitled War-Gods of the Deep, presumably after the gill-men occasionally seen, reminiscent of the Aquaphibians in ‘Stingray’. RC
(‘The City Under the Sea’ is repeated on Talking Pictures at 3.10 pm on Wednesday 12th.)