War Gods of the Deep

Starring:Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, David Tomlinson, Susan Hart, John Le Mesurier, Henry Oscar, Derek Newark, Roy Patrick, Tony Selby, Michael Heyland, Steven Brooke, William Hurndell, Herbert the Rooster, Jim Spearman, Bart Allison, Hilda Campbell-Russell, Dennis Blake, Arthur Hewlett, George Ricarde
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product Type: DVD

Customer Reviews:

Subterranean hokum at it's finest!.......2007-02-12

War-Gods of the Deep aka The City Under the Sea scared the heck out of me me as a very small kid, but then I did live in a coastal town that was rumored to have it's own sunken town... Vincent Price and his immortal band of smugglers living in a somewhat mislocated Babylonian city under the Cornish stretch of the English Channel didn't have the same effect this time, but Jacques Tourneur's vaguely Poe-inspired subterranean/underwater adventure is still a fun romp thanks to superb production design which makes the film look ten times more expensive than it probably was and great Scope photography with a good use of color from Zulu's Stephen Dade. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a brisk and enjoyable period adventure with more than a passing nod to both Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Plus it has David Tomlinson sharing a diving suit with a chicken while pursued by gill men, and not many films can say that.

Aside from a couple of moments of negative damage the 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is surprisingly good. The only extra is the US theatrical trailer.

At the Earth's Core is an inspired companion piece, catching just the right tone for the appropriately named Burroughs' pulp adventure about Victorian inventor Peter Cushing and the inevitable Doug McClure ending up in the underground world of Pelucidar and battling its evil telepathic fighting dinosaurs. It's men in monster suits time, which is a lot more fun than stop-motion or CGI if you're willing to suspend your disbelief, and if you're not there's always Caroline Munro's cleavage to look at. Aside from what may well be Peter Cushing's worst performance, an irritating but dottier rehash of his movie Dr Who ("You can't mesmerize me, I'm British!"), it's easily the best of the John Dark-Kevin Connor-Doug McClure fantasy adventures, surprisingly well directed and boasting an atmospheric use of color. Never especially good at exterior scenes, Alan Hume's photography gains immensely from the control a studio set gives him (the film was shot entirely on soundstages) to paint a luridly vivid world worthy of a pulp novel cover. Not high art but definitely great Saturday matinee fun.

The only extra is the US trailer - which sells it as a horror film! - but the film has a very good widescreen transfer, although there is briefly a slight tramline in one scene at the end.

Price, Cushing and McClure!.......2005-11-12

This Beneath-The-Surface themed double feature from MGM is pretty mediocre. Neither film is really bad, but neither are anything to write home about either. War Gods Of The Deep starts things off. Basically Tab Hunter(who looks like an early prototype for Casper Van Dien) and David Tomlinson(with a pet chicken in a picnic basket) go searching for Susan Hart, who has vanished from her bedroom. Finding that old reliable secret passage behind the bookshelf they find themselves going deeper and deeper into a cave til they end up in a city beneath the sea ruled by Vincent Price. Price kidnapped the girl coz she looks like his late wife(how's that for original?) and I'm assuming he wants to get jiggy with her. He's also stressed coz an underwater volcano is a ticking timebomb that will destroy his beloved city. Price sees our heroes as meddling pains in the ass, so he decides to execute them though he doesn't keep them very well guarded coz they seem to just venture out whenever they want to. The first hour's a bunch of scenes of Price talking about his civilization and such. Finally are heroes are let out into the ocean with scuba gear and are hunted by Price's soldiers as well as the gill men that lurk around the city. These horrifying gill men are nothing more than guys in torn clothes and obvious rubber masks. The Creature From The Black Lagoon is much more believable. Price does alright with what he's given. He's always a decent villian even if the movie isn't all that decent. Hunter is typical tough guy and Tomlinson and his rooster are the comic relief characters. Not bad but far from good. Actually, kinda boring. The second feature, At The Earth's Core, is the better of the two, but that's not saying much. It's another collaboration between director Kevin Connor and star Doug McClure(The first being The Land That Time Forgot). McClure and Peter Cushing have one of those neato machines with the giant drill on the front that allows you to burrow through the earth. Well, somewhere in the middle, they get stuck and find themselves in a prehistoric kind of world very similar to the "Before Time" films. The center of the earth is pretty much a jungle with a red/pink sky and a cave. Lots of red lighting and lots of lava in this film. The primitive humans(that speak english) are slaves to evil pterodactyl men who control an army of neanderthal type goons(who have a bizarre way of speaking. You know the sound it makes when you are listening to a cd and you hit the FF button?). The visuals and monsters in this movie are at about Godzilla level. The arrival of the badazz McClure sparks a slave revolt and soon everyone's had it up to here with these pterodactyl schmucks. It may sound like cheesy B movie fun, and it is, but it's also a bit more boring than it should be. Cushing is the comic relief this time as an absent minded english scientist. He's got that "Oh, My!", "Oh, Dear!" reaction to everything. A very far cry from his Frankenstein portrayal for sure. Caroline Munro is there just to look hot like she always does. Not bad if you're a fan of rubber monsters and lava. Though I'm sure Edgar Rice Burroughs would want the negatives burned if he saw it. Both films are 2 and a half stars at the very best, but they both beat watching infomercials at 4am.

Average customer rating:

Poe meets Jules Verne (sort of...)
War Gods, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing, uh huh
SO BAD IT'S, WELL, BAD
Enjoyable and Visually Appealling Film
IT SINKS!!

War Gods of the Deep
Starring: Vincent Price , Tab Hunter , David Tomlinson , Susan Hart , and John Le Mesurier
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00005O075
Release Date: 2001-11-20

Amazon.com

Vincent Price and Tab Hunter star in this entertainingly silly adventure. Very, very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "City in the Sea," War-Gods of the Deep starts off just right, with a stormy night and a huge old mansion by the sea. Before you know it, everyone is charging through secret passages and swimming around in enormous diving helmets. The plot zips along nicely, and the cast of pros knows just what to do with it. By this point in his career, Vincent Price could do tragic brooding menace with both hands tied behind his back, but he still puts his all into it like a champ. David Tomlinson also does a great job as half of a comic relief team--the other half being an uncredited chicken. This may not be a story for the ages, but it's not a bad way to spend an evening. -Ali Davis

Customer Reviews:

Poe meets Jules Verne (sort of...).......2006-07-28

For once, I found myself in agreement with every other reviewer here. Read 'em all, they know whereof they speak!

Having just polished off all 8 Roger Corman POE films (plus CASTLE OF BLOOD), I set my sights on this, hoping it might turn out better than I remembered. As it happens, it was EXACTLY as I remembered. Can't win 'em all. AIP refused to let their POE series end with Corman's departure, and plowed on. There does seem to be a lot of talent involved here... except, like the 3rd season of LOST IN SPACE, it feels like it was shot from a 1st-draft script that could have used a LOT of extra work.

The story, involving a seaside mansion, secret tunnels, underground caverns, and a secret "world" lorded over by a megalomaniacal madman will no doubt remind the viewer of several other films, most of which are better than this one. Using a POEM as a jumping-off point (they'd done it before with THE RAVEN) this seems to borrow ideas from such Jules Verne stories as JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and perhaps others less well known. Price is classic as always, though his character shows virtually no admirable qualities. Tab Hunter seems to be walking thru the picture. Susan Hart is a DOLL, but gets VERY little to do. I like David Tomlinson, generally... just NOT HERE. He's annoying, and so is his chicken, oddly named Herbert (is that a reverse on "A Boy Named Sue"?). John Le Mesurier, who I've seen in many films & tv shows, actually gets a chance to exhibit more depth and emotion in his brief scenes as the long-kidnapped preacher than I've ever seen from him, and perhaps more than anyone else in the film!

I often get frustrated with characters like Price's "Captain" who simply CAN'T be reasoned with. He issues Tab Hunter an IMPOSSIBLE task and deadline, then quickly condemns him to a watery grave. (Was anyone surprised?) He kidnapped Susan Hart because she's a DEAD RINGER for his long-dead wife. While a staple of late-model DRACULA films (including those with Gary Oldman, Frank Langella AND William Marshall), I wonder where this idea really originated, as the earliest use of it seems to be the 1932 Karloff classic, THE MUMMY.

While the basic premise is interesting, the cast adequate, and the sets & props excellent, the writing drags it down unforgiveably, leaving no room for the director or the actors to go with it. I was also confused by the layout of the tunnels (considering how important they were to the plot, it's a point of confusion that should have been better handled). And of course, the climactic underwater action scenes are just impossible to follow. (This is no THUNDERBALL-- made the same year!) A shame... this makes THE PREMATURE BURIAL look like 5 stars by comparison!

War Gods, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing, uh huh.......2004-04-22

In an effort to determine what exactly went wrong with War Gods of the Deep (1965) aka City in the Sea, I looked at the individuals involved in bringing this film to life. The story is based on an Edgar Allen Poe poem, The City in the Sea, so it had good roots. The director, Jacques Tourneur, seems quite accomplished, at the very least prolific, directing scads of films and television shows from the 30's all the way into the 60's. Let's look at the writers...Charles Bennett, well, he appears to be a very capable writer, responsible for a few films I've really enjoyed like The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935). Let's see, who is the other writer? Louis M. Heyward? The schlock producer/writer responsible for such films like Pajama Party (1964), Sergeant Dead Head (1965), and Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966)? Oh bruther...Oh wait, I also see he was a production executive for KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)...I think I've found the weak link in this production.

The film stars Vincent Price as The Captain, 50's teen heart throb (also known as 'the sigh guy') Tab Hunter as Ben Harris, Susan Hart (who was married at the time to James H. Nicholson, one of the founders of the AIP, the studio that released this film...big mystery as to how she got the part here...) as Jill Tregillis, English character actor David Tomlinson as the foppish Harold Tiffin-Jones, and Herbert, the chicken...yes, there is a chicken in this film, and it did get a screen credit at the end.

Okay, the film opens pretty well, with a dark and stormy night and a large, isolated manor house/hotel on a secluded Cornish coast, sitting on the edge of a high cliff before the raging sea. A body washes onto the shore, and some locals discover it's a lawyer who is assisting American Jill Tregillis manage the transition of an estate from a recently passed relative...I think...the finer points of the story got a little muddled, and continued to do so throughout the film. Ben Harris, and American geologist (I think) gets involved, for whatever reason, and goes to tell Jill that her lawyer (or barrister, as I think they are referred to in good old England) has bit the proverbial big one. No one seemed particularly put out by this fellow's demise, giving me the impression that the English feel the same about their legal professionals as we do in the states. Here we meet one of the residents of the house, an artist named Harold Tiffin-Jones, and his pet chicken named Herbert. Why does he have a pet chicken? Well, I didn't get the impression he was married, so draw your own conclusions. After Ben has a slight skirmish with a mysterious intruder, he finds that Jill is missing, so he, Harold, and Hubert investigate. They find a secret passage, one that leads to caves and such beneath the manor, and find a giant whirlpool, to which they promptly fall in...what a couple of goons...and awaken in the city underneath the sea...oh bruther...

Some stuff happens, barely, and the boys (and the chicken) meet The Captain. Seems many moons ago the city was a land based one, but fell into the sea, pulled there by an underwater volcano. The residents at the time, being very smart, fashioned machines and such to enable them to continue to live in their city, but weren't smart enough just to just leave the city as it was sinking...and now The Captain is the leader, king, whatever, of the now remnants of this once great city, and is desperately searching for a way to save the city from the increasingly active volcano that threatens their existence, sending fish men and such to the surface to steal books, kidnap people, whatever, all in a means to try and stave off disaster. Yes, there are fish men, who aid the humans in the city underneath the sea for some reason or other. Why? I haven't the slightest idea... Why don't the humans just leave the city, you ask? I wondered that myself... Well, living in the sea has been a sort of blessing as well as a curse, extended their lives to highly un-natural lengths, but has rendered them highly susceptible to the ultra-violet rays of the sun in that prolonged exposure would cause rapid aging followed by death. Why kidnap Jill? Because she bears an uncanny likeness to The Captain's deceased wife...oh bruther...

War Gods of the Deep actually has some pretty good-looking sets and gave a glimmer of hope that was soon extinguished as the plot unfolded. As far as the source material is involved, Price does have some voice-over with him reading passages from the Edgar Allen Poe poem, but that's about it...Vincent Price and David Tomlinson are fun to watch, but really can't help save this drecky mess. Tab Hunter and Susan Hart are obviously thrown in for eye candy, as neither seems entirely capable of pulling off their respective characters. This film seems to try to do for Edgar Allen Poe's poem what Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) for Jules Verne's story, even borrowing elements from that much better film, replacing the goose from the film with a chicken. Too bad it didn't work. Oh, and I can't finish without mentioning the drawn-out underwater scenes that tried to create all kinds of suspense and tension, but due to the fact that movement is restricted and everyone moves, in effect, slow motion, these scenes had quite the opposite effect, and will probably prompt the viewer to be looking for the fast forward on the remote.

The wide screen print here looks okay, with a few blemishes, and there is a trailer, but that's it for special features, unless you count the availability of French and Spanish subtitles.

Cookieman108

SO BAD IT'S, WELL, BAD.......2002-04-19

With little fanfare, MGM has quietly transferred a handful of great B films to DVD that they not too arbitrarily categorize as "Midnight Movies." The nice looking digital prints are in their original theatrical format and appear as if they were taken from original material. The discs come with no substantial extras but care has been lavished on the box art, often reflecting the lurid lobby cards and posters of their initial release. Even acknowledging the B category, these are for the most part well-crafted and, well, adequately acted.

In "WAR GODS OF THE DEEP," the late and much-lamented Vincent Price co-stars with 50s pretty boy Tab Hunter in an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story that pits he-men against gill-men with sexy Susan Hart caught in the middle.

See, Price is uberlord of a lost underwater city (apparently built by a low bid papier mache developer), and he's got gillgoons that kidnap landubbers. The second half is a showdown between brave humans and slimy fishmen with an angry, about to blow volcano towering over everything. ...

This gets 3 stars 'cause Vincent Price and Edgar Poe had a hand in it.

Enjoyable and Visually Appealling Film.......2002-01-04

Although the story-telling and pacing leave a lot to be desired, this is a nice addition to the very collectible MGM Midnite Movies series. Great sets, locations, and actors (Vincent Price, whom many would pay to hear him recite his laundry list) make this a very visually appealing film. I disagree with Maltin's comment about the "shoddy underwater city". For its time, the visual effects (with the notable exception of the gill-men ), sets, and props were impressive. Try it out and see for yourself.

IT SINKS!!.......2001-12-16

As a storm rages outside a creepy old mansion on a clifftop, lovely Susan Hart is kidnapped by a half-fish/half-man creature and taken to Vincent Price's undersea lair. Tab Hunter, David Tomlinson and Herbert The Chicken (who gets a special screen credit at the end) go to rescue her. I wont say any more about the plot in case you want to check this out for yourself. I thought the movie was not campy, outrageous nor exciting enough to be anything more than a pleasant Sunday-afternoon time-killer. Director Jacques Tourneur has done some great stuff in the past (like Curse Of The Demon)and I was hoping for more thrills....oh well! Vincent Price just walks through this one having nowhere near as much fun as he does in some of the other AIP Poe adaptations and in Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (also with Susan Hart). The DVD itself has great artwork, a nice letterbox print and good sound plus a trailer.

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