Watch Seas Beneath For Free

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It has its dull moments. The crew of an American Q ship, a secretly armed three-masted schooner, try to lure a German U-boat within range during World War I. (Kids, that's the one that came before World War II.) Like Gaul, the movie is divided into three parts: (1) The introduction to the characters and the mission; (2) The longish interlude at a port in the Canary Islands where the crew meet the ladies they're not supposed to fraternize with, and the officers of the German U-boat that's tracking them. Each side knows who the other is, but all the conversations are sarcastically polite. The American captain (O'Brien) unwittingly falls for a pretty German spy (Lessing). (3) The final shoot out between the American sailing ship (aided by an American submarine) and the U-boat. Guess who wins.Actually, of course, it's more complicated that that. The pretty German spy's brother commands the U-boat, and she's apparently in love with an officer aboard the boat (Loder, speaking fine German). We get to know some of the American sailors, mostly used for comic relief.It's splendidly photographed in the Channel Islands by Joe August, who was a Hollywood craftsman and one of the best. The production design is impressive. A ship chandler's shop is filled with exactly the kind of junk you'd expect -- irregular piles of cork floats, anchors, and the like. And it seems evident that whatever could be shot at sea WAS shot at sea. Watch a stunt man do a swan dive from an impossible height.Too many of the performances are below par, especially Marion Lessing's, and she has an important part. It isn't that they don't try. It's that they try too hard, as if it were a silent film directed by Cecile B. De Mille. There are roles (and nick names) that would become part of Ford's repertoire. Sometimes, even the actors themselves were carried over into films like "They Were Expendable." The editor, Frank Hull, should be spanked. Several plot developments blindside the viewer. Yes, we see O'Brien giving instructions to the fake "panic party" but, until the shoot out, we didn't know there were TWO panic parties. And the preparations for the final shoot out go on far beyond the point at which we grasp what's happening. Too many shots of O'Brien crouching on the deck, shouting, "Keep your heads down, men!", while the sea begins to wash around their knees.I don't think the friendship between Ford and O'Brien lasted much beyond this film. Sometime in the 30s, they took a tour of Southeast Asia together. Ford was swept up in one of his periodic binges for days and O'Brien was compelled to leave him behind in some port. End of friendship. O'Brien had to wait until "Fort Apache" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" before being rehabilitated, fifteen or twenty years, which was the usual period for someone in the director's dog house.It seems long for what it has to say and most of the gags fall flat, but, saints preserve us, it carries you along with the flow.

From the beginning of the sound era until he won his Oscar for The Informer John Ford turned in an interesting body of work. Some of his films are good, others less so. It seemed to me it took him a bit longer than some of his peers to master the technique of sound on film.Case in point is this World War I naval story Seas Beneath. An interesting and fine war film, it's hampered a great deal by a rather unrealistic romance between the sister of a U-Boat commander Marion Lessing and George O'Brien the American captain of the mystery ship.O'Brien is in command of the so-called mystery ship which has a pair of big guns camouflaged on board. The object is to look like a harmless American schooner and play decoy until the U-Boat comes in range and then cut loose. When the schooner puts into the Canary Islands for provisioning and to pick up any loose information, the Germans have the same thing in mind. In fact a female spy played by Mona Maris seduces young officer Steve Pendleton and finds out he's a lieutenant. Pendleton redeems himself in a most spectacular incident.The battles at sea are staged very well. Surprising that other than star George O'Brien none of the known regulars from the Ford stock company are here. Walter C. Kelly plays the CPO of the ship and he's kind of a poor man's Victor McLaglen.John Ford completists will like the film and it's all right, but nothing more.

While there are a few small signs that this film might have been directed by the great John Ford, for the most part there is little about this B-movie that would seem great or inspired. Now I do cut the film SOME slack since it's an early talkie, but compared to the average film of the day, it's still a sub-par film.Most of the problem is the story--it's just written so poorly and the characters are just so gosh-darn stupid that it's hard to enjoy. You KNOW this ain't the brightest ship in the US Navy when BOTH Warren Hymer AND Nat Pendleton serve on it--to actors who specialized in playing thick-headed galoots. In fact, the rest of the crew is amazingly stupid as well--making me feel that the writers sure didn't try very hard for realism. The story is about an old fashion wooden sailing ship that appears to be a merchant ship but really hides a deck gun designed to sink German subs during the waning months of WWI. But the American crew, as I said above, is dumber than a sack of door knobs and I got frustrated at the writing. A great example is when the Captain told them all they were on a top secret mission, so when they go on shore leave, no fraternizing and no liquor--at which point they all went out chasing women and getting drunk. What part of "top secret mission" or "no fraternizing or drinking" didn't they understand?! Then, when tops of German-accented sailors started walking about, no one seemed to even notice!! The writing was strictly B-movie (or worse) and there were so many loose plot threads that I had a hard time watching the film. The only positive thing I noticed about the film is the nice cinematography. Otherwise...yuck.My advice is that if you MUST see it because you are a die-hard Ford fan, then do so by all means. Otherwise, you'd be best to find another--ANY other Ford film.

Rarely have I seen such stilted, hammy, and just plain bad acting. There didn't appear to be a professional performer in the whole picture. And the dialogue! Gad! The skipper of the allied vessel came off more like a cheerleader than a leader of men. I still enjoyed the film; even with all the cornball humor from the brainless naval crew. If their collective brains could be rendered into gasoline, there wouldn't be enough to run a termite's chainsaw. Fairly good action yarn for such an old picture.