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To me, this movie is perfection.

Simply Perfect

Load of rubbish!!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Two reporters in Japan stumble upon the underground city of a mad scientist bent on conquering the world by creating a new race of cyborg fish men from humans. The Navy go in search of the reporters.. Well that's sort of the plot. The early part of the film is slow but it does carry on to an explosive finale. It held my attention mainly due to two things. One, the cinematography is colourful and almost like a comic book. Second, it does have Sonny Chiba who although he has a standard hero role still is compelling to watch, particularly when utilising some of his unique facial expressions.In contrast .Peggy Neal's woeful whines were wearisome, though that was probably the dubbing and not her. Only really worth seeing for the great Mr. Chiba..

1966's "Terror Beneath the Sea" is a forgotten sci-fi from Japan, less surprising once you learn it's from neither Godzilla's Toho, or Gamera's Daiei. It's actually a Toei production, one of three that made it to American shores, with "Magic Serpent" and "The Green Slime" better remembered. Apart from future martial arts star Sonny Chiba, we have teenage blonde Peggy Neal, who went on to star in Shochiku's "The X from Outer Space," who promptly disappeared from the scene. The Gill Man costumes are initially intriguing, but become obvious through repetition, though the prospect of human beings being transformed into amphibian cyborgs manages to produce some effective moments. Director Hajime Sato really struck paydirt with his final film, 1968's "Goke Body Snatcher from Hell" (also from Shochiku), as nightmarish a combination of horror and sci-fi as any made in Japan. "Terror Beneath the Sea" was frequently seen on television through the late 70s (not much since), airing three times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater: Sept 14 1974 (followed by 1955's "King Dinosaur"), Mar 6 1976 (following 1970's "The Beast in the Cellar"), and Nov 25 1978 (following 1960's "Gorgo").

Sadly, before Sonny Chiba made the wonderful martial arts films that made him so famous throughout the world, he starred in a bazillion films--including some real turkeys like INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN (in the bottom 100 films on IMDb). Despite a fairly respectable current score of 5.5 on IMDb, TERROR BENEATH THE SEA is also one of these early bad films. Now it isn't nearly as terrible as INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN (but what is?!), it's still mighty bad and a film only for kids and the curious.The film involves Chiba and a cast of Westerners and Japanese investigating some strange creatures in the ocean. They look like a poor man's version of the Creature from CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON--rubber body suits painted silver with putty-like faces. It turns out that they are the creation of a mad megalomaniac (Dr. Moore) who has learned to change humans into practically anything he'd like. Using a mind control device, these cheesy monsters do his bidding. And where does this crazed genius live? Yep, 3000 feet under the ocean--and it's up to Chiba and the US Navy to stop this crazy and his freaky friends. They never really explain how the subs are able to go that deep and Chiba's stupid red-headed sidekick wants to swim from there to the surface (they'd be crushed like grapes by the pressure almost immediately). Maybe originally they mean 300 feet and it was mis-dubbed! The film looks very Japanese when it comes to the underwater battles and sub. There are lots of fires and explosions(!) under water and much of it looks really, really cheap--like they were created by someone who built the cities for the Godzilla films. Oddly, despite these silly special effects, some of the underwater diving scenes were very well done and filmed well and the color throughout the film was lovely--very vivid and clean. The costumes also aren't bad (other than the silver-suited freaks).The film is entertaining silliness that bad movie fans and kids will like, but I can't imagine anyone else sitting through this odd film. Well,...at least it IS different!

THIS MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS… …even when this little movie has not much of a narrative to give away.Now, I've seen quite some rubber-suit monster, creature from wherever and suchlike, but man, this one really is boring. It even succeeds in being so bad that it's "good" – which makes most of these movies fun to watch. But "The Terror beneath the Sea" lacks any suspense, storytelling devices or actors-not-being-a-cardboard figure.The story is rather cheap, maybe even for a flick like this one, but hey, this would have not made the movie bad as such – most old Sci-Fi flicks and films like this have a very bad narrative and still are entertaining. The "story" of this movie has been written down by some other guys here all over the page, so I won't sum it up again, but rather question some points… Apart from dragging on without building up any suspense or anything story-like beyond "now this is a master plan to conquer the world that did not work in some other 30+ movies – they surely botch this one", the characters are all totally stupid (Chiba's Ken being the only one hardly managing to be likable). Like the bad guy, I forgot his name, is very evil indeed. Not only does he wear menacing sun-glasses he also sneers all the time, gives us some throaty laughter and comes over with the usual wanna-be World Dominator one-liners. I mean come on, sun-glasses in an underwater city? Where they afraid to make the movie to cheese if they would have given him a cool mask like Dr. Doom from 10,000 fathoms? Anyway, he is a total nut-case – in fact, he never does anything but point out his glorious plan, while the work is done by his doctors-turned-henchmen. In the end he can't control his own "Water-Cyborgs" (bad looking rip-off's from the Creature from the Black Lagoon) and makes a run for it. Of course he is stopped by Chiba's hero, but only after Mr. Villain fails to shoot him at point blank range.One thing I found quiet amusing was the shrieking and whining of Peggy Neal's Jenny, who is so occupied with her looks (they get a little bit mutated themselves), that if she survives the movie, she will surely commit suicide when she gets some wrinkles from age.Generally, what is this thing with the mutations anyway? The "stop-motion" scenes with some other guy being transformed into a hideous Water-Cyborg (means looking ridiculous and being controlled by a Work/Fight/Stop dial in the villain's HQ) looks like they did put butter or curd onto the poor guy to simulate a "mutated skin". Then they went into an aliment-frenzy and threw all other stuff onto him – all which looks like some sort of milk produce. At last they put on some chips (posing as scales) and, hey, here's your average fish soldier.There are also some guys from the US Navy, who are first reluctant to do anything, then see their wrongs and are over-anxious to to something and then come up with doing nothing more than blasting the villain's underwater city to kingdom come. They by the way overact so completely, and are so badly dubbed that it hurts – but, as I said, they don't do much for the sake of the narrative.Overall, what could have been a standard Sci-Fi fun flick with some silly fun is sadly completely sub-standard and just rolls along rather drowsy. And the ending scene is so completely terrible "a little laugh at the end" stuff with yet another attempt to break the sonic barrier of cheesiness that you are really happy that this has finally dragged itself to it's end.Stay with "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" or "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" if you want some underwater monsters with style.