Below the Sea (1933)

Powerful

Better Late Then Never

Awesome Movie

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

Ralph Bellamy looks uncomfortable playing a tough deep-sea diver instead of his usual dork-who gets-dumped. He is Mac McCreary, a pipe chomping man of action in this one. His sneaky partner is Karl Shlemmer, former German U-Boat captain, who knows where the gold is and doesn't plan to share it with anybody. Fay Wray is the rich babe who finances the expedition on a boat that looks like a royal yacht. Then there is Lily, a tough waterfront babe who adds little and somehow gets lost along the way. If you can believe all this, how about Miss Wray--rich, beautiful, educated--falling for hunky but dumb, poor, and inarticulate Bellamy? The ending (HERE'S THE BIG SPOILER) is reminiscent of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when the almost retrieved gold falls back into the ocean, never (for unexplained reasons) to be found again.

The film opens with a sea battle, and a submarine going down, and for a large part of the remainder of the movie, we follow captain Schlemmer(Fred Vogeding) and Steve McCreary (Ralph Bellamy) as they try to bring its contents back up years later. Our female lead Diane Templeton is the lovely (and in this one, also educated and wealthy) Fay Wray. She will provide the ship and the money for her undersea research, or so she thinks. She had been making movies for 10 years by this time, although it was only Bellamy's second year. In 1933, Wray would make eleven films (wow!) Writer Jo Swerling had written numerous adventures from the 1920s to the 1970s, including portions of Gone With the Wind, and It's a Wonderful Life. Good strong script, mostly good acting; A couple scenes are a little fuzzy and out of focus, but it was 1933. Also a little naughty for its time, especially in the photography dark-room. Interesting discussion of evolution from Diane Templeton, as she shows McCreary around some laboratory. Good action film. Per IMDb, it appears to have been re-released in 2005, but I was not able to find it available on barnes & noble, ebay, or amazon.com in any format. The web page for "nothings new video" says they are no longer in operation.

Even though BELOW THE SEA is an antique of a movie made in pre-code 1933, it's nice to note that there was a feistier side to FAY WRAY than the Scream Queen exhibited in KING KONG. She still has the same beauty but it's a little less innocent this time as she plays flirtatious games with RALPH BELLAMY as an underwater diver whom she can't get to smile or act like a gentleman. That seems to be her main preoccupation here, although she is bankrolling an underwater expedition while being deceived by men who are actually after some sunken gold bullion.I thought she was prettier as the innocent blonde of KING KONG, but is presented here as a more modern and calculating heroine who learns the truth about the expedition only after she's fallen in love with Bellamy. But by this time he's been given some underwater heroics to do in order to save her life, just in time for a happy ending.It's watchable but there are crude reminders that this is an early "talkie". It's easy to see why Bellamy never became leading man material in the Hollywood of the '40s after some leading man roles in films like this. He tries hard to play the sort of role that Bruce Cabot could have done blindfolded, but his loutish behavior seems more like a forced act.Wray is lovely but not quite as effective as she was in her most famous film. Fans of the actress will be the ones who can appreciate this early offering.

Having made it a point to see all the available Fay Wray films that have survived, I can tell you with certainty that you will never see her looking more beautiful than in her role, here. A radiant presence in a world of dangerous characters, she plays a moneyed adventuress bankrolling a 'scientific' expedition to document marine life. Unknown to her is the real purpose of her crews' intentions. Surprises abound in this 'A' title from Columbia Pictures. I had a hard time telling the full scale from the miniature set. And for humor, Fay lectures Ralph Bellamy about becoming a gentleman, as he descends a ladder, and she'll lean WAAYY over to make sure she has his attention. Another delight from the pre-code era. Highly recommended.