Merten paholaiset

Nobody ever claimed Samuel Fuller was an artist, especially not Fuller himself. He was to movies the same thing he was to newspapers, a cigar-chomping primitive. This, along with Fixed Bayonets and Pickup on South Street, is among his best movies. It's his usual stuff -- big closeups, rudimentary dialogue and character -- souped up by a larger budget than usual. A lot of it went for special effects. The Big Boom of the atomic bomb, still something of a fearful novelty in those days. And, for the first time in my memory, a war movie delineates the trajectory of tracer bullets. (Only it's hard to see on the small screen.)

The story is simple enough. A bunch of mercenaries of varied backgrounds is hired to man a submarine and gather intelligence and they undergo the usual dangers, except that there are no depth charges. There is a crude and horny seaman who is the source of some laughs. There is one of those non-English speakers (a Chinese guy) who sings a traditional American song by Cole Porter and mixes it up with a lot of slang. There is the egghead that is usually found in a Howard Hawks movie. There is the love interest, a discovery of the producer and his wife, who is named Bella Darvi (DAR Daryll, and VI = Virginia). She wound up addicted to gambling and her career was practically nonexistent. Our sub rams and sinks a Chinese sub. (Isn't that against some kind of law?) Everybody gets on deck and shoots at a passing airplane, to good effect. The professor loses a thumb in a horrific scene. In another awful scene, the slangy Chinese guy gets his brains beaten out.

I don't know, but I kind of enjoy it. Nice technicolor, good battle scenes, and Richard Widmark is always dependable if not necessarily memorable. Sam Fuller had absolutely no aspirations and he lives up to them here.