Underwater! (1955)

Two scuba divers find a shipwreck which may contain undiscovered treasure, however, their attempt to salvage it is threatened by scavengers.

Director:

John Sturges

Writers:

Walter Newman (screenplay), Hugh King (story)

Stars:

Jane Russell, Gilbert Roland, Richard Egan

Cast

Cast overview:
Jane Russell	...	Theresa Gray
Gilbert Roland	...	Dominic Quesada
Richard Egan	...	Johnny Gray
Lori Nelson	...	Gloria
Robert Keith	...	Father Cannon
Joseph Calleia	...	Rico Herrera
Eugene Iglesias	...	Miguel Vega
Ric Roman	...	Jesus
Dámaso Pérez Prado	...	Perez Prado (as Perez Prado)

Storyline

Dominic Quesada and Johnny Gray, two SCUBA divers searching for sunken treasure off the coast of Cuba, think they've hit the jackpot when they find a 17th century ship on the sea floor. They need working capital however and Johnny is ready to hock his boat but his wife Theresa thinks they're off on another wild scheme that will leave them all poorer than when they started. She comes around however and are soon joined by Gloria, whose boat they will use and Father Cannon, a university professor and archaeologist. Although Dominic hasn't been completely honest with his partners, they may in fact be in the area of a major treasure ship. When they do find it, the ship is teetering on the edge of a 300 foot cliff and dangerous for even the most experienced divers.

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Plot Keywords:

treasure | boat | archaeologist | partner | sunken treasure | 

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Taglines:

COME ON BELOW... to that new, exciting Underwater World!

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Genres:

Adventure | Drama

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

1955 (UK)

Also Known As:

The Big Rainbow

Filming Locations:

Hawaii, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$3,500,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

RKO Radio Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

99 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound Recording)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.00 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Jane Russel arrived regularly late on the set, while the whole crew waited for her.

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Goofs

When Theresa pushes Johnny off the boat at the end, the walls of the tank in which the boat floats is visible in the background.

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Connections

Featured in Biography: Jane Russell: Body and Soul (1997)

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Soundtracks

Rhythm Sticks
(uncredited)
Written and Performed by Dámaso Pérez Prado (as Perez Prado) Y Su Orchestra

User Reviews

What about the time you tried to corner the avocado market!

**MINOR SPOILERS** Midly entertaining sunken treasure adventure movie that's only kept afloat by it's star Jane Russell, Theresa Gray, who's constantly competing in the movie with the breath-taking Caribbean scenery off the coast of Cuba. Finding some underwater artifacts that suggest their from a Spanish Man of War it's decided by the sunken-ship treasure hunters Johnny & Dom, Richard Egan & Gilbert Roland, to get a bigger boat to go back out at sea to recover the hundreds of gold bars and box-loads of priceless gems submerged there.

It takes a while for Johnny to first get his wife Thereas to go along with his, what seemed to her, water logged plan. It's then that Lady Luck struck him and Dom when looking to rent a 50 foot boat from this guy Robinson they finds that he checked out of town and left his boat over to his totally land-locked minded young secretary Gloria, Lori Nelson, who's more then willing to let the two treasure hunters use it.

There's a number of unexpected event happen to the quintet with a local padre Father Cannon ,Robert Keith, coming on board who's only interested in recovering a life size solid gold Virgin Mary statue studded with diamonds to be returned to her rightful owners in the little church in Panama where she originally came from. Later there's this boat-load of shark hunters headed by the scuzzy-looking Rico, Joseph Caileia,looking for garbage from John's boat to use as bait to attract the underwater predators. Rico smells a rat, or a gold bar, when John tells him he and Dom are only looking for underwater rocks to be studied by the professors and students at Havana University.

The movie "Underwater" comes to it's very predictable conclusion when after reaching the underwater sunken treasure site Johnny is left by himself with Dom suffering from the bends. It's then when we finally get to see Theresa or actress Jane Russell, who we earlier briefly saw in a swimsuit, put on her bathing suit and dive underwater to help and possible save her husband, Johnny, from either drowning or getting eaten up by sharks. Theresa for all her efforts gets stuck in the sunken ships wreckage where we then have Johnny making it back to the boat to get her an extra oxygen tank. You wonder why all this was really necessary when Theresa has those two giant natural air supply tanks that can easily keep Theresa breathing for at least a week!

With Johnny and Theresa as well as Dom who heroically came to both their aid, risking his life doing it, back on the boat their again confronted by the shark-hunters who were disarmed and left on shore by Johnny & Dom just a while earlier. We then have another boring battle between them and Johnny & Dom which ends with everybody shaking hands and becoming friends> This happens when one of the shark hunters got very religious, which quickly affected the rest of his crew-mates, over the the fact that all this violence was over a golden statue of the Virgin Mary the mother of the Prince of Peace!

Nothing that you wouldn't expect or want in a movie like "Underwater", except hoping to see a lot more of Jane Russell in a tight swimsuit, with a happy ending without anyone in the film getting killed. With the most seriously injury among the cast being that they got a bit wet under and between the ears and,in the case of Dom, a very bad case of the Caribbean cramps.