In the 60's the Japanese had a lock on what I like to call "sci-fi soap operas" with their successful Gojira (Godzilla) series and various creature features. Marking an early role for Sonny Chiba (who most of us B-movie aficionados know from the Street Fighter series), Terror Beneath The Sea is a solid, if unremarkable, entry in the sub-genre and has enough cheesy charm to keep you mildly entertained right up to the over-the-top finale that's packed with multiple explosions, a persistent bad guy who refuses to die, and our "fish men" monsters rising up against their controlling masters (while sporting harpoon guns and pistols).

Chiba plays a reporter named Ken, who along with his fellow newswoman/girlfriend Jenny (Peggy Neal) are onboard a military submarine in order to witness the test run of a new underwater heat seeking missile that has the ability to seek out and destroy its target no matter how much it changes course (we see this test done with dopey looking models, which tends to be the norm for these Japanese flicks). The test doesn't quite pan out they way it was intended and they see a silhouette of what they think is a person outside the sub.

Intrigued by this our duo set out to figure out what they saw only to end-up trapped in the underground base of Dr. Moore (Enric Nielsen), who has been changing human beings into what he calls "water cyborgs" (which are really just scaly amphibian-like creatures - played by guys in what look like silvery tracksuits and silly masks) in order to try and create a new breed that can rise up and take over dry land. Trapped and next on the agenda to be experimented on, Ken and Jenny have to try and escape while a couple of Navy officers search for them topside.

Terror Beneath The Sea is the kind of movie you'll want to throw on during a dull, preferably rainy, Sunday afternoon when there's nothing going on, you're feeling lazy, and you don't want to think too much. The entire thing is an exercise in silliness, what with its passing mentions of "atomic waste" (a standard of 50's and 60's monster movies), over emoting like crazy from the cast to go with the overly dramatic musical score, and plenty of chintzy effects such as the moment where a transformation is shown using goofy stop motion animation. Plus, it's given the usual much too serious dubbing you'd expect and we even get our mad scientist villain giving a maniacal rant about using the waste of humankind to rule the world while looking nuttily into the sky.

This isn't art, but if you're a fan of B-flicks of the most ridiculous kind then there should be something within Terror Beneath The Sea to please - even if it's only such lines of dialogue like, "Not the X-4! You'll blow-up the whole ocean!" (as one person exclaims when the military unleash a top secret missile on Dr. Moore's base). (Chris Hartley, 3/22/06)

Directed By: Hajime Sato.
Written By: Kohichi Ohtsu.

Starring: Shin-Ichi (Sonny) Chiba, Peggy Neal, Franz Gruber, Gunther Braun.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The first thing I noticed about Terror Beneath The Sea when watching it were two things: a) the credits are shoddily edited down, and b) the entire thing looks framed incorrectly with too many close-ups and scenes looking cut-off. Upon further research I read from various sources 2.35:1 is the correct ratio, which would explain this.

Apart from that fact, Dark Sky does present the film on disc looking much better than you'd expect with a stable picture sporting bright colour and solid clarity. The print does suffer from dirt and grain, but you can't expect it to be pristine 40 years after its first release.

Extras: It would've been cool for Dark Sky to include a Japanese language track with subtitles to go with the dubbed version and that would've been "bonus features" enough, instead they've given us absolutely nothing - not even a trailer.

Visit Dark Sky Films for more info.