List Price: $14.95Price: $2.00 You Save: $12.95 (87%)as of 11/23/2009 22:08 EST
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Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780792851455
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792851455
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Languages: SpanishSubtitledFrenchSubtitledEnglishOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 20, 2001
Running Time: 84 minutes
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: May 26, 1965
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Vincent Price and Tab Hunter star in this entertainingly silly adventure. Very, very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "City in the Sea," War-Gods of the Deep starts off just right, with a stormy night and a huge old mansion by the sea. Before you know it, everyone is charging through secret passages and swimming around in enormous diving helmets. The plot zips along nicely, and the cast of pros knows just what to do with it. By this point in his career, Vincent Price could do tragic brooding menace with both hands tied behind his back, but he still puts his all into it like a champ. David Tomlinson also does a great job as half of a comic relief team--the other half being an uncredited chicken. This may not be a story for the ages, but it's not a bad way to spend an evening. -Ali Davis
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
War-Gods Of The Deep is one of those films whose title really makes no sense, but is right in keeping with the whole tenor of the film. It was made in 1965, the first of the famed American International Pictures post-Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe-themed horror and sci fi films of the 1960s, that started with The House Of Usher in 1960, and was a part of the Big Four of horror and sci fi films of that era. The three other competitors in the field were the giant monster films from Japan (Godzilla, Mothra, Gammera, etc.), the stop motion action-adventure-monster films of Ray Harryhausen, and the British Hammer Studios horror films. That War-Gods Of The Deep was set in England, even though made by AIP, and featuring two American B film superstars like Vincent Price and Tab Hunter, and based upon a poem by American poet and writer Poe, is just one of its many ironies. Yet, that still does not explain its odd title. The alternate title was The City Under The Sea, which makes sense, since that's what it is about, a city reputedly called Lyonesse- not any War-Gods. It was based upon the Poe poem The City In The Sea, which is quoted by Price at film's start and end, and begins:
Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
Suffice to say, the poem was not one of Poe's great classics, and the film derived from it is not one of AIP's better Poe themed films. War-Gods Of The Deep was the final film in the storied career of Jacques Tourneur, probably the greatest B film director in cinema history, and one of the true masters of the black and white medium. While better known for his classic films produced by Val Lewton (Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie), Tourneur proved he could make great horror films on his own. In 1957 he directed the British horror classic Night Of The Demon (Curse Of The Demon in the U.S.), and even in this color film, with its thin premise of a sunken city off the Cornish coast, unaging sailors from the Eighteenth Century, who do not age because of an imbalance of oxygen from an undersea volcano and some nonsense about ultraviolet light on the earth's surface in daylight (huh?), Gill-Men who are third rate Creatures From The Black Lagoon, and other assorted lunacy- such as a British comic foil for Hunter who carries about a chicken with the male name of Herbert, the film actually entertains, even if it lacks real chills.
The film has several layers to it. Watching it today, one must bear in mind, with the film over four decades old, yet the story is set in the more distant past of 1903, with characters who came from their even more distant past of decades, and even over a century, earlier, that this was made right at the beginning of notions of Postmodernism; which shows mostly that PoMo and B film psychology are kissin' cousins. What this says for both mindsets and pulling the wool over one's eyes is open for debate. The film also makes great use of its recycled AIP wares from prior movies. AIP reputedly never trashed old sets, and art director Frank White makes the most of the sets and miniatures that comprise the underwater city. The film also seems to be a scrapbook of ideas from other, better films, like the aforementioned Poe films, and The Time Machine. But, it also recalls the stellar Forbidden Planet by having the underground city being powered by huge pumps and machinery built by a long destroyed society that is no longer, having degenerated into the Gill-Men. The underwater cinematography by Neil Ginger Gemmell and John Lamb is also excellent, for a B film, even though the divers are all manifestly in a pool no more than fifteen or twenty feet deep, not leagues under the sea for the surface can be seen a few feet above the divers' heads. There are even some chuckles to be had when Harold sticks his chicken Herbert inside his diving helmet. The rest of the cinematography, by Stephen Dade, is merely solid, although there are some moody moments captured seemingly inadvertently, with miniatures.
Rating: -
For once, I found myself in agreement with every other reviewer here. Read 'em all, they know whereof they speak!
Having just polished off all 8 Roger Corman POE films (plus CASTLE OF BLOOD), I set my sights on this, hoping it might turn out better than I remembered. As it happens, it was EXACTLY as I remembered. Can't win 'em all. AIP refused to let their POE series end with Corman's departure, and plowed on. There does seem to be a lot of talent involved here... except, like the 3rd season of LOST IN SPACE, it feels like it was shot from a 1st-draft script that could have used a LOT of extra work.
The story, involving a seaside mansion, secret tunnels, underground caverns, and a secret "world" lorded over by a megalomaniacal madman will no doubt remind the viewer of several other films, most of which are better than this one. Using a POEM as a jumping-off point (they'd done it before with THE RAVEN) this seems to borrow ideas from such Jules Verne stories as JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, and perhaps others less well known. Price is classic as always, though his character shows virtually no admirable qualities. Tab Hunter seems to be walking thru the picture. Susan Hart is a DOLL, but gets VERY little to do. I like David Tomlinson, generally... just NOT HERE. He's annoying, and so is his chicken, oddly named Herbert (is that a reverse on "A Boy Named Sue"?). John Le Mesurier, who I've seen in many films & tv shows, actually gets a chance to exhibit more depth and emotion in his brief scenes as the long-kidnapped preacher than I've ever seen from him, and perhaps more than anyone else in the film!
I often get frustrated with characters like Price's "Captain" who simply CAN'T be reasoned with. He issues Tab Hunter an IMPOSSIBLE task and deadline, then quickly condemns him to a watery grave. (Was anyone surprised?) He kidnapped Susan Hart because she's a DEAD RINGER for his long-dead wife. While a staple of late-model DRACULA films (including those with Gary Oldman, Frank Langella AND William Marshall), I wonder where this idea really originated, as the earliest use of it seems to be the 1932 Karloff classic, THE MUMMY.
While the basic premise is interesting, the cast adequate, and the sets & props excellent, the writing drags it down unforgiveably, leaving no room for the director or the actors to go with it. I was also confused by the layout of the tunnels (considering how important they were to the plot, it's a point of confusion that should have been better handled). And of course, the climactic underwater action scenes are just impossible to follow. (This is no THUNDERBALL-- made the same year!) A shame... this makes THE PREMATURE BURIAL look like 5 stars by comparison!
Rating:  -
In an effort to determine what exactly went wrong with War Gods of the Deep (1965) aka City in the Sea, I looked at the individuals involved in bringing this film to life. The story is based on an Edgar Allen Poe poem, The City in the Sea, so it had good roots. The director, Jacques Tourneur, seems quite accomplished, at the very least prolific, directing scads of films and television shows from the 30's all the way into the 60's. Let's look at the writers...Charles Bennett, well, he appears to be a very capable writer, responsible for a few films I've really enjoyed like The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935). Let's see, who is the other writer? Louis M. Heyward? The schlock producer/writer responsible for such films like Pajama Party (1964), Sergeant Dead Head (1965), and Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966)? Oh bruther...Oh wait, I also see he was a production executive for KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)...I think I've found the weak link in this production.
The film stars Vincent Price as The Captain, 50's teen heart throb (also known as 'the sigh guy') Tab Hunter as Ben Harris, Susan Hart (who was married at the time to James H. Nicholson, one of the founders of the AIP, the studio that released this film...big mystery as to how she got the part here...) as Jill Tregillis, English character actor David Tomlinson as the foppish Harold Tiffin-Jones, and Herbert, the chicken...yes, there is a chicken in this film, and it did get a screen credit at the end.
Okay, the film opens pretty well, with a dark and stormy night and a large, isolated manor house/hotel on a secluded Cornish coast, sitting on the edge of a high cliff before the raging sea. A body washes onto the shore, and some locals discover it's a lawyer who is assisting American Jill Tregillis manage the transition of an estate from a recently passed relative...I think...the finer points of the story got a little muddled, and continued to do so throughout the film. Ben Harris, and American geologist (I think) gets involved, for whatever reason, and goes to tell Jill that her lawyer (or barrister, as I think they are referred to in good old England) has bit the proverbial big one. No one seemed particularly put out by this fellow's demise, giving me the impression that the English feel the same about their legal professionals as we do in the states. Here we meet one of the residents of the house, an artist named Harold Tiffin-Jones, and his pet chicken named Herbert. Why does he have a pet chicken? Well, I didn't get the impression he was married, so draw your own conclusions. After Ben has a slight skirmish with a mysterious intruder, he finds that Jill is missing, so he, Harold, and Hubert investigate. They find a secret passage, one that leads to caves and such beneath the manor, and find a giant whirlpool, to which they promptly fall in...what a couple of goons...and awaken in the city underneath the sea...oh bruther...
Some stuff happens, barely, and the boys (and the chicken) meet The Captain. Seems many moons ago the city was a land based one, but fell into the sea, pulled there by an underwater volcano. The residents at the time, being very smart, fashioned machines and such to enable them to continue to live in their city, but weren't smart enough just to just leave the city as it was sinking...and now The Captain is the leader, king, whatever, of the now remnants of this once great city, and is desperately searching for a way to save the city from the increasingly active volcano that threatens their existence, sending fish men and such to the surface to steal books, kidnap people, whatever, all in a means to try and stave off disaster. Yes, there are fish men, who aid the humans in the city underneath the sea for some reason or other. Why? I haven't the slightest idea... Why don't the humans just leave the city, you ask? I wondered that myself... Well, living in the sea has been a sort of blessing as well as a curse, extended their lives to highly un-natural lengths, but has rendered them highly susceptible to the ultra-violet rays of the sun in that prolonged exposure would cause rapid aging followed by death. Why kidnap Jill? Because she bears an uncanny likeness to The Captain's deceased wife...oh bruther...
War Gods of the Deep actually has some pretty good-looking sets and gave a glimmer of hope that was soon extinguished as the plot unfolded. As far as the source material is involved, Price does have some voice-over with him reading passages from the Edgar Allen Poe poem, but that's about it...Vincent Price and David Tomlinson are fun to watch, but really can't help save this drecky mess. Tab Hunter and Susan Hart are obviously thrown in for eye candy, as neither seems entirely capable of pulling off their respective characters. This film seems to try to do for Edgar Allen Poe's poem what Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) for ... Read More
Rating: -
With little fanfare, MGM has quietly transferred a handful of great B films to DVD that they not too arbitrarily categorize as "Midnight Movies." The nice looking digital prints are in their original theatrical format and appear as if they were taken from original material. The discs come with no substantial extras but care has been lavished on the box art, often reflecting the lurid lobby cards and posters of their initial release. Even acknowledging the B category, these are for the most part well-crafted and, well, adequately acted.
In "WAR GODS OF THE DEEP," the late and much-lamented Vincent Price co-stars with 50s pretty boy Tab Hunter in an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story that pits he-men against gill-men with sexy Susan Hart caught in the middle.
See, Price is uberlord of a lost underwater city (apparently built by a low bid papier mache developer), and he's got gillgoons that kidnap landubbers. The second half is a showdown between brave humans and slimy fishmen with an angry, about to blow volcano towering over everything. ...
This gets 3 stars 'cause Vincent Price and Edgar Poe had a hand in it.
Rating:  -
Although the story-telling and pacing leave a lot to be desired, this is a nice addition to the very collectible MGM Midnite Movies series. Great sets, locations, and actors (Vincent Price, whom many would pay to hear him recite his laundry list) make this a very visually appealing film. I disagree with Maltin's comment about the "shoddy underwater city". For its time, the visual effects (with the notable exception of the gill-men ), sets, and props were impressive. Try it out and see for yourself.
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