Filmed only 15 years after the end of WW1, "Hell Below" recounts the exploits of a US submarine (AL-14) and her crew, both at war and on shore-leave in Italy. The action sequences are outstanding, especially the sinking of the German destroyer (as recounted elsewhere, the producers actually purchased a decommissioned USN destroyer and sank it for the film) and the bomber/fighter attack on the US sub. Like most submarine movies, there is much emphasis on the claustrophobic conditions on board, the tension of being stalked by surface ships, and the fear of the crushing weight of water outside the hull. The scenes were AL-14 is trapped on the bottom, below her safe depth, as chlorine gas begins to seep out from her batteries are excellent. For a film supported by the DoN, I'm surprised that the film-makers were allowed to show submariners dying such grim, unheroic deaths (including suicide). The shore-leave scenes (and the associated love story) are not as good as the action sequences (possibly because they don't date as well) but they're not bad (a boxing match with a kangaroo not withstanding). Jimmy Durante, a major comedy star at the time, provides the comic relief with his standard 'schnozzola' shtick -- a little bit goes a long way, but the British Marine with huge buck-teeth constantly referring to him as 'the pelican' is pretty funny and the scene where he gets set up with an Italian girl with an even bigger nose is priceless (the movie is 'pre-code' - the line "I wonder if my old man ever taught here" probably would not have got by the censors a year later). The ending is pure Hollywood heroic-hokum but that doesn't detract much from an altogether excellent war movie from the inter-war period.
Review of Hell Below
