Gray Lady Down (1978)

People are voting emotionally.

Fantastic!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Gray Lady Down is directed by David Greene and collectively adapted to screenplay by James Whittaker, Howard Sackler and Frank P. Rosenberg from the novel Event 1000 written by David Lavallee. It stars Charlton Heston, David Carradine, Stacy Keach, Ned Beatty, Stephen McHattie and Ronny Cox. Music is by Jerry Fielding and cinematography by Stevan Larner. Hanging onto the coat tails of the Disaster Movie boom of the 70s, Gray Lady Down is pretty much routine. Plot basically finds a nuclear submarine struck by a boat and sunk to the depths of the treacherous ocean floor. The crew, Captained by a bearded and gruff Heston, are naturally also teetering on the edge of doom unless the Navy can pull off a miracle salvage operation and save the day. Enter Carradine and Beatty in a new Thunderbird like device that although untried in reality, may just be up for the job?Thus from this plot onwards is a role call of robotic characterisations and adherence to the genre's formula. Men in the sub either sweat and be stoic, or crack and be sacrificed, while up above the waves the hierarchy think they know best while Carradine's unconventional Captain Gates knows otherwise. It's all very muscular, even if some of the dialogue came out of a cheese sandwich, and undeniably the effects work is decent and the suspense is pumped up for maximum impact. Yet if you have seen any other Disaster Movie from the 70s you are likely to be jaded with this "Join The Navy" advertisement. 6/10

"Secure that door!"This is the story of Nautilus, the nuclear submarine that sank with all hands, but some of them got rescued. No submarines were harmed during the making of this movie, even though the script is quite bad and the special effects were done in a bathtub. The cast is great and it is just about the only grace saving this picture.The story and it's translation into script require the viewer to believe that the highly trained officers of the Navy are idiots. Which could be, but I highly doubt it, especially when we're talking about the flagship of the submarine fleet. Then again, stupid accidents happen all the time, and it could be possible that a ship the size of Manhattan would sucker punch a sub, once in a while. After that it gets better, especially towards the end, when the tension is well done.The special effects are terrible, but they seem to improve during the movie. Or I just got used to them, not sure. If you can look past the flimsy models and their less than impressive screen presence, however, they do their job and tell a decent story.The cast is great. Charlton Heston, Stacy Keach, Ronny Cox, David Caradine and Christopher Reeve are excellent.Gray Lady Down. A decent sub movie, with terrible special effects. 5/10.

A better-than-average disaster movie, due mostly to the absence of any ridiculous scenes. (There are no overweight older Jewish women who won swimming medals many years ago trying to reach the sub, for example.)On the other hand, Ronnie Cox as the first officer goes to pieces very quickly and you wonder why the Navy ever thought he'd be able to command a sub of his own. Also, you've got to ponder the initial collision. The sub's crew basically just lets a freighter in open water run them down, not even noticing that the freighter is in the area until it's too late to do anything about it. Kind of makes you wonder.Heston is restrained in his role, which works out pretty well. Everybody else does a good job (except for Cox) and the special FX are average for the time.Definitely worth watching.

Gray Lady Down is one of the better disaster movies of the late 70's The above title is a naval term for sub down. During a routine exercise off the coast of Connecticut, The Neptune is caught in dense fog Which unfortunatetly is rammed by an Norwegian trawler, the sub then sinks To terrifying depths and then rests on a unstable precipice which is overlooking a abyss beyond the point of no return. Charlton Heston gives an always great performance as the captain as does Ronny Cox as Hestons second in command. Stacy Keach plays the admiral back on shore who mounts the daring rescue mission, David Caradine also stars plays a creator of an experimental sub who plays a pivotal role in the rescue operation Ned Beatty delivers some much needed comic relief as Caradines bumbling Assistant, Strangely underrated Gray Lady Down, slowly but surely is just getting the recognition it finally deserves thanks to frequent TV showings and its DVD release finally in Anamorphic 235:1 WideScreen,