Trapped Beneath the Sea (1974)
Based on an incident that occurred off the coast of Florida in 1973, this film tells the story of four men who find themselves trapped in a mini-submarine in the ocean depths.
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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Powerful
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Some interesting facts about the movie. It was indeed about the tragedy of the Johnson Sea Link but not due to a collision. It was the accidental trapping of the Sea Link due to a snap hook that contacted a cable on a wreck. There was no way to cut or disengage the cable during those early days. The sub used to make the movie was the DSRV Diaphus from Texas A&M Univeristy in College Station, TX. A fiberglass shell was used to make it look bigger and added a fake lock out hatch like is on the Johnson Sea Link. The Diaphus can only be entered through the observation tower and typically only holds 2 people and at the most 3, never 4 people and it only has one compartment. The Diaphus could only go to 1,200 ft as opposed to 3,000 ft for the Sea Link. Some employees who operated the sub for TAMU were used in the movie.
A pseudo-documentary treatment of a true incident, this was framed as an inquest into the events. While the dramatization of what happened is fine, and the performances are believable, it is as if someone was afraid making the story exciting would undermine the documentary realism of the piece. This could have been so much more if they had allowed it more suspense.