This is loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, City in the Sea and thus fits in with AIP’s other Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, though the film feels more like a budget version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea but it was a good ten years too late to cash in on Disney’s film.
Vincent Price plays The Captain, leader of an undersea city. When he kidnaps Susan Hart because she looks like his dead wife, Tab Hunter and David Tomlinson stumble across the city in there quest to find her. Then it’s a race against time for the trio, as they must escape before an impending volcanic eruption destroys the city.
Price, in full scenery chewing Poe mode, and Tomlinson, as a chicken fancying artist, just about make this watchable. The problem is far too little happens, at least until the last ten minutes or so when the escapees fight off gill-men as the volcano erupts, destroying the city and it’s inhabitants.
This was the last film made by the great Jacques Tourneur, of Cat People and Night of the Demon fame, but you’d be hard pushed to find anything to suggest the man who made this was the same one who made those horror classics. A sad end to the filmmaking career of one of the great horror directors of the ‘40s and ‘50s.
Horror and Western film buff, Marvel comic geek, music lover and occasional gamer. 