I can imagine this silent/talkie movie of 1929 having an impact on audiences of the time -- which it apparently did not do -- but the effects are primitive by today's standards and the story itself is not much more than routine.
Lionel Barrymore is Count Dakkar who lives on the Baltic Island of Hetia with his daughter Jacqueline Gadsden. He and his workmen are building two submarines with which he will explore the ocean depths for scientific reasons.
He is betrayed by his ambitious and treacherous friend, Montagu Love as Baron Falon or Felon or something. (Who carries the juice, a Count or a Baron?) He wants to use the submersibles as weapons of war with which to conquer the world. Love takes over one of the submarines, holding Gadsden as hostage, while Barrymore and a few of his subordinates dive in the other.
The two wind up at the bottom of the ocean where they encounter strange creatures such as a horde of hostile humanoids living in cities and a couple of baby alligators with fins glued to their backs. They barely escape with their lives.
Up to the surface again, where Love and his myrmidons are defeated by Barrymore and his workmen. Barrymore is dying. Before he does, he destroys the factory that built the devilish machines so that no one will be tempted to use them as weapons of war again. The audience is permitted a slight chuckle here.
It has a few tense moments. Barrymore and his daughter are both tortured by Love's hussars and they both project intolerable pain reasonably well.
I mentioned that the special effects are primitive by today's standards. I don't mean that I kwell at the sight of CGIs parading across the screen and munching on people. It's just that these effects, as modern as they once might have been, are so crude as to be distracting. It's hard to get into an action scene when you're reminded, every second, that you're looking at miniatures.
It carries a relevant anti-war message, which I thought was fine but which some viewers might find noisome. At any rate some might find it more entertaining than I did.
Lionel Barrymore is Count Dakkar who lives on the Baltic Island of Hetia with his daughter Jacqueline Gadsden. He and his workmen are building two submarines with which he will explore the ocean depths for scientific reasons.
He is betrayed by his ambitious and treacherous friend, Montagu Love as Baron Falon or Felon or something. (Who carries the juice, a Count or a Baron?) He wants to use the submersibles as weapons of war with which to conquer the world. Love takes over one of the submarines, holding Gadsden as hostage, while Barrymore and a few of his subordinates dive in the other.
The two wind up at the bottom of the ocean where they encounter strange creatures such as a horde of hostile humanoids living in cities and a couple of baby alligators with fins glued to their backs. They barely escape with their lives.
Up to the surface again, where Love and his myrmidons are defeated by Barrymore and his workmen. Barrymore is dying. Before he does, he destroys the factory that built the devilish machines so that no one will be tempted to use them as weapons of war again. The audience is permitted a slight chuckle here.
It has a few tense moments. Barrymore and his daughter are both tortured by Love's hussars and they both project intolerable pain reasonably well.
I mentioned that the special effects are primitive by today's standards. I don't mean that I kwell at the sight of CGIs parading across the screen and munching on people. It's just that these effects, as modern as they once might have been, are so crude as to be distracting. It's hard to get into an action scene when you're reminded, every second, that you're looking at miniatures.
It carries a relevant anti-war message, which I thought was fine but which some viewers might find noisome. At any rate some might find it more entertaining than I did.