This was the first film seen in theaters as a widescreen presentation in Finland in the fifties. So much for the film history, because the video version I saw was in 1.33:1 format leaving a lot of the visual underwater spectaculars out of the picture. Not that it might have helped much the otherwise lackluster presentation. The underwater photography of scavenging a sunken treasure does look great and very well done for its time. But above the surface there are the all too static scenes made in a studio with painted skies and wind machines. The dialog and acting are stiff and more like posing instead of running smoothly along the story. Not that the plot is much of a help either. A bit more care for the script would have been needed for a working balance next to the well executed underwater scenes and such ambitious plans for marketing tricks like underwater screenings with aqualungs for the press. The whole story is very slow moving and largely without excitement until the final fifteen minutes. Only then is the movie finally able to fill some of the expectations that have been promised all along with claustrophobic mood, shark danger and Jane Russell stuck in a favorable position in open red swimming suit. John Sturges was usually a very capable director, but this time his skills have probably been too tied under the command of the producer Howard Hughes. I'm sure they didn't really mean the whole movie to sink like that.

**MINOR SPOILERS** Midly entertaining sunken treasure adventure movie that's only kept afloat by it's star Jane Russell, Theresa Gray, who's constantly competing in the movie with the breath-taking Caribbean scenery off the coast of Cuba. Finding some underwater artifacts that suggest their from a Spanish Man of War it's decided by the sunken-ship treasure hunters Johnny & Dom, Richard Egan & Gilbert Roland, to get a bigger boat to go back out at sea to recover the hundreds of gold bars and box-loads of priceless gems submerged there.It takes a while for Johnny to first get his wife Thereas to go along with his, what seemed to her, water logged plan. It's then that Lady Luck struck him and Dom when looking to rent a 50 foot boat from this guy Robinson they finds that he checked out of town and left his boat over to his totally land-locked minded young secretary Gloria, Lori Nelson, who's more then willing to let the two treasure hunters use it.There's a number of unexpected event happen to the quintet with a local padre Father Cannon ,Robert Keith, coming on board who's only interested in recovering a life size solid gold Virgin Mary statue studded with diamonds to be returned to her rightful owners in the little church in Panama where she originally came from. Later there's this boat-load of shark hunters headed by the scuzzy-looking Rico, Joseph Caileia,looking for garbage from John's boat to use as bait to attract the underwater predators. Rico smells a rat, or a gold bar, when John tells him he and Dom are only looking for underwater rocks to be studied by the professors and students at Havana University.The movie "Underwater" comes to it's very predictable conclusion when after reaching the underwater sunken treasure site Johnny is left by himself with Dom suffering from the bends. It's then when we finally get to see Theresa or actress Jane Russell, who we earlier briefly saw in a swimsuit, put on her bathing suit and dive underwater to help and possible save her husband, Johnny, from either drowning or getting eaten up by sharks. Theresa for all her efforts gets stuck in the sunken ships wreckage where we then have Johnny making it back to the boat to get her an extra oxygen tank. You wonder why all this was really necessary when Theresa has those two giant natural air supply tanks that can easily keep Theresa breathing for at least a week! With Johnny and Theresa as well as Dom who heroically came to both their aid, risking his life doing it, back on the boat their again confronted by the shark-hunters who were disarmed and left on shore by Johnny & Dom just a while earlier. We then have another boring battle between them and Johnny & Dom which ends with everybody shaking hands and becoming friends> This happens when one of the shark hunters got very religious, which quickly affected the rest of his crew-mates, over the the fact that all this violence was over a golden statue of the Virgin Mary the mother of the Prince of Peace!Nothing that you wouldn't expect or want in a movie like "Underwater", except hoping to see a lot more of Jane Russell in a tight swimsuit, with a happy ending without anyone in the film getting killed. With the most seriously injury among the cast being that they got a bit wet under and between the ears and,in the case of Dom, a very bad case of the Caribbean cramps.

This was the last picture that Howard Hughes, Executive Producer, would produce with Jane Russell. Howard produced "The Outlaw" with Russell years ago and it was a big success because it was baned by many Christian churches, because too much cleveage was exposed by Jane R. In this film, Jane Russell,(Theresa Gray),"Young Widow",'46, appears mostly in a bathing suit and shows off her body in all the right places and was the wife of Richard Egan,(Johnny Gray),"Untamed",'55, who had a great addiction to trying to find treasure and was down on his luck and just got married; so he was looking for a big find. Gilbert Roland, (Dominic),"Sonora",69 was also a skilled diver who also desired to find sunken riches from the deep coral reefs. Lori Nelson,(Gloria),"The Naked Monster",'05, was a cute petite blond friend of Dominic and played a rather dumb role. In 1955, scuba diving was a new feature and underwater films were of great interest to the public. There even was a priest who went along on the boat, who had great interest in religious relics that had sunken into the sea. There is some exciting scenes which captured the audiences of the 50's; it is truly a great Classic Film.

Leonard Maltin got this one right, I'm afraid. It's standard fare all the way through. Richard Egan and Gilbert Roland searching for lost treasure don't create much excitement, even with Jane Russell and Lori Nelson along for the ride. Ms. Russell briefly displays a Latin accent which goes in and out, mostly out. If you could never get enough of the old TV series 'Sea Hunt' this might be your thing but otherwise it's strictly take it or leave it.