Hello Down There |
  • USA • 1969 • 88m •    • Directed by: Jack Arnold, Ricou Browning. • Starring: Tony Randall, Janet Leigh, Roddy McDowall, Jim Backus, Ken Berry, Charlotte Rae, Kay Cole, Richard Dreyfuss, Lou Wagner, Gary Tigerman, Arnold Stang, Harvey Lembeck, Merv Griffin. • Music by: Jeff Barry.    Marine scientist Fred Miller designs the world's first underwater home, but when the business magnate funding his work threatens to end the project, Miller volunteers to live in it with his own family to prove it's practical.
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Review:
I first saw this as a youngster on a Saturday night movie, probably on ABC or possibly NBC. Only a few years after its theatrical release, it hadn't yet dated badly, even though we had already entered in the cynical post-Woodstock, post-Vietnam era. We kids could still look back at the '60s as a very bright, fun, mod and groovy decade, and this movie brought that all back. This is very much a snapshot of the era, complete with ecological awareness of the oceans. It fit in well in the era of not just Flipper, but also Sealab 2020. Overall, I give it eight stars not really because of the quality of the movie, but mostly for nostalgic value.
The cast was not exactly brimming with movie stars, but they were nevertheless household names, bringing their familiar personas from the little screen to the silver screen. Tony Randall plays the uptight, meticulous father role that likely got him cast as Felix Unger a year later, essentially the same character as Fred Miller with a few neuroses thrown in. Ken Berry plays the clumsy wimp a la Captain Parmenter, with a touch of underhandedness from the evil twin roles he liked to play on occasion. Jim Backus was all money-grubbing blustery blowhard, like Thurston Howell. Berry and Backus also worked together in Wake Me When the War Is Over, a TV movie broadcast only months after this was released. It does drive home just how long ago this movie was that all of the older cast members have left us. It's been 50 years now, and Randall, Janet Leigh, Berry, Backus, Roddy McDowell, Charlotte Rae, Merv Griffin and Harvey Lembeck are all gone, and the younger members of the cast are well into retirement age.
The script was fairly simplistic and repetitive at times, befitting a movie that wouldn't strain the attention span of its younger viewers.
The underwater "action" scenes will be very familiar if you've ever seen Flipper. Exciting for children, but reasonable adults won't get much of a rise out of them. The sharks are Caribbean reef sharks, which almost never attack humans and have never killed one in recent record. In fact, tourists pay good money to swim with Caribbean reef sharks. No sharks were harmed in the filming of the movie. The ones that the dolphins rammed with their noses were fiberglass, not real, and the "blood" gushing from the gills of live ones after the rammings were just food coloring squirted into their mouths.
Review by TVholic from the Internet Movie Database.
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