A pretty unremarkable John Wayne movie about dud torpedoes. Varied quality miniature effects, most close ups suffering from poor depth of focus. Many shots taken from much earlier films and exhibiting an obvious grainy quality. A particularly odd over use of a totally out of focus miniature periscope shot. Some shots appear to have been shot out at sea rather than in a tank as the horizon and sky look real. Some of the underwater tank work, particularly the violence of the depth charges is well done while a few of the shots which I suspect were lifted from earlier films suffer from the overly clear pool water and obvious pool sides in the background. Amusingly the sub sailors in the film are watching a sub movie complete with miniature shots of a submarine.
- In focus periscope shot?
Real horizon, not shot in a tank.
- Very grainy Stock shot from some other movie?
- Pool sides easily apparent, underwater visibility way too clear
- Sailors in the movie watching a sub movie miniature shot from another movie.
- … our favourite out of focus periscope shot returns.
- Animated search light beams, added in the optical printer and not too convincing.
What a fantastic blog! I’ve always been a bit of a warship buff and what with one of my other interests being visual effects, a website covering maritime effects in the movies is manna from heaven for me!
I see you’ve already mentioned ‘Sink The Bismarck!’, one of the all-time great naval battle movies, but I hope you go into more depth at some point. ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ is another classic and frankly whups the arse of Michael Bay’s CGI excrescence, the movie-that-dare-not-mention-its-name.
There are also some interesting Japanese war films, ‘Nihonkai Daikaisen’ or ‘Battle of the Japan Sea’ (Toho, 1969) in particular being a magnificent picture. Here are some screengrabs off a DVD I managed to get hold of a few years ago (including some behind-the-scenes shots from a short extra film on it):
http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a172/GrandLunar/Battle%20in%20the%20Sea%20of%20Japan/
Anyway, good luck with your blog, I’ve already got it bookmarked, and I see you already have Peter Cook’s superlative Matteshots blog linked as well!
Wow great pics of a movie I have not yet seen but it is on my hunt list. I only have only ever seen a couple of pictures of the miniatures in a book about Eiji Tsubaraya. Sink the Bismarck is one of the all time top model ship movies and will definately get a blog at some point as will Tora x3.