Who payed the critics

Too many fans seem to be blown away

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This is the final collaboration of Toho's iconic kaiju team of Ishiro Honda (director), Eiji Tsuburaya (effects), and Akira Ifukube (music), but is far from their best work. The film follows three men (two scientists and a reporter) rescued by Capt. McKenzie (Joseph Cotton) in his highly advanced submarine "The Alpha" only to find out that their saviour is 200 years old and lives in the titular deep-sea utopia 11000 fathoms beneath the eponymous coordinate (where the equator crosses the international date line). On the trip to Latitude Zero, the Alpha survives an attack by a heavily armed submarine, The Black Shark, which is, commanded by Captain Kuroiga (Hikaru Kuroki) in the service of evil Dr. Malic (Cesar Romero) who is also 200 years old. After touring the idyllic abyssal city, the three rescuees end up accompanying McKenzie on a mission to rescue an atomic physicist kidnapped by Malic. Adventure ensues as the heroes penetrate Malic's secret island fortress and battle his army of giant man-bats, monster rats, and a surgically-engineered griffin, with the clock ticking as Malic prepares to practice his fiendish vivisection skills on the helpless scientist and his pretty daughter. As forgiving (and loving) as I am of Toho's tokusatsu movies, this one is generally ridiculous. The story makes no sense (unless the cryptic final scene means that the whole thing is some alternate reality) and there is little to explain who these fantastically advanced icosagenarians are or how the titular underwater city came into being. LZ 'technology' ranges from the reasonable (the Alpha), to the unlikely (the elevation belts and flamethrower/gas/laser gloves), to the preposterous (the hot tub 'bath of immunity' that makes you bulletproof). Malic's specialty seems to be bioengineering, but the giant rats and the lion look more like evil stuffed toys than actual animals and the 'man-bats' are ludicrous (note how the connection between their 'hand' and their wing changes depending on what the creature is doing). Even the most tired kaiju gimmick, the ability to suddenly increase in size, makes an appearance as Malic uses his "amplification serum" to make the griffin of suitable proportions to threaten a submarine. On the plus side, the underwater scenes are quite good (notably the opening bathyscaph segment), as are some of the images in the underwater city (such as the docking of the Alpha). The cast has lots of familiar faces from both American and Japanese cinema but the star power doesn't help. Cesar Romero essentially plays his iconic Joker character with a less maniacal laugh, Cotton's smug McKenzie is tiresome, Linda Haynes is terrible as the usually underdressed 'surprise, I'm a doctor' eye-candy, and Patricia Medina plays Malic's moll Lucretia, the typical sidekick who serves no purpose other than to have things explained. I don't know what I would have thought of this film when it came out and I was eleven (and probably representative of the target audience) - maybe I would have been impressed, but I doubt that it would hold the attention of a 'modern' eleven-year old. As far as adult viewers go: fans of this kind of schlock or those, like me, focused on their tokusatsu life-lists will find it worth watching, others, likely not.

This is one of the finest of the non-Godzilla epics by Ishiro Honda and Toho. It definitely has all the elements that make for a great film great story, great action and an interesting twist at the end. What really stands out is the fact that Honda pretty much took a near impossible situation in working with several American actors who didn't speak Japanese and was able to do a decent job in directing them. However, the thing that really was interesting about this film was the fact that this film marks what probably is the first and only time that Akira Takarada and the late, great Akihiko Hirata are heard speaking English with their own voices after years of being dubbed. This film is definitely one of the finest to come from Toho.

I saw this film while it was in first run, back in 1969. Expecting an action film, what I recall seeing was one of the worst most laughable bombs in cinematic history. The special effects were amateurish and the acting dreadfully stiff. A Japanese movie with two has-been American actors edited in.When I first discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in the early '90s this film immediately came to mind as perfect fodder for a send-up. I don't know if they ever got around to spoofing it, but Joel and the crew should have.Don't waste your time on this turkey.

Scientists are descending in bathyspere when an underwater volcano erupts. They are saved by a submarine commander on his futuristic sub the Alpha who takes them to a mystical and wonderful place named Latitude Zero, where the adventure is this action packed Japanese film begins.