The Worst Film Ever

Don't listen to the negative reviews

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Delight war comedy,easy to watch and hard to forget,a bright constellation of stars,Grant as Captain every time try put out the fire,Curtis continues set on fire,all five woman are the main reason for so many confusion on board,each one them had a special moments along the picture in the particular way a clumsy and sexy Joan O'Brien and the chemistry between O'Connell and Virginia Gregg,a everlasting funny moments with all casting,a movie to be discovery for new ones!!! Resume: First watch: 2007 / How many: 3 / Source: Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.5

A sometimes funny, sometimes serious account of a damaged sub and its ragtag crew as they wend their way through the perilous waters of World War II. Cary Grant is the sub commander and Tony Curtis is a less than honest lieutenant who is great at stealing stuff needed on the sub. Along the way, the crew rescues several Army nurses, who make life aboard the sub difficult, to put it mildly. Lots of familiar faces pop up in the cast, including Gavin "Love Boat" MacLeod, Gene Evans, Virginia Gregg, Dick "Bewitched" Sargent, Marion "Happy Days" Ross, Arthur O'Connell and Dina Merrill. Beautifully photographed and nicely directed by a very young Blake Edwards, although the antics are on the mild side, which is what comes of having the Navy's cooperation. Interestingly, Grant was not the first choice for his part. Jeff Chandler, whose star was on the rise in the 1950s, was. The film was essentially remade 37 years later with Kelsey Grammar in the Grant role. It was called "Down Periscope."

An hilarious comedy with a much higher gag quota than I was expecting.Very little actually happens in terms of the plot: they repair the sub, they pick up some women en route to another port where they make further repairs, escape from an air raid and fall foul of an American destroyer in the final minutes. But it's the dialogue that matters, and the interplay between Cary Grant and Tony Curtis, the men and the women. These dynamics prove fertile comedy ground, and are mined for everything they're worth without ever overdoing it or becoming silly.The film looks fantastic. One of those where the full weight of military cooperation is evident on the screen, with planes flying low overhead, naval destroyers dropping dozens of depth charges in the spectacular climax, and an unexpected level of detail in some of the external shots of the sub. The resultant location shooting means the film is a lot less studio-bound than similar films of the era. Talking of the sub, I don't know if the interiors were shot on a real sub - I doubt there'd be room - but it feels very authentic and realistic.Most of the best material stems from Curtis' attempts to procure supplies for the sub, with the best scene in the film being the theft of a pig and the ensuing cover up. It's a riotous few minutes and as funny as anything I've seen in a film made in the '50s.

The message Cary Grant, in complete frustration at red tape, requisitions toilet paper for the Sea Tiger is almost word for word from an actual sardonically-toned requisition from a USS sub commander in WWII to HQ (CINCPAC). I don't have the book nearby, but in "Submarine", Commander Edward L. Beach (of "Run Silent, Run Deep" fame) recounts the famous incident.After this Skipper's message was received, he got his toilet paper. More than he may have expected. Every time thereafter that his sub returned to Pearl Harbor from patrol, instead of the mounds of meat, fruit, and ice cream that greeted the sequestered crews of other returning subs at the dock, there were disappointingly only mounds of rolls of toilet paper.Some viewers may see a double entendre in the context of the film where ladies are aboard on a pink submarine. Edwards and Blatty probably were also aware of this because sexual innuendoes abound in the film - and might I say in good taste - although in their other later collaborations, the taste may have gotten lost on a few occasions.But, do appreciate that an older USS sub (SS-23? 22? 21? 20? etc...) undergoing retrofit in the US Navy around December 1941 in the South Pacific did have a rust colored primer coat applied to it prior to its final coat of gray. However, after Pearl Harbor, the finishing gray paint became unavailable or the sub had no time to have the finishing coat applied, and had to enter war service with only its primer coat. Because of the rusty color of the primer, it often looked pink, especially in grand Pacific sunsets. Therefore, you actually had a US sub on patrol in the early days of WWII that was, in effect, pink.Blake Edwards also knew the Navy because he served in it during WWII. The characters, Sherman and Holden, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis respectively, might just be akin to Edwards' alter egos since Blake was in the fight as a swab jockey.Extra stuff: Crews on USS subs were "hand-picked" for their advanced aptitude in engineering and mechanics. Collectively, on one US sub in WWII, you probably had quite a few geniuses in service. Each man could operate any function on the boat should one have become incapacitated. They CYA'd very well. "Pig Boats" is another great book to learn of the US Silent Service during WWII."Through Hell and Deep Water" recounts the contributions of a Texas-bred submarine skipper to the Pacific campaign. Sam Dealey was renowned for his "down the throat" torpedo kills of Japanese destroyers, a major plot point in the film version of "Run Silent, Run Deep".Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas was named after the family from which Sam Dealey was a member. Unfortunately, the main legacy of the name Dealey now relates to the location of the assassination of an American President, not to Sam's Silent Service.At highest rank an XO on the first "Trigger", Beach's sub was also retroactively fitted with an ice cream maker by some of its crew. In those years, ice cream was a most cherished commodity in American society.A strange phenomenon would actually occur to some US crews of sunken vessels and left adrift for days asea. After their boats had been sunk, having been drifting in the merciless sun of the Pacific, air-blasted with sea salt, and suffering from hypothermia in Pacific warm waters still lower than their own body temperature, some sailors would begin hallucinating of mirages of islands made of ice cream, and set a swimming course to them. Some of their less-affected, but still exhausted, mates would try to stop them, but weakness prevented any action. These young sailors would swim to the mirage of ice cream, and eventually disappeared with it.