Interesting story of underwater demolition teams exploring the landing beaches around Okinawa in World War II. The cast has some well-known names too, though some were just getting started. Don't blink or you miss Robert Wagner and Jack Warden.
If the story of their work is engaging -- and it is -- the group dynamics aren't, nor does anything in the dialog particularly sparkle. Richard Widmark takes over a UDT team after the death of the commander they idolized. He does things by the book. He's resented by the crew who continually compare him to their previous leader and who believe he's an inept and unfeeling poltroon.
Widmark is understandably unhappy and broods a bit. Standing against him in the crew are the chief, Dana Andrews, and the usual motley cast of World War II movies -- the Brooklyn wise guy, the family man. The combat scenes are handled well enough. SCUBA gear was still a novelty at the time. The production had the cooperation of the U. S. Navy, and why not? It's basically a promotional film. The large ship on which the team is berthed in an APD, a fast transport. Proper protocol is usually followed. When a man receives an order on the radio, he doesn't say, "Roger. Over and out." He says the correct, "Wilco, out." There are some exceptions though. Two or three times, Widmark shouts to the coxswain, "Full speed ahead!" That belongs in a comic book. At least nobody wears caps indoors or salutes without them, as they do in the far more lavishly funded "Crimson Tide." By the end, of course, after a final dangerous mission and the tense disarming of a dud torpedo, in both of which enterprises Widmark plays an important part, the team comes together as a group.
The plot is lifted from "Twelve O'Clock High," also a Twentieth-Century Fox Production, and the dialog is by the notorious Oscar Millard. He was the guy responsible for the speeches in John Wayne's classic "The Conqueror." There, Wayne had to say things like, "She is much wummin." And, "Yew're beautiful in yewr wrath."
I saw "The Frogmen" as a kid and all of us kids were excited by it. The frogmen rolling one by one off the speeding landing craft into a tethered rubber raft and then over the side with a great white splash of impact. It was all new to us, as it was to the rest of the audience. Some of us tried playing "Frogman" in Lake Hopatcong but it's hard to roll off a speeding boat when the boat is a ten-foot-long rowboat moving at the pace of an unskilled swimmer doing the breast stroke. I didn't enjoy it quite so much this time around, but then I don't enjoy ANYTHING quite as much these days.
If the story of their work is engaging -- and it is -- the group dynamics aren't, nor does anything in the dialog particularly sparkle. Richard Widmark takes over a UDT team after the death of the commander they idolized. He does things by the book. He's resented by the crew who continually compare him to their previous leader and who believe he's an inept and unfeeling poltroon.
Widmark is understandably unhappy and broods a bit. Standing against him in the crew are the chief, Dana Andrews, and the usual motley cast of World War II movies -- the Brooklyn wise guy, the family man. The combat scenes are handled well enough. SCUBA gear was still a novelty at the time. The production had the cooperation of the U. S. Navy, and why not? It's basically a promotional film. The large ship on which the team is berthed in an APD, a fast transport. Proper protocol is usually followed. When a man receives an order on the radio, he doesn't say, "Roger. Over and out." He says the correct, "Wilco, out." There are some exceptions though. Two or three times, Widmark shouts to the coxswain, "Full speed ahead!" That belongs in a comic book. At least nobody wears caps indoors or salutes without them, as they do in the far more lavishly funded "Crimson Tide." By the end, of course, after a final dangerous mission and the tense disarming of a dud torpedo, in both of which enterprises Widmark plays an important part, the team comes together as a group.
The plot is lifted from "Twelve O'Clock High," also a Twentieth-Century Fox Production, and the dialog is by the notorious Oscar Millard. He was the guy responsible for the speeches in John Wayne's classic "The Conqueror." There, Wayne had to say things like, "She is much wummin." And, "Yew're beautiful in yewr wrath."
I saw "The Frogmen" as a kid and all of us kids were excited by it. The frogmen rolling one by one off the speeding landing craft into a tethered rubber raft and then over the side with a great white splash of impact. It was all new to us, as it was to the rest of the audience. Some of us tried playing "Frogman" in Lake Hopatcong but it's hard to roll off a speeding boat when the boat is a ten-foot-long rowboat moving at the pace of an unskilled swimmer doing the breast stroke. I didn't enjoy it quite so much this time around, but then I don't enjoy ANYTHING quite as much these days.