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War-Gods of the Deep (1965)
AKA City Under the Sea
4/10
I think the film was supposed to be a sci-fi adventure, but it's on rather short supply of either. The script painted on the shoestring plot demonstrates no interest in said plot. And as an excruciatingly long underwater chase scene without establishing shots makes clear, suspense is also not on display. It is a nice-looking film.
A woman gets abducted by a gillman under orders of a group of undersea dwellers, that includes Vincent Price who was once boat captain of the group. They used a secret passage in an old mansion to grab any new books that may have information to help them stop an undersea volcano from erupting. Sadly, no book has been published on how to do that.
Why did the gillman take the woman? We never find that out. But it does lead some dude and another dude with a chicken in a basket to find the secret passage and go down into the caves to rescue her. That's when the dudes find the group of seamen who have discovered the place about a hundred years ago and decided to stay there. Be amazed that their aging process has slowed down. And if they go to the surface, they will immediately die of old age.
It's an ancient underwater city where all the dwellers died off except for a few gillman that do what the men ask them. Why did the seamen originally stay for decades? Not a very good reason. Cap. Price insinuates he keeps the city pumps going that provide air and heat, but the gillman breathe underwater and swim "outdoors" eating fish. Also, they are guilty of smuggling, so living in these caves eating fish is better than being busted for smuggling.
Why did the seamen decide to hold the woman? Besides the fact that she looks like a woman in a painting that captain Vincent Price used to know, we don't know. The dudes are afraid of the seamen, so they lie and say they can probably figure out how to stop the volcano from erupting. So, the captain holds all of them there. But they better hurry up, cause with all the earthquakes you can tell, like the film, she's about to blow.
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