This episode we return to our running science fiction series to discuss The Terror Beneath the Sea! A strange Japanese/American co-production from 1966 featuring sea creatures, an evil plot to take over the world… and a young Sonny Chiba!
And while we try to figure out the mystery that is Peggy Neal, we also cover… Dr. No, Cromwell, a lot of model work, a giant space chicken, homing missile technology, Richard Harris, the leather-lined office, Japanese monster movies, a language barrier, Biloxi, Mississippi, a gaggle of reports, a healthy dose of misogyny, wearing sunglasses all the time, picaresque vs. classical storytelling, Kill Bill, these are our terror machines, they put this poor hapless dude into a tube, General of the mismatched Navy, the evil pinball machine that controls all the fish-people, Bela Lugosi, I feel like I’m watching Bergman on speed, progressive photography, Austin Powers, put into a chamber, toxic dumping, set the fish cyborgs to vibrate, well I get to get out of my cell for a little while, some Navy dudes, basically just automatons doing what we’re told, murder them a whole lot of interns, it is his job to carry this film, Godzilla, a certain kinetic style of directing, Jackie Chan, Miss Moneypenny, The X from Outer Space, fire underwater, Timothy Dalton, inserting some lungs and I left my camera at the bottom of the ocean.
Spoiler Alert: Full spoilers for as much of the plot as we can make sense of for The Terror Beneath the Sea. So go watch the movie before you listen.
“…while wandering through they get captured by some fish-people and brought to a very futuristic-looking underwater lab which also looks like the set of Sealab 2021 reconstructed by the creators of MST3K.”
