I wonder if anybody excited to see 1978’s Gray Lady Down thought they were about to watch a geriatric take on Deep Throat? Instead, it is a sub that is the “gray lady” that goes “down” after a collision with another vessel.
This is the kind of film where the captain of that sub is on his last voyage before retirement which, just like movies and TV shows about cops, is when disaster will strike. And the gray lady will collapse like a cheap pop can at 1500 feet, so it naturally comes to a rest 50 feet shy of the mark. Alas, it is teetering on the edge of a very high cliff.
Something else that collapses like a soda can is Ronny Cox, whom Captain Charleton Heston was going to turn over command after his retirement. It’s probably just as well this crisis happened before that transition, as Cox becomes panicky, bitter and petulant roughly one second after the collision.
This is the kind of production where nobody bothered to try to match studio shots to real footage. The moments leading up to that accident are especially bad, with the actors on the sets of the sub and the boat in an impenetrable fog, while the footage of the surfaced sub shows it in clear, bright daylight.
Speaking of lighting, I don’t know if the interiors of modern submersibles were as brightly lit as they are here, but they definitely couldn’t have been lit like they are here. Typical of studio productions of the time, everything is artlessly lit by huge overhead lights, breaking the illusion of being in a confined space.
Not that the environment feels especially claustrophobic. While I have never been on a sub, I suspect they aren’t quite as roomy as what we see here. That is the kind of environment where I imagine every square inch would be precious, yet we have some rather spacious rooms, and even a corridor where people could walk past each other without any concerns of making physical contact. It’s plenty of room for people to throw themselves around in while pretending the vessel is rocking from the collision, in that manner which always brings to my mind similar scenes from the original Star Trek.
Also befitting the production is the acting. Heston is well-cast, with his teeth-grinding intensity. I’m guessing Stacy Keach barely had to stretch himself as a by-the-book ship captain, nor would David Carradine as the vaguely anti-authoritarian developer of an innovative submersible prototype. Ned Beatty is Carradine’s second, as basically a grown-up version of the kid who is always picked last for a baseball team. Other than the leads, the rest of the cast are various stereotypes. Michael O’Keefe fares especially poorly as a young seaman who freaks out. Christopher Reeve is largely a stoic background presence on Keach’s ship, and it is amazing his career-making turn as Superman was just around the corner.
The model work is pretty good. Even better are the shots of some real technology I didn’t know existed at the time, such as that cutting-edge mini-sub Carradine has designed. It’s not too far off from the kind of thing James Cameron seems to spend most of his free time in. Even more impressive is the DSRV, a huge underwater rescue vehicle which we first see in a long tracking shot where it is stored in a giant hangar.
Unfortunately, this is a very dry and rather enervated affair. There are three or four main action scenes and a great deal of tedium in between. There isn’t much humor in it, but those moments are welcome, such as a guy who puts a soda can at the end of an upward slanting table and catches it when it slides back to him. I have a feeling that is about the hundredth time he has done that and he’s probably going to do it for a hundred more. Then there’s others passing the time by watching Jaws. When the sound goes out, they invent movie riffing, subbing in their own humorous lines.
I think this is how most people should treat Gray Lady Down, by making wisecracks over it. I’ll even give you some inspiration for free. When O’Keefe is on the radio desperately calling out for any station, imagine there’s a bunch of operators out there hearing him, but not answering because they have a real name and are not the “any” station. And did I mention Carradine’s tiny sub is called the SNARK? Hey, buddy, I’ve got your snark right here.
Dir: David Greene
Starring Charleton Heston, David Carradine, Stacy Keech
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray