Absolutely the worst movie.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

While "Below the Sea" is a relatively low-budget film and Ralph Bellamy seems oddly cast as a real rogue, this is a dandy adventure film--one I almost gave an 8. But, occasional lapses (such as the doll that was used in underwater shots in an aquarium full of gold fish or a small octopus!) keep me from giving it a higher score because of a few rough edges.The film begins with a prologue where a German sub is sunk in 1917. However, two members of the crew survive--and they know that the sunken ship was carrying gold! Here is where you get an idea of what sort of hard-edged film it is--as the Captain shoves the only other survivor off a cliff in order to preserve this secret! Many years pass and the Captain is working to get a diver who can help him retrieve the treasure. The man he gets, Steve (Ralph Bellamy), is a real creep--and the slimy pair also work with a nasty dame to get the gold. But, this expedition is doomed and the ship sinks! A few years pass. Now, the Captain and Steve try another approach--they latch on to a scientific expedition funded by an unusual heiress (Fay Wray) and you'll just have to see what happens next yourself.There was a lot to like in the film. As I mentioned above, there is a real hard edge to the film you just won't find in Post-Code films (films made after mid-1934)--when Hollywood was forced to make its films more family friendly. I like this edge--particularly at the incredibly cool (and rather gruesome) ending! I also loved that for once Fay Wray was given a real decent part--not some screaming lady or bubble-head but a woman who is all woman! Well worth your time.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody decided that Ralph Bellamy was perfect to play the sort of role that would have suited Humphrey Bogart or maybe Robert Mitchum in a later era. So there he is, trying to come off as a cynical tough guy, a professional diver, who signs on for an undersea expedition financed by society playgirl Fay Wray. What he doesn't know is that the captain of their ship isn't searching for exotic marine life but a cache of gold from a sunken U-boat. It's a standard grade-B actioner, down to a fight to the death with a prop octopus. But watching the easy-going, erudite Bellamy desperately trying to play a hard-boiled adventurer is worth tuning in for.

Ralph Bellamy looks uncomfortable playing a tough deep-sea diver instead of his usual dork-who gets-dumped. He is Mac McCreary, a pipe chomping man of action in this one. His sneaky partner is Karl Shlemmer, former German U-Boat captain, who knows where the gold is and doesn't plan to share it with anybody. Fay Wray is the rich babe who finances the expedition on a boat that looks like a royal yacht. Then there is Lily, a tough waterfront babe who adds little and somehow gets lost along the way. If you can believe all this, how about Miss Wray--rich, beautiful, educated--falling for hunky but dumb, poor, and inarticulate Bellamy? The ending (HERE'S THE BIG SPOILER) is reminiscent of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when the almost retrieved gold falls back into the ocean, never (for unexplained reasons) to be found again.

The film opens with a sea battle, and a submarine going down, and for a large part of the remainder of the movie, we follow captain Schlemmer(Fred Vogeding) and Steve McCreary (Ralph Bellamy) as they try to bring its contents back up years later. Our female lead Diane Templeton is the lovely (and in this one, also educated and wealthy) Fay Wray. She will provide the ship and the money for her undersea research, or so she thinks. She had been making movies for 10 years by this time, although it was only Bellamy's second year. In 1933, Wray would make eleven films (wow!) Writer Jo Swerling had written numerous adventures from the 1920s to the 1970s, including portions of Gone With the Wind, and It's a Wonderful Life. Good strong script, mostly good acting; A couple scenes are a little fuzzy and out of focus, but it was 1933. Also a little naughty for its time, especially in the photography dark-room. Interesting discussion of evolution from Diane Templeton, as she shows McCreary around some laboratory. Good action film. Per IMDb, it appears to have been re-released in 2005, but I was not able to find it available on barnes & noble, ebay, or amazon.com in any format. The web page for "nothings new video" says they are no longer in operation.