In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

When James Bond reached the big screen in the early Sixties Ian Fleming's baddies - the Russians - were diplomatically changed into Third Force characters playing off the super-powers against each other usually to rack up loot or feed a madman's ego. In the bristling up-and-atom Fifties it was a different tale. With McCarthyism breathing down its neck Hollywood had a vested interest in slagging off the Reds without fear or favour giving rise to - among others - two fascinating collaborations between Sam Fuller and Richard Widmark. Fuller claimed though to eschew ideology in favour of tough tabloid human-interest while Widmark, a noted liberal but not a 'joiner', ducked and dived in the flow of things to keep his career afloat. PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET was a dark urban thriller in which a pickpocket inadvertently pinches top-secret microfilm. He's not a patriot and his subsequent actions are mercenary but the murder of a friend finally triggers personal revenge. Interestingly the Commie spy's also a mercenary, being easier to combat dramatically, I suppose, than a set of alien ideas.When HIGH WATER took to the waves CinemaScope was in, spreading its wings on a mushroom-cloud explosion near the Arctic circle, an earnest voice-over suggesting It's All True. A busy reel of 'Scope travelogue zaps us around the world (there's a momentary clip from THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN with Maggie McNamara at the edge of frame) as the media buzzes with the sudden disappearance of Professor Montel, top man in his nuclear field - has he 'gone over' ? "Like something out of Inner Sanctum" ex-Cmdr Adam Jones observes on being summoned to a secret meeting in the dead of night (a nice in-joke: Widmark acted in countless radio shows before movie-fame). Get that name, a potent mix of the First Man and the First American Sea-Dog but like the pickpocket this Jones is no flag-waver. He's hired for cash by a civilian consortium of scientists headed by Montel (he didn't defect) to investigate suspicious activity around said Arctic - the film's crafty way of turning the Cold War hot, potentially, without appearing to do so. No governments are officially represented on this "peaceful expedition" and the only Americans involved are the mercenary Jones and his "key men" from World War II. Even the submarine they're using is an old Japanese "sewer-pipe". Jones does insist, against objections, on arming the vessel - not as a political gesture, you understand, but just to cover everyone's butt. So off we go into a delirious farrago of unabashed clichés - the one girl on the sub, the skipper's guilty past (he lost a ship through disobeying orders), the Chinese equivalent of "the good German" etc. knowingly marshalled by Fuller to lively effect mainly within the boat (just as well as the surface-scenes against lurid backcloths are on a par with the worst moments in BEN-HUR).Montel's on board as expedition-leader along with his fetching assistant Denise who's rejected at first as a 'jonah' by the superstitious matelots but soon wins them round with a gracious plea for tolerance - the brimming eyes probably did the trick. "That's no female - that's a scientist !" Denise can speak umpteen languages but doesn't know what a 'pass' is. She soon finds out, the sailor-boys lining up to make her acquaintance, the jovial Ski with his fake tattoos and a drunken crewman who gets physical till the skipper knocks him cold. "A last-minute replacement," he tells her. Not one of his key men, obviously. Despite occasional frictions with both eggheads Jones does a nifty job of seducing Denise in a quite sexy bunkside dalliance bathed in infra-red during a cat-and-mouse, no-sounds encounter with a Red sub. Chin Lee the cook (who appears out of nowhere via Central Casting) has no English but entertains the crew with comic parodies of popular songs in fluent pidgin-American. When a Red Chinese officer is captured during a contretemps on their island-objective Chin is enlisted to pose as another prisoner to find out what they're up to. He insists on being beaten up by the skipper in person beforehand to make it more convincing - "It won't hurt if you do it" - something rather dark going on here. He secures the vital information but is killed by the Red. They intend dropping a bomb on Korea and Manchuria from a plane with American markings - as they would, of course. (The ultimate paranoid nightmare). Jones' patriotism surfaces - "They're gonna lay the biggest egg in history and we're taking the rap for it. I don't like that !" Quite so. He thereupon orders up every gun the old bucket can muster to knock the Gooks out of the sky. Montel, the man of reason, protests "this insanity" but knows the movie's got him beat and sacrifices himself for the greater commonsense. "Each man has his own reason for living and his own price for dying." (The script got rather fond of this line and tended to repeat it). Mission completed, the world is saved (for the moment) but not without an extra twist of pathos I won't reveal even at this great distance because it's rather good.By the Sixties the climate had changed sufficiently to allow the nuclear-disaster cycle where someone presses the button - always by accident or delusion and always from our side - and the world comes apart. Widmark returned to Arctic waters as producer and star of THE BEDFORD INCIDENT in which a hawkish destroyer-captain, like a modern Ahab, obsessively stalks and hustles a trapped Russian sub to the point of no return. No girls here, no jokes, no colour and 'Scope. And this time round absolutely no-one gets to "head for home."

This is an average post World War II movie that is by no means bad but also a very long way from being great. The film is the story of a group of international privately funded scientist who are on a humanitarian mission to discover if some unnamed communists are conducting nuclear tests in a remote area of the Artic. As a means to their end the scientists recruit Richard Widmark as Captain Jones to captain a sub-marine manned by mercenaries and a two scientists the lead scientist Professor Montell and his glamorous assistant Denise Gerrard (played by the doomed Bella Darvi). Things plod along nicely and for the time the are some tense submarine duel scenes once they engage the enemy. Denise Gerrard and Proffesor Montaell clash with Captain Jones as they have to enter his world though the female character really needed fleshing out. We have some battle as the tension mounts and the enemy base is located leading up to the final battle which works quite well. A few twists along the way add to the mix and some nice morals add to the ending. Worth a go.

HELL AND HIGH WATER was produced in 1954 when 20th Century-Fox was showing off their spectacular new CinemaScope process and Sterephonic Sound --- and thereby dominating the box office like they wouldn't do again until the Star Wars movies. They made the most of previously seldom filmed Paris, London, Rome, Tokyo location shots -- combined with excellent storytelling. With this movie they hired Samuel Fuller to direct it, one of the few directors with name recognition.A group of ex-Navy men are hired as mercenaries to take a submarine to an island in the Arctic to allow two scientists to investigate the suspected existence of nuclear weapons there.......When I saw this film in 1954, it was as movies were made to be shown. It played the 3,450 seat Loew's Capitol Theater which had an atmosphere fit for royalty; plus the widest screen, best stereo, best projection we ever had in Washington, DC. Loew's Capitol --- which lives on only in memory --- makes our present Kennedy Center look like a tar paper shack in comparison. Hell and High Water just came out in DVD but the CinemaScope effect is muted in that format; still we're used to that now.I rated this film a 10. In 1954 I might have said 8. But that was then and this is now. A few days ago a movie came out called SUPERBAD -- an instantly disposable piece of tripe, but thanks to 2007's low standards SUPERBAD ranks #81 in the all-time great movie list -- the CASABLANCA of the Bevis and Butthead Era. HELL AND HIGH WATER is a much better movie than any 2007 film, so by today's if-it-has-a-pulse-give-it-an-A standards it's gotta rate a 10.

Although she didn't make but three major Hollywood motion pictures, Bella Darvi had magnificent screen magnetism that made a man's pulse beat red hot. In this campy picture (her first film), she does a fine job in her first effort as a film actress, displaying good technique cinematically. She was, as they say, a natural. The French accent, the smooth skin, the sharp facial bone structure, those arched eyebrows, that smoldering stare, and that oh-so-sexy slightly cross-eyed look just made a guy want and wonder. Her voice was strong and yet soft at the right moments. There was something about her that made a man want scoop her up into his arms and say, "Hey, baby, it's gonna be okay!"It's too bad that she was perhaps a victim of her own sexuality as it is rumored that Mrs. Darryl Zanuck discovered there might have been some hanky-panky with Mr. 20th Century Fox.Richard Widmark is fittingly commanding and cantankerous as the sub skipper, and Cameron Mitchell does what he did so well in playing the comic relief sidekick sonar guy.The script and it's dialog is something straight out of a comic book, but you've got to love it. It's got all of the marbles in one bag: submarines, underwater battles complete with ramming full speed ahead, a silent running sweatout, crash dives, commando shore raids, evil Commies, a spy guy named Chin Lee, a B-29 bomber, and just to put the cherry on the Boston cream pie, the obligatory nuclear explosion. Check Bella Darvi out opposite Kirk Douglas in "The Racers". There again, the lady is smokin' hot! So, if you want a good time, pop some corn, pull up a chair, and watch "Hell and High Water"!!!