It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Here's a middling B-movie yarn hampered by long, boring periods of inactivity and the lack of a budget which reduces the supposedly thrilling undersea action to what looks like a model submarine being floated around in a fish tank while someone flashes a torch at it. All right for undemanding fans of the genre, but anybody looking for thrills and adventure would be advised to seek elsewhere. THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE is, at best, a passable thriller which offers the bare minimum of suspense. The plot, which is very mysterious at first, soon descends into non-action with a few simple events and situations (sub chases saucer around ocean for an age before finally confronting it) being dragged out to fill the entire seventy-two minutes, which still feels like quite a long haul.Director Spencer Gordon Bennet - king of the serials - directs with a no-frills style, cutting between exposition, dialogue and action. He has no time for atmosphere build-up or the like, which makes for a very static-looking movie. The actors are fine in their roles - especially Arthur Franz and Brett Halsey (RETURN OF THE FLY) - but once again their characters are boringly predictable military and scientist guys who have the usual petty squabbles seen a zillion times previously, and well telegraphed with it. The photography of the interiors is great, though, with good use of the black and white colours (especially in the pitch black interior of the flying saucer, as our heroes tramp up a white-lit pathway; an excellent idea, cutting costs of production yet creating a spooky-looking interior with it).Unfortunately, it's a shame that the miniature effects are less than impressive, as without much meat on the story it's the effects you are left looking at. Thankfully the film concludes with the appearance of a large, ugly, hairy one-eyed octopus alien. THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE isn't really that bad, and has a few good moments (including violent-for-the-time scenes of men being radiated to a crisp and getting crushed in closing doors) worth sitting through for, but it remains indistinguishable from all the rest without anything really good to make it stay in your memory.

What a stinker! Oh, I've got to write more. There are no redeeming qualities to this movie, which isn't good, and isn't so horrible that it's funny. If only the acting were terrible, but it's only bad, like the script. What kills it is there is no life to the movie, no spirit. You feel like the actors punched in on a time clock and are just there for a paycheck. No one is having any fun. The concept isn't particularly bad, atomic submarine meets undersea UFO. But at some point you are supposed to be afraid, and at some point something actually interesting is supposed to happen. Nada. The last 10 climactic minutes seem to last for two painful hours.This isn't a B movie; this is a Zzzzzz movie. The music is slightly interesting, if you look at it as a possible model for the Star Trek TOS scores. Is there any actual connection? I can't find any. The best way to watch this movie is to have someone tie you down to a chair and pry your eyelids open. The best thing about this movie was the poster. I wish I could remember why I wanted to watch this movie? Oh, wait. Could it have been some of the off the mark reviews on IMDb?Why don't they make remakes of bad movies? Then the remakes could be better than the originals. Instead, they take great movies and make them into stinkers. It doesn't make any sense. Someone could actually make a pretty good remake of this, with today's CGI special effects and a reworked script. If they do, I hope they change the ending and have the UFO blow up the nuclear submarine.

I saw this movie first run at the Strand in Summit, N.J., attracted by the scientific slant of the title. My most vivid recollection is of the stock footage at the beginning illustrating the crisis in the Atlantic. ( This is very similar to the beginning of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. ) The documentary style had the desired effect on my impressionable mind, and I recall being quite disturbed by it and wondering why I hadn't known about all this, until the fictive nature of the proceedings was reestablished by the appearance of sets and actors. I do recall the general trend of the action as an encounter with an underwater UFO, an idea which has gained traction more recently. Of course, this encounter elicited the usual remarks about the unknown and alien nature of the materials, which I always wondered about, because ... what could it be? I do recall the dialog establishing the alien ship as made of "living material", but beyond that my memory is dim. Nevertheless the experience of it remains a landmark for me.

I knew very little about THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE as the opening credits rolled . I was led to believe it was grade z rubbish with a cult following and it's very easy to see how this reputation came about The film starts in the recognisable future where atomic submarines are used as vehicles of commerce and we're shown via some laughably unconvincing special effects of a submarine meeting its doom . Words fail me as to how bad the footage is as a toy submarine in a fish tank is destroyed and this stock footage is continually used throughout the film . It should also be noted that shipping mysteriously disappearing as the first stages of an alien invasion had been used as a premise for John Wyndhams watery masterpiece The Kraken Wakes from a few years earlier and you can't help thinking that TAS was heavily influenced by this intelligent apocalyptic classic Unfortunately both director Spencer Gordon Bennet and screenwriter Orville H Hampton also seem to have been inspired by Ed Woood . Early into the film we're hit over the head by the most intrusive , melodramatic and badly written voice over possible . In screen writing classes you'll be informed that obvious voice over is poor voice over but the narrator goes well beyond bad by referring to things we never see happen on screen . For example we're told that the crew are apprehensive as they sail towards the North Pole which is strange considering most of the crew are unaware what their mission is and are under the impression that it's a routine mission and that problems involving irritation makes themselves felt amongst the crew which is not something that ever appears on screen . Note also the pythonesque map that shows lots of squiggly lines of the submarines route When the sub gets to the bottom of the mystery that a flying saucer is responsible for the sinkings the story does pick up and shows some imagination on the part of the film makers . The basic set of the saucer interior is so effective simply down to the simplicity of the set and Bennet does manage to manage to bring an eerie other worldliness to the mis en scene . The alien itself might seem some what laughable resembling a cross between a penis and a sock puppet but its mission to either kill or kidnap the crew in order to experiment upon them does again mirror the aims of the aliens in The Kraken Wakes and despite the grade z production values these scenes are relatively chilling and one wonders why the rest of the movie couldn't reach this standard All in all this is a very flawed SF adventure . It is very memorable but frequently for the wrong reasons which makes THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE one of the most uneven films you will see . It's very good in places but if you're not a fan of sci-fi B movies you'll not want to watch this but if you're a fan it's a pleasant time waster