All movies need to be reviewed in the context of the era in which they were made. This 40 year old movie is a classic for its time. The story line is excellent. The underwater cinematography outstanding and Jaquline Bisset well, as beautiful and elegant as ever. The movie focuses on treasure hunters tourists who get mixed up with unsavory islanders. The movie chugs along as expected with good prevailing over evil, but most impressive is Robert Shaw's performance which is as good or better than his prevail of Quint in Jaws. A simple straight forward classic with outstanding underwater footage.

The Deep is another Peter Benchley success, this time involving treasure, Drugs, and mystery. David(Nick Nolte) and Gail(Jacqueline Bisset) are vacationing in Bermuda. They are diving one day, and come across a sunken ship, The Goliath.When they explore it, David finds a piece of treasure. Thinking it could be some kind of coin. He also discovers an ampule of morphine. Gail on the other hand has a run in with something that tried to pull her arm off, but got her diving stick instead. What it was is never know to the viewer? It could have been a Morey Eel, but what ever it was was big, and it almost pulled her under the bottom. When they come up from diving, Dave tells her about his discovery. When they return to shore and tells someone working on the beach, where they were the guy gives him a strange look. The guy gets very suspicious, and wonders why they were down roaming in The Goliath. That night when Gail and David go to dinner, they attract unwanted attention. During dinner a man by the name of Cloche(Lou Gossett Jr.) comes over. He introduces himself as a rare glass collector. He wants the ample of Morphine, but Dave refuses. The next day David and Gail want to find out more about the treasure he found, and info on the ample. They take it to the best treasure hunter on the island, Romer Treece( Robert Shaw). He tells them what they found is no coin, but a medallion. Treece tells them if they found the ample on the Goliath, there's bound to be thousands more. The Goliath was a military medical ship. The medallion doesn't catch Treece's attention as much as the ample does. So he, David, and Gail, go and find Coffin. Coffin was one of those that survived the ship wreck, and Treece wants to know more. It wasn't just a military ship that carried medical supplies; but one that carried a lot of ammo.Cloche also will do anything to get his hands on this, including killing anyone who gets in the way. Cloche first tries to kill Dave and Gail by running them off the road and kidnapping them. Then when Treece and Dave dive one night. Cloche sends his hench men to threaten Gail at their hotel room. While on this cat and mouse game of survival, they learn more about another sunken ship whee the medallion was found. Whit the help of Romer they find out who the medallion belonged to and the history of it and other treasures that are down there. When Coffin double crosses Treece, Treece's loyal friend joins in to help, Kevin(Robert Tessier). When they all team up the stakes get higher, and Cloche is right on their tails.This movie is excellent, not as good as JAWS; but it grabs you from the start. Robert Shaw is excellent as Treece, but to date Quit is still is best performance. I enjoyed this movie so much because of the scenery, plot, and excitement. The giant Moray Eel will get your attention, especially at the end. For those that love movies about treasure hunters, with action/suspense this is for you. It is highly recommended and you will not be disappointed. Since I have seen this movie I am reading the book. I want to know more that you just can't get from the movie. Don't pass this gem up, because your adventure awaits you IN THE DEEP.Thanks, Kris

"The Deep" has a number of similarities with "Underwater!", the 1955 Jane Russell vehicle. Both films feature a young couple (unmarried here, married in "Underwater!") who unexpectedly run into danger while on a scuba-diving expedition in search of a lost Spanish treasure ship. And both films rely heavily upon the physical charms of a beautiful brunette leading lady (Jacqueline Bisset here) in a bikini or swimsuit. Producer Peter Guber said of the opening scene, featuring Bisset swimming underwater wearing a white T-shirt and bikini bottoms, "That T-shirt made me a rich man."David Sanders and his girlfriend Gail Berke are on holiday in Bermuda. As both are keen divers, they spend most of their time exploring shipwrecks off the coast. (Despite the title, all the underwater action takes place in relatively shallow water). They recover a number of artifacts which lead them to believe that they have discovered an eighteenth century wreck containing Spanish treasure. With the help of Romer Treece, a local treasure-hunter, they identify the items as gifts being sent by King Philip V of Spain to his future wife, Elizabeth Farnese Duchess of Parma. (Just why a ship travelling from Spain to Italy was wrecked off the coast of Bermuda is a plot-hole never satisfactorily explained). There is, however, a complication. The wreck of the Spanish ship lies near that of the "Goliath", an American ship that sank during World War II with a cargo of munitions and medical supplies, including morphine. David and Gail find that they are in danger from a local gangster who is hoping to acquire the morphine in order to convert it into heroin. Another source of danger comes from the explosives on board the wreck of the "Goliath". The film was based on a novel by Peter Benchley who had also written "Jaws". Steven Spielberg's adaptation of "Jaws" had, of course, been a huge success, leading to Spielberg's being hailed as the heir apparent to Alfred Hitchcock as "Master of Suspense". Robert Shaw, one of the stars of "Jaws", also has a leading role here as Treece. No doubt Guber and director Peter Yates were hoping for a similar popular and critical success here, and as far as the box office was concerned they achieved it. Guber's quip about the T-shirt making him a rich man had some basis in fact; this was one of the top-grossing films of 1977. The critics, however, were less enthusiastic and today, more than three decades on, it is easy to understand their lack of enthusiasm. The film's box office success is perhaps less easy to understand, unless one assumes that all those queuing for admission to the cinemas were young men so ravished by Jacqueline Bisset's beauty that they would do anything- even watch a film as dull as this one- to see her in a T- shirt. Yates seems to have been aiming at a Hitchcock-style crime thriller, but the film never really works as such. Bisset as Gail and Nick Nolte as David play their roles reasonably well, but Shaw is just as bad here as he was in "Jaws", and for the same reasons, overacting and affecting an eccentric accent. He seemed to think that because "The Deep" is about treasure he ought to play his character like a clone of Long John Silver. Or perhaps his scenes were shot on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. (Yes, there is such a celebration). The underwater scenes have a certain grace and beauty, although in this respect they do not perhaps represent much of an advance upon the similar scenes in "Underwater!", shot more than two decades earlier. The trouble is that everyone in these scenes movers so slowly and deliberately that there is little sense of menace or suspense, even when one of the characters is in danger. As for the scenes on the surface, they are just badly staged and unconvincing, and often badly lit. One thing which aroused less adverse comment in 1977 than it would today is the fact that the heroes are all white whereas the villains (with one exception) are all black. You could, it seems, still get away with that sort of thing in the seventies. The one exception is the character played by Eli Wallach, who starts off as a comical old drunk reminiscent of Eddie in "To Have and Have Not" but who ends up trying to double- cross the heroes. One positive thing about the film is a fine musical score by John Barry, but overall there is little else of much value about "The Deep", one of those seventies thrillers which have dated badly in the thirty-odd years since they were made. There is so little deep or profound about it that it perhaps should have been entitled "The Shallows". 4/10

I loved this movie when I first watched it in 1977 as a 32-year old and I love it just as much today. It has everything that a "boy's own" adventure could offer; a decent plot, a beautiful girl (let's face it, Jacqueline Bisset is gorgeous at the best of times but put her in a wet T-shirt and she's, well, WOW!, a fabulous exotic location, a dastardly villain or two and a couple of decent goodies to battle the baddies. Toss in a great music score by John Barry (that theme is brilliant) and what more could you ask for?Robert Shaw plays a great part and is equalled only by Eli Wallach; he was always an excellent baddie! Nick Nolte may not be the world's greatest actor but he does the job okay in this movie.