A couple of respectable elements assemble here for a decent fantasy feature: source material from master of horror Edgar Allan Poe, a capable director in Jacques Tourneur, and the consistently amusing film star Vincent Price. While ultimately it lacks the imagination, budget, and style to be anything more, it's still acceptable entertainment of this kind.Ben (Tab Hunter) is an American living on the Cornish coast at the turn of the 20th century. When mysterious forces kidnap area resident Jill (Susan Hart), on whom Ben is sweet, he sets out after her, with the doddering artist Harold (David Tomlinson) in tow. (Oh, and not to forget, Harolds' pet rooster Herbert.) They soon discover a strange underwater civilization, ruled by the domineering captain (Price). The captain, upon being led to believe that Ben is a professor of immense knowledge, wants to pick his brain on what to do in the event of a cataclysmic volcanic eruption.As part of the package, the captain and his men exploit local "gill men". They're NOT as cool as the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but the masks aren't bad either, and they're not bad characters. Considering that A.I.P. probably controlled expenses a lot, the sets and production values are still respectable enough. The movie is shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is fairly colourful. The score by Stanley Black is also nice. Tourneur gets down to business quickly and the pacing & editing are adequate. Most of the cast & crew credits are saved for the end.Hunter is a handsome and engaging hero. The beautiful Hart is a likable enough heroine. Tomlinson handles all of the comedy relief duties and is delightful. John Le Mesurier is excellent as helpful old Reverend Ives; Henry Oscar, Derek Newark, and Roy Patrick co-star. Price is magnetic as always as our villain, and the lines from the Poe story flow off of his tongue with the greatest of ease.The viewer may not enjoy this quite as much as they'd like to, but it remains watchable for most of its 85 minute run time.Sadly, director Tourneurs' final feature film.Seven out of 10.

CITY UNDER THE SEA seems to have been tacked on to the end of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price Poe cycle, featuring Price narrating a few passages of the author's work over a vista of some choppy waves. It's supposedly based on some of Poe's writings, but it has more in common with same-era sci-fi flicks like DR WHO AND THE DALEKS and THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT.It's a fairly enjoyable little movie, but it has zero depth and absolutely nothing going on beyond the action-adventure template. Vincent Price is at his hammy best as an age-old smuggler ruling over an undersea kingdom, and Tab Hunter is the square-jawed but wooden American hero. In terms of entertainment value, David Tomlinson (and his chicken!) and the cut of Susan Hart's dress supply most of that.This movie certainly has a good pedigree in the form of Jacques Tourneur, the famed director of much fantastic fare, including NIGHT OF THE DEMON. He doesn't have a great deal to work with here, but he does ensure the sets look just that - fantastic - and he manages to incorporate some stock disaster footage fairly well.The biggest flaw, I found, were the interminable underwater scenes that last for about twenty minutes towards the end. As in the same year's THUNDERBALL, they consist of people wandering around aimlessly for what feels like an age. Not much fun, although the monster masks are. The US title, WAR GODS OF THE DEEP, may be a bit of a misnomer for what is a genteel and completely old-fashioned sort of film.

"War-Gods of the Deep" (1965)--cool title, dumb movie. Rarely does a movie fail this badly. Nearly everything this movie tries falls flat on its face. For example, David Tomlinson (from "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "Mary Poppins") is supposed to provide comic relief with his pet chicken from this otherwise serious story. Maybe we would have needed comic relief had the events been even remotely exciting, but they're not. But even if they had been exciting, Tomlinson's quirky character is not funny, just annoying. His attachment to his chicken is not endearing, it's foolish. Every plot line that is remotely interesting--an impending volcanic explosion, men who live forever underwater, an ancient civilization, a woman who looks like the captain's dead wife--are all inexplicably dropped. It's almost like the director and cast accidentally got hold of the outline of the movie rather than the actual script. Not fun, not funny, not exciting.

War-Gods Of The Deep is one of those films whose title really makes no sense, but is right in keeping with the whole tenor of the film. It was made in 1965, the first of the famed American International Pictures post-Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe-themed horror and sci fi films of the 1960s, that started with The House Of Usher in 1960, and was a part of the Big Four of horror and sci fi films of that era. The three other competitors in the field were the giant monster films from Japan (Godzilla, Mothra, Gammera, etc.), the stop motion action-adventure-monster films of Ray Harryhausen, and the British Hammer Studios horror films. That War-Gods Of The Deep was set in England, even though made by AIP, and featuring two American B film superstars like Vincent Price and Tab Hunter, and based upon a poem by American poet and writer Poe, is just one of its many ironies. Yet, that still does not explain its odd title. The alternate title was The City Under The Sea, which makes sense, since that's what it is about, a city reputedly called Lyonesse- not any War-Gods. It was based upon the Poe poem The City In The Sea, which is quoted by Price at film's start and end, and begins:Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone Far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.Suffice to say, the poem was not one of Poe's great classics, and the film derived from it is not one of AIP's better Poe themed films. War-Gods Of The Deep was the final film in the storied career of Jacques Tourneur, probably the greatest B film director in cinema history, and one of the true masters of the black and white medium. While better known for his classic films produced by Val Lewton (Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie), Tourneur proved he could make great horror films on his own. In 1957 he directed the British horror classic Night Of The Demon (Curse Of The Demon in the U.S.), and even in this color film, with its thin premise of a sunken city off the Cornish coast, unaging sailors from the Eighteenth Century, who do not age because of an imbalance of oxygen from an undersea volcano and some nonsense about ultraviolet light on the earth's surface in daylight (huh?), Gill-Men who are third rate Creatures From The Black Lagoon, and other assorted lunacy- such as a British comic foil for Hunter who carries about a chicken with the male name of Herbert, the film actually entertains, even if it lacks real chills.The film has several layers to it. Watching it today, one must bear in mind, with the film over four decades old, yet the story is set in the more distant past of 1903, with characters who came from their even more distant past of decades, and even over a century, earlier, that this was made right at the beginning of notions of Postmodernism; which shows mostly that PoMo and B film psychology are kissin' cousins. What this says for both mindsets and pulling the wool over one's eyes is open for debate. The film also makes great use of its recycled AIP wares from prior movies. AIP reputedly never trashed old sets, and art director Frank White makes the most of the sets and miniatures that comprise the underwater city. The film also seems to be a scrapbook of ideas from other, better films, like the aforementioned Poe films, and The Time Machine. But, it also recalls the stellar Forbidden Planet by having the underground city being powered by huge pumps and machinery built by a long destroyed society that is no longer, having degenerated into the Gill-Men. The underwater cinematography by Neil Ginger Gemmell and John Lamb is also excellent, for a B film, even though the divers are all manifestly in a pool no more than fifteen or twenty feet deep, not leagues under the sea for the surface can be seen a few feet above the divers' heads. There are even some chuckles to be had when Harold sticks his chicken Herbert inside his diving helmet. The rest of the cinematography, by Stephen Dade, is merely solid, although there are some moody moments captured seemingly inadvertently, with miniatures.