5 Submarine Movies Worth Diving Into
Serving on a Submarine is Out of My Depth, But These Films are On My Radar
I was nearly Shanghaied in Pearl Harbor. My overseas deployment ended upon conclusion of the war and I was shipped back to Pearl where I took advanced radio training on base. While walking past the submarine docks one day, I made the mistake of slowing my pace just slightly. The sight of the idle subs in this, the largest submarine base in the Pacific, was amazing. They looked like acres of beached whales packed flank to flank. The rapid discharge of servicemen after Pacific victory siphoned these vessels of personnel crew members. You see, submarine crews are all volunteer. Until a boat can fill all hands of the crew manifest, it remains glued to the dock, unable to embark on its appointed mission.
Just slowing down to gawk made me vulnerable. Out of nowhere popped an officer from one of the boats who invited me on board to “take a closer look.” Down the hatch I went. During my brief tour, I was treated with the utmost hospitality while being told how easy it was to transfer from my current assignment to this. But primarily and persistently, I was told how good the food was on a sub. Thick steaks. Cold milk. Fresh fruit. Real ice cream. As many eggs as you wanted, prepared any way you ordered them for breakfast. Indeed, I later learned the food budget apportioned per submariner was twice that allowed per shipboard sailor.
I almost succumbed to the wooing of luxury chow before realizing that something was amiss. As an enlisted man, I had never known an officer to be so friendly. Submarine officers had to bite their superior tongues in the act of snaring new personnel from the bevy of hapless sailors buzzing around the base. Experienced radiomen were in short supply, and therefore my specialty was golden to a sub crew yearning to get back to sea. It dawned on me that this officer’s benevolence was pure recruitment theater. The unspoken horrors of submarine duty revived me—claustrophobic conditions, long endurance missions, hot bunking, no showers, depth charges, stale breathing air, hazardous chemicals. Never mind the real bacon, I was out of there like a human torpedo.
Most of us have learned about submarine conditions from the movies. When it comes to such films, most plots are redundant. The sub is either too close to the surface and thus in peril or too far below the surface and thus in peril. Here are 5 films involving submarines (none of which are The Hunt for Red October or Das Boot, although those are good sub movies, too) whose stories slip traditional expectations:
1. The Command – Based on the true story of the Russian nuclear sub Kursk that went aground in the Barents Sea in 2000. Yes, basically a story about a sub in peril for being too deep. But this film is much more than that. It is a commentary about the political paranoia and financial frailty of post-Soviet Russia in contrast with the character of its people.
2. Les Maudits – “The Damned” in English. During World War II, a German submarine packs up a motley group of passengers bound for South America to lay social and cultural groundwork for an ambitious Third Reich. Complications ensue. This engaging 1947 film is in French, German, English, Scandinavian and the various languages spoken by the various egotists aboard this ship of fools.
3. Pacifiction – A weirdly moody film about a submarine without a submarine to be seen. This Polynesian fever dream contemplates the French government renewing atmospheric atomic bomb testing in a resistant Tahiti. Don’t expect any answers, just plenty of attitude.
4. On The Beach – The Hollywood bungling of this story is almost unbearable, but the plot is too good to ignore. Nuclear war has annihilated life as we know it throughout the northern hemisphere and the only surviving American military submarine heads to Australia, where the Aussies show their pluck while awaiting the lethal cloud to engulf them. Plenty of time for Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner to do some canoodling, however. Not one genuine Australian actor among the principals, so try not to cringe at the bad accents. Based on a pretty good mid-century cautionary novel by Neville Shute.
5. The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming – A Cold War comedy made in 1966 that satirizes American “red scare” hysteria at the height of that very hysteria. A Soviet sub accidentally runs aground at a provincial Massachusetts cape island and the desperate crew members at first terrorize, and then ultimately charm the locals.
Answer to Pop Quiz from “5 Terms for Folks in the Vintage Navy”: You were asked to identify the rank the fictional James Bond held in the British navy. 007 was a Lieutenant Commander in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.
This is great! Really descriptive about how you were wooed immediately to become a sub crew member but reminded yourself that the good food wasn't worth all of the other sacrifices. Thank you for the list of movies, too.