submarine movie cliche
 

So what's the first movie to use the "hey, lets shoot debris and our dead guy out the tubes to make them think they sunk us" strategy. I'll bet I've seen it at least 5 movies. My vote is "The Enemy Below". How many can you think of? :scratch2:

Is there a prize?
(I always make up a wise reply if I don't know)

I don't know the first movie to do that but I can name one that did....U571

And Das Boot perhaps.

Operation Petticoat
Down Periscope

U571....I love that movie. It has it's cheesy moments but those depth charges rattle my house with 2 (yes 2) Sunfire subwoofers!

That was used in one of the original Star Trek episodes too.
Against the Romulans.

Geeks of the world.....Unite!

Run Silent, Run Deep
 

Run Silent Run Deep (1958):

The captain of a submarine sunk by the Japanese during WWII is finally given a chance to skipper another sub after a year of working a desk job. His singleminded determination for revenge against the destroyer that sunk his previous vessel puts his new crew in unneccessary danger. :yes:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052151/

Yup, both of these came to mind.
Any others with the dead crewman "used"?

Good one! Great WWII sub movie :thmbsp:

Balance of Terror, one of my favorite ST episodes.

Falls into my AWM* category. If it is AWM, I'll like it.

:thmbsp:

(*Anything with Mitchum)

I can't help with that specific bit, but my favorite submarine movie cliche is closing the distance between the boat and the enemy torpedo to a short enough range that the "fish" is under the distance required to arm itself and bounces off the hull harmlessly. (Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide... others I'm sure.)

This thread inspired me to put a bunch of submarine movies in the Netflix queue. My wife will be expecting a Woody Allen flick in the mail and it'll be Robert Mitchum. Ha ha.

Great submarine movie that you have probably never seen
 

Hell and High Water (1954)

A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer (Widmark) to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III. Mixes deviously plotted schoolboy fiction with submarine spectacle and cold war heroics. :thmbsp:

Directed by Samuel Fuller
Staring Richard Widmark

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047073/

Unfortunately, this movie is NOT available on VHS or DVD. It is occasionally shown on TCM.

Well more cliches

How about the depth gauge with the red line, captain we can't go THAT deep!!! And water starts to spray and they tighten bolts in desperation. There just has to be one bolt that will keep it together.

The guy that has to die or almost die swimming through flooded compartments to tighten a line or push a switch or whatever for the good of the crew.

They didn't do that in Das Boot.

Or it's a valve of somekind. You would think it would be part of "basic submarine depthcharge procedure" to close all those freakin' valves before the leaks start. :D

Originally Posted by jeffw
That was used in one of the original Star Trek episodes too.
Against the Romulans.

Geeks of the world.....Unite!

Ummm, not quite. The Romulan Commander, played by Mark Lenard (before he was called back to be Spock's Father, Sarek), has to order the crew to include his friend, Centurion, who was killed by falling debris, with the rubble to jettison into space to try to fool Captain Kirk.

But agreed, one of the finest and noblest episodes of ST-TOS.

Regards,

Bart

It's always nice to have a dead guy laying around on the sub just in case you need to "jettison" him.