The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978)

Excellent, a Must See

Better Late Then Never

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This short lived television series based on a cryogenically frozen Captain Nemo coming to life in the latter part of the 20th century and and putting his Nautilus at the disposal of the USA whom he sees as the good guys. Of course it helps that Naval Intelligence undersea branch in the persons of Tom Hallick and Burr DeBenning discover him and thaw him out. They serve as first and second mates on detached duty from the navy.His Nautilus even beats our nuclear submarines, but it isn't the Russians who have a better boat. It's arch villain Burgess Meredith as a mad scientist who wants to rule the world with a half human, half robot crew that wants that.This film is compilation of three episodes of the television series. While it was done it must have been a hoot for both Jose Ferrer and Burgess Meredith. These guys were just loving trying to top the other in outrageous displays of ham acting. They make it a joy to watch this most inferior science fiction film.Best line in the film was when Hallick says Captain Nemo was a figure of fiction, Ferrer says that Jules Verne was a biographer as well as a science fiction writer. From there get set for some ham a la mode.

Two years after Irwin Allen did some of his best work with his Time Travelers TV movie, he did some of his worst with this summer replacement series. I remember rather liking this back then. Revisiting it via the recently released Amazing Captain Nemo DVD, it's nothing like what I thought I remembered. It was much less fun and exciting. I think I'll stick with my memories. Thanks to the Towering Inferno and the Poseidon Adventure, Allen earned the sobriquet, "Master of Disaster." With this, that was certainly accurate. It was definitely a disaster.The plot made no sense at all. At one point, Nemo tells Tom to set his hand weapon to stun because "We are not murderers." Never mind that a stunned scuba diver would probably drown, probably a less pleasant death. Only minutes later, they utterly destroy the villain's submarine, so presumably everyone onboard is killed. The Atlanteans appear to be able to breathe water, but Nemo insists that they take his mini-sub to escape. Amazing Captain Nemo, edited down to two hours from several episodes, was even worse. The editing was completely haphazard, jumping from scene to scene at times and being hard to follow.This cast was utterly forgettable. Jose Ferrer chews the scenery but does little else, once flinging his cape backwards as if he were auditioning for Phantom of the Opera. Tom Hallick, who had previously appeared on Allen's Time Travelers, was okay, but the character was about as two-dimensional as they come, like all of the other characters. Lynda Day George stood around as decoration but didn't actually do anything to help the crew.A superior undersea effort came a year earlier, with the Man from Atlantis TV movie. That also featured a former Batman guest villain, namely Victor Buono (King Tut) while this had Burgess Meredith (the Penguin). That movie also featured mind control devices. Was Allen cribbing again? Like most Irwin Allen works, there was no character development here. Nemo is stuffy and good. Cunningham is crabby and evil. The Navy pair are loyal. Nobody grows or changes at all through the series.Allen stole from everything this time. It's no accident that the corridor on Professor Cunningham's sub resembles the one from the beginning of Star Wars. Even the music during that fight shamelessly apes John Williams' iconic score, but without the master's touch. Allen reused (twice!) a shot of two mines colliding and exploding, taken from his 1961 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea movie.Just how chintzy was the budget? The filming model of the villain's submarine was recognizably built using major parts from a model kit of the Space: 1999 Eagle, which you could buy from any hobby store at the time for less than $10. Maybe that's why they called it the Raven. I can't imagine any other reason why someone would name an undersea vehicle after an aerial creature. To mask the poor effects, every "underwater" shot was filled with swirling particles and silt. There were "robots" in cheap rubber masks and spray-painted wetsuits. The mask on Tor muffled the actor's voice and they never bothered to even dub it, even though it would have been easy since there were no lip movements to match. Not that hearing him more clearly would have been a blessing. His lines were monotonous, ridiculous ones like, "Aliens live! Aliens must be destroyed!" If you must watch one of Irwin Allen's undersea works, I strongly suggest going with his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series instead. That was ten times better than this. Or better yet, get the 1961 Voyage theatrical movie with Walter Pidgeon and Barbara Eden.

Captain Nemo is still alive in 1978.The Amazing Captain Nemo (aka three episode TV series The Return Of Captain Nemo) is an odd ball mix of TV's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964), TV's Batman (1966) and Star Wars (1977). This show is totally unique. There has never been anything like this ever before where these three classic titles all come together so well. I was just 12 in 1978 when this appeared on Australian TV in 1978. I had spent the last few years of my life watching Irwin Allen sci-fic TV like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost In Space but they were all afternoon re-runs of something that was made in another decade. Nemo was NEW!Even today I remember the constant TV advertising that played for seven days and seven nights before the show screened! Then on a Saturday night it appeared and one of the characters even mentions the year as being 1978, which really pushed the point that it was current. I seem to remember enjoying the show at the time but I was perhaps a bit too young to like the well spoken lines of Jose Ferrer as Captain Nemo and Burgess Meredith as the Batman-ish bad guy. Seeing the sub encounter a force field and having the crew get frozen in time was interesting to a 12 year old. But now let me move on to my adult reaction ....Never dull for a second. Outstanding Richard LaSalle score.The not perfect submarine miniatures do the job (better than having CGI).The acting/dialogue from the whole cast is first class. Not a single dud cast member, they all shine! It has a sense of playful fun not seen in Irwin Allen's City Beneath The Sea (1971) and other Allen TV movies.Don't expect the Captain Nemo of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) or the Mysterious Island (1961). This is Jose Ferrer's fun loving version of the character that reminds me of his work in the movie Cyrano de Bergerac (1950).In a nutshell: don't listen to the critics of this film (aka three episode TV series), who cares if Irwin Allen took his name off it, if you love Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and 1966 Batman, you will love this 1978 take on Captain Nemo!

A very fun bad movie. Jose Ferrer (who played Emporer Shaddam IV in the fake video version of Dune) was the only good actor in this film. I saw this for the first time on TV in the late eighties in Woburn MA. I love submarine shows, fact and fiction, and my friends and I were heckling bad movies long before MST3K did it professionally. Professor Cunningham is the world's most senile supervillain. Tor the xenophobic psychic android was hilarious with his "Aliens must die!" lines. I swear that Cunningham's sub the Raven looked like it was made from Space:1999 Eagle parts. When Mr. Miller said that,"The U.S. government is not a commercial enterprise" I howled with laughter. Also laughed when Miller held up a Betamax videotape (another case of superior marketing [VHS] beating out superior technology [Beta], like Microsoft's brilliant marketing of crappy software, or the soap opera-like addictiveness of the WWE). Nemo's submarine the Nautilus was an incredible anachronism, psychedelic nuclear fission reactor, stealth projector, laser cannon, force field, 120 knots top speed (I believe our fastest subs today go almost 40 knots), and a crush depth deeper than anything other than the Bathyscape Trieste (which reached the deepest part of the oceans in 1960 with 2 crewmen aboard). Good guys fired blue stun lasers while bad guys fired red kill shots. Tor had the best handgun, 5 settings, stun, kill, 'freeze', 'thaw', force field. They even slowed down some Star Wars music for a corridor fight scene! The Atlantean King's two top advisors set off my gaydar. Apparently the formula for Nemo's laser beam is only about 10 characters long, according to Cunningham's brain tap, like wow man. I give this a 10 as a bad movie!