For its first full season of CinemaScope movies, Darryl Zanuck found a likely property for Samuel Fuller in Hell and High Water, an absolutely insane amalgam of hot-button political notions, avant la lettre paranoid conspiracy fiction, and infantile Terry and the Pirates comic book action. How does one react to the problem of nuclear proliferation among hostile nations? Sam enlists WW2 veterans to transform the Cold War into a shootin’ war. Some in the army had expressed unhappiness with Fuller’s pragmatic, brutal, and realistic vision of combat in his The Steel Helmet. The F.B.I. was none too pleased with Pickup on South Street, where Sam portrayed America’s main defender as a selfish thief, who sneers at Government agents asking him to be a patriot and risk his neck.
Sam Fuller was on a roll at 20th Fox, and his boss Darryl Zanuck picked him to move up to CinemaScope and color with this ocean-going epic. Sam was never vague about where he stood on the issues of the day. Pickup on South Street’s Thelma Ritter tells a cop, “I just don’t like commies.” That sentiment is amplified by Fuller’s wild Vietnam movie China Gate, where black mercenary soldier Nat King Cole has traveled halfway around the world just to get the chance to kill Reds. Going far beyond either of those films in its geopolitical insanity, Hell and High Water is pure pulp, a loopy Atomic commando saga. Richard Widmark returns for his second Sam Fuller potboiler joined by the ill-fated Bella Darvi, who made her debut in The Egyptian under the promise that she was going to co-star with Marlon Brando. Darvi made only one more American picture before heading back to France.
In science fiction movies 1954 was the year in which movie soldiers and scientists formed a truce to fight technological monsters, with politicians taking a back seat. Newspapers were questioning the loyalty of atom scientists reluctant to help Uncle Sam build bigger and better bombs. The fictional confederation of atom scientists in Hell and High Water hates commies so much that they do an end-run around international politics, funding a secret pro-active mission to find out what the Chinese are doing on a tiny island in the North Pacific. Frenchman Professor Montel (Victor Francen) must go into hiding to lead the expedition; the world press assumes that he has defected behind the Iron Curtain. Ex- Navy sub commander Adam Jones (Richard Widmark) is hired as a mercenary, to outfit and sail a war-surplus Japanese submarine (?) provided by scientist-activist Hakada Fujimori (Richard Loo). The rowdy handpicked crew (Cameron Mitchell, Gene Evans, David Wayne) at first objects to having a woman on board, but sexy Denise Gerard (Bella Darvi) is an atomic energy expert in her own right and has helpful multilingual skills. The refitted ship defeats a Chinese submarine and searches one Chinese-held neutral island, finding nothing. At a second island Adam and Denise narrowly escape capture but get a glimpse at an American B-29 outfitted with a nuclear bomb. A captured Red Major reveals an inscrutably fiendish plot: the commies plan to nuke Manchuria or North Korea, blame it on America and ignite World War Three!
In his autobiography Sam Fuller described Hell and High Water as “a sea picture where we never went to sea.” Studio executives looking for budget pix to keep sound stages busy could always fall back on a submarine movie. The basic requirements are one fancy sub interior set for the actors, and a lot of toy boat noodling by the prop wranglers in the miniature tank. Hell uses a standard sub mock-up set probably welded together in WW2, backed with a lot of special effects.
The tone of the show is Captain Blood crossed with Robert Oppenheimer versus the Commies, on a budget. A CinemaScope orgy of world capitals establishes worldwide concern about nuclear scientists and the nuclear peril. Fuller’s invents a cabal of nuclear egghead peaceniks, and refreshingly enough doesn’t label them as Soviet dupes. No, this independent brain trust weirdly shares the same agenda as the F.B.I.. Montel tells reporters that America’s Atomic Energy Commission will have nothing to do with his outfit, but he’s also quick to blackball an ‘untrustworthy’ sailor from Adam Jones’ crew. Actor Victor Francen had a strong background in highly emotional political movies, having starred for French filmmaker Abel Gance in both La fin du monde (1931) and the anti-war J’accuse! (1938).
Richard Widmark’s tough guy Adam Jones takes the helm of the no-flag pirate ship out of professional need — he’s addicted to skippering subs and wants a second chance at a career. International cooperation is the order of the day as the diverse crew of former enemies bands together against the one “-ism” they all agree must be opposed at all costs. If there’s a character arc, it’s Jones’s: he has to see commie treachery for himself to fight for principle over profit.
The voyage is comprised of standard comic-book episodes (battling the Chinese sub, storms, a man losing his thumb in a hatch) and silly oo-la-la hi-jinks with the heavily accented Denise, the film’s love interest. Contrary to general opinion, Ms. Darvi does just fine in the role. Denise proves her indispensability by translating Japanese ideograms on the sub’s interior plumbing. Captain Adam Jones vetoes Professor Montel’s mission-by-committee concept in favor of One-Dude Rule, and barks out a lot of tough-guy orders to remind us that he’s the Captain. Fuller isn’t afraid to run down the sub movie cliché checklist. There’s the expected silent running scene, and the gag where they have to hide on the bottom with red lights on and the oxygen running out. Widmark’s attentions to Denise would now be considered unforgivable sexual harassment. He romances her as both of them gasp for breath in the foul air. I’ve been on a studio submarine set, and even it smelled like a men’s locker room after a few minutes, so this scene is quite a stretch. Denise naturally falls for Adam, sweat and all.
The crew interaction is corny and broadly played. Swarthy swab Cameron Mitchell tries to get to cozy with the ‘ma’amselle scienteest,’ something Mitchell was doing a lot of at the time (see Garden of Evil). The dialogue for the crew is not the best but we do get to see Fuller’s favorite bunch of he-man actors. Fox contract player Mitchell receives most of the attention as a grinning idiot, but the fave Fuller faces on display include Richard Loo, Henry Kulky, Neyle Morrow and Sgt. Rock himself, the cigar-chomping Gene Evans. Perhaps actor David Wayne signed on to fulfill his Fox contract, for his ship’s doctor has very little to do.
The sub crew is international in flavor, with Asian sailors but no blacks. Unbilled Wong Artarne’s Chinese crewman Chin Lee sings a song but is sandwiched into a thankless Gunga Din plot complication. He sacrifices himself for the good of the voyage, which is all the proof Adam and Fuller need to conclude that commies are just not like you and me. Even Montel must remind himself that the Red enemies are human beings. As in Warners’ Them! the scientists are in complete harmony with the military: the United States should have a monopoly on nuclear weapons and anybody else that wants them is an Enemy of Freedom.
After some fairly generic incidents the excitement picks up with the commando action on the two secret islands, where our peacenik mercenaries duke it out with the goonish Asians. The diabolical wild scheme of the Red Chinese is comparable to the outrageous super-crimes we would later associate with James Bond villains. The rotten Reds are willing to risk blowing up the whole world because their immense population will allow them to prevail after the bombs fall. Or perhaps they think that by faking a U.S. attack on China they can pull off a propaganda coup and convince the U.N. that America is indeed bent on world domination. And they’re willing to nuke their own citizens to do it: those crazy commies have no respect for human life.
This insane plot complication can only be called irresponsible and provocative. I can imagine Party insiders projecting a purloined copy of Hell and High Water in their secret Kremlin & Peiping screening rooms and shaking in their boots. If frivolous, decadent Hollywood can toy with life-and-death nuclear issues as blithely as this, what crazy extremes could be expected of the U.S. Government?
The Fox effects department provides all of the sea-going visuals for Hell and High Water. Shots on deck are accomplished in the studio tank, mixing rear projection with iffy traveling matte opticals. The secret Chinese islands are matte paintings combined with some well-sculpted fake rocks and caves for the live-action footage. A fire scene by the water cleverly re-purposes some stock shots from the ten year-old Crash Dive, optically repositioned. The miniatures are well crafted but not always well- filmed by modern standards, as the murky arctic waters are far too clear; it’s like we’re looking into an aquarium. Assuming Fox used ‘Scope lenses on the miniatures as well, the limited focus and warped optical field would certainly restrict the kinds of angles that could be used, even on a model eight feet long.
Several camera tricks are phenomenally successful, however. When Chinese machine guns rake our commandos on the beach, tracer bullets light up the scene, a very cool effect. They’re achieved through traditional cel animation, the same technique later used to create the laser blasts for Star Wars. The tracer flashes appear to be roto-scoped from the real thing, and are so fine that they didn’t show up well on the old DVD. Someone concocted a really good-looking studio pyrotechnic explosion for the Atom Bomb blasts that bookend the film. The billowing, fiery cloud is similar to the explosion at the end of Disney’s 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was made the same year on rented studio facilities. I’ll bet Disney hired the same effects men to do it.
Although it lasts only a few seconds a single graphic set piece in Hell and High Water ranks with the most dynamic images of the cinema of the Cold War. I have a feeling that the entire movie was concocted just to find an excuse to film it. (spoiler) The bomb-laden B-29 takes off and must fly right over our rogue sub which has been waiting in ambush. Adam orders every man on deck with a weapon in an attempt to down the low-flying Stratofortress as it passes. We’re treated to the sight of about twenty men pivoting like tracking antennas and firing in unison as the giant bomber lumbers by. It’s a wild image, this motley group of idealist mercenaries ( ? ) blasting away at what looks like an American plane. Sam Fuller must have loved this idea, as it drops all the high technology blather to get back to the Big Red One basics he understood … one can always count on small-arms riflemen. The scene perfectly expresses Fuller’s embrace of contradictory emotions: yes, yes, we know it’s to defeat an evil enemy scheme, but in visual terms The Good Guys are still trying their damnedest to shoot down an American plane!
Made when new economy-sized Hydrogen Bombs were just alerting people to the notion that Cold War aggression could really destroy the world, Hell and High Water is the damndest, most adolescent expression of confused anti-war, pro-war, peacenik, gung-ho insanity to come from a major studio. It’s irresistible.
