“It was foolish. It was insane. It was fantastic.”

Justin’s rating: Gee whiz, this atomic stuff’s going to be quite swell!

Justin’s review: When I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I was a voracious reader of scifi — and I was not that discriminate. I plowed through several series from the ’50s, including the Tom Swift books, and enjoyed dipping my toes into the atomic age of the genre from time to time.

That’s the bridge that helps me reach back to a much more creaky and black-and-white era: my fondness of those books and the sheer imagination that these B-movie makers had back in the day. And you can’t get much more imaginative than The Atomic Submarine, a short film that punches above its weight with creativity and ideas and miniatures.

What I love here is that this is a UFO movie where the threat doesn’t come from outer space — it emerges deep in the Arctic Ocean. A number of ships and submarines have gone missing from a vital travel route, and so the hi-tech Tigershark is tasked with investigating the threat and eliminating it.

I’m also a sucker for submarine movies, and while the sets here are far too spacious for any real sub, the feel of being in a mechanical beast is real. The Tigershark also has a second, smaller sub, the Lungfish, for specialized excursions.

The crew discover the underwater alien ship — the “Cyclops” as they dub it — and its occupants malicious intent (Hint: These extraterrestrials aren’t tourists). While they take the war to the aliens, the militaristic XO butts heads with a scientist who’s (gasp) a pacifist and supposedly a coward. That’s the big interpersonal conflict we have here, and it’s not really that believable or interesting.

Pardon the pun, but this isn’t a deep movie, just one infused with a great spirit of adventure. It felt a lot like an episode of classic Star Trek, with the ship encountering strange anomalies, hostile aliens, and malfunctioning technology as the crew uses their intelligence and bravery to save the day.

The Cyclops ship turns out to be an advance scout that’s been tasked with hauling back a few human specimens (in the Arctic Ocean?) to help with preparations for a future colonization of the planet. But the Tigershark ain’t going to let the aliens win over the USA, so the fight is on! And by “fight,” I mean “greasy middle-aged men stumbling through dark corridors while occasionally melting into goo.”

The Atomic Submarine’s ambition earned my respect. It’s centered on a pretty solid story idea that isn’t the same-old, same-old, and it throws a lot of technology, battles, and emergency dive-dive-dives to keep the plot moving at a good clip.

Sure, it’s still littered with the bane of ’50s B-movies — stodgy men talking around tables in rooms, saving the good creature effects for the last 10 minutes — but there’s enough good stuff like explosions and weird aliens to make up for these shortcomings. It even wants to be Odysseus at times, and that reference was going to go right over the heads of this movie’s intended teen audience.

As I said, this movie has my respect, but that doesn’t mean I was hugely entertained. Like a lot of these older black-and-white scifi flicks, there’s about five minutes of really good stuff with a whole lot of padding around it. At least it’s relatively short, so even as a novelty, it doesn’t feel as though it takes up too much time to experience.

Intermission!

• Ever wonder where the Simpsons got their inspiration for Kang and Kodos? This movie!
• I am not overly fond of how older movies would do the fuuuuuull credits before the film, usually with a bombastic soundtrack
• When people got drunk back in the ’50s, they said “behoove” a lot.
• And when people made out in the ’50s, they kissed once and then had a cigarette after.
• These are absolutely huge quarters for a submarine. Someone else pointed out how the public (and filmmakers) had no idea what the interior of these new nuclear missile subs looked like, so it was just guesswork.
• Did they do a lot of smoking underwater back then? Probably.
• This gigantic submarine only has about 8 people running it, it seems
• They also have a really good exterior camera with a lot of lighting to see all of these details outside the sub
• Yeah let’s just plow into the UFO like a battering ram, that’s a smart thing for a sub to do
• The alien ship is so much bigger than the Tigershark
• “Why don’t you stay on board and make a speech, maybe get them to ban flying saucers.”
• “To us, your form of life is ugly.”
• They’re exchanging “wave thoughts.”