From 1969 to 1975, ABC put out weekly films. They functioned as TV pilots, testing grounds for up-and-coming filmmakers, and places for new and old stars to shine. Every month, Chloe Walker revisits one of these movies. This is Movie of the Week (of the Month).
If there’s a single raison d’être for disaster movies, surely it’s the spectacle—the chance to use the biggest, best, most special effects to make the viewer feel like they’re experiencing a hurricane/inferno/volcano/plane crash/earthquake from the safety and comfort of their seat. (Why we would want that kind of vicarious traumatic experience is another question altogether, but the massive box office success of films from The Towering Inferno to a large part of The Rock’s oeuvre suggest we do!) So what happens when you just don’t have the money to achieve that spectacle? Well, in true ABC MOTW fashion, you often get something wonkier, decidedly less glossy, and yet charming nonetheless.
Take Skyway to Death. A bunch of disparate people get trapped in a cable car that has been sabotaged by an ex-employee looking for revenge. Does it ever seem that anyone is in any real jeopardy? No! Is the rear projection so janky as to be downright comical? Yes! And yet the story of this group becoming the best of friends, hundreds of feet above the earth, is so sweet-natured that it’s still tremendously endearing.
Then there’s The Day the Earth Moved. It’s inescapable that the central earthquake sequence is largely achieved by getting the actors to just wobble around a bit. Nevertheless, the way the movie draws the small afflicted location—a dusty, dead speed trap town owned by an eccentric millionaire sure that a Santa’s grotto is the key to its revivification—is extraordinarily vivid.
Still, while budgetary constraints may have prevented the ABC disaster movies from garnering their thrills in the same way as their big screen cousins, that doesn’t mean they were always completely devoid of tension. One MOTW, from the slot’s final season, is notably gripping.
Based on the fatal incident on the 1973 Johnson Sea Link submersible (and bearing an uncanny similarity to the Titan’s 2023 tragedy…), 1974’s Trapped Beneath the Sea tells the story of a research submersible trip gone terribly wrong. The vessel in question completes the first stage of its mission—laying containers to test sea life by an old shipwreck—without incident. But when it makes the return trip the following day, a jumble of wires and technical malfunctions prevents the craft from ascending back to the surface.
Pilot Jack (Paul Michael Glaser), divers Gordon (Cliff Potts) and Sam (Joshua Bryant), and Jeff (Roger Kern)—a traveling folk star who was just along for the ride—are trapped 350 feet beneath the ocean. Jack and Gordon are in the front compartment, Sam and Jeff in the back; they can only talk to each other by intercom as they try to find a way of saving themselves. Help is on the way, in the form of both the Navy, and a traveling salvage vessel (helmed by Martin Balsam), but will it arrive in time?
It’s actually the lack of spectacle that makes Trapped Beneath the Sea gripping. That TV movie sparseness strips away anything glossy or extraneous and leaves you with the plain, horrible reality of these four men and their rapidly dwindling air reserves. Save perhaps for the periodic narratorial intrusions of Howard K. Smith (a renowned newsman, famous for his association with Ed Murrow), updating us as to how many hours of air the unfortunate quad have left, there’s very little here that could be described as melodramatic. Even the court trial-esque framing device, set at a hearing after the incident, is mostly there to provide technical context rather than extra drama.
In terms of preserving a sense of realism, it helps that the cast isn’t over-burdened with big names. Sure, it boasts Lee J. Cobb and Martin Balsam in the above-water contingent, trying desperately to orchestrate the rescue of the men deep below, but they—both well into middle-age—are eminently believable as salty sea dogs. Paul Michael Glaser is one of the at-risk four, but he was not yet known as the first half of beloved duo Starsky & Hutch (the pilot for the series wouldn’t debut until the following spring). No one here was in possession of enough star power to immunize them against death.
After an unnecessarily labored table-setting (this is one of the few ABC MOTWs that clocks in above the typical 73 minutes, landing a little over 90), Trapped Beneath the Sea succinctly establishes a warmth and respect between the men in peril. While Stanford Whitmore’s screenplay’s attempts at characterization are slim-to-none, the actors have a chemistry that means it’s easy to believe their professional relationship, and the fondness and respect they have for each other. Although civilian passenger Jeff becomes increasingly—and understandably!—frantic as the situation worsens, the three professional divers largely retain their calm, with only whispers of panic detectable round the edges of their otherwise steely demeanors. The men’s attempts at stoicism in the face of catastrophe, and the few times we’re allowed to see the glue holding their brave facades together, make Trapped Beneath the Sea surprisingly moving.
As befitting a small-scale disaster movie, the drama stems from technical malfunctions and miscalculations—the support wire of the rescue divers being 20 feet too short, or the powder meant to decrease the carbon dioxide in the submersible losing its effectiveness. Because it’s all on such a human scale, and indeed based (albeit loosely) on true events, the slow downward spiral to disaster feels agonizingly tangible.
Of course, there is a double-edged sword to the MOTWs’ stripped-down horror. Trapped Beneath the Sea is not the sort of film that rewards repeat viewings—it’s spare and somber and gets its horror across the first time round; as to-the-point pragmatic as its title. That it doesn’t try to replicate a big-budget disaster movie means it avoids the misbegotten attempts-at-spectacle scenes that have dated poorly in productions like Skyway to Death and The Day the Earth Moved, but it is also somewhat lacking in their wonky charm.
And yet, there’s a bravery to that lack, to the dearth of entertaining cushioning, that only adds to the tense, nightmarish coldness. That stripped-to-the-bone quality gives the movie nowhere to hide, and it lives up to that self-imposed challenge, particularly in the performances of the endangered men. Though it could be entertaining to watch MOTWs try to ape the excesses of their big screen counterparts without having the resources to do so, Trapped Beneath the Sea shows how they were often at their best when embracing the constraints of their form.
Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.