Lo! Death has reared himself a throne. In a strange city lying alone.
On the Cornish coast in 1903 an American mining engineer, Ben Harris (Tab Hunter), and some fishermen, find the body of a lawyer washed up on the beach. Ben is staying at a manor house overlooking the ocean. At the house is another American Jill Tregillis (Susan Hart), an eccentric artist Harold Tufnell-Jones (David Tomlinson), and Herbert, Harold’s chicken. Yes, I said chicken. Apparently Herbert and Harold are the comic relief.
Jill is kidnapped by a gill man. Ben, Harold and Herbert the chicken follow the gill man’s trail through a secret passage into some caves underneath the house. They find a whirlpool. They get sucked into the whirlpool and end up in an underwater city.
The city was built by an ancient race, it’s not clear if it was the gill men that made it or some other race that turned into gill men or just another race and the gill men are a separate race. Now the city is home to a group of smugglers led by an insane tyrant, called the Captain (Vincent Price), who came to the city in 1803.
Due to some strange mixture of the oxygen in the city the occupants have not aged in over a hundred years. The volcano that powers the city has become unstable. The men in the underwater city can’t leave because of the gas they have been breathing. Should they be exposed to sunlight they will turn old quickly.
One of the gill men stole a book that had a picture of Jill in it. It appears that the Captain found the picture and believes that Jill is his deceased wife Beatrice who has returned to him.
"War-Gods of the Deep" was released in 1965 and was directed by Jacques Tourneur. A lot of the story is not really that cohesive. You don’t know why the lawyer was there, what the estate was they mentioned. Why Ben, or Harold are there. The beginning tries to be dark and mysterious, but it doesn’t exactly go along with the reactions of the main characters in the house. The gill men seem to be an aside to the movie. There is no real purpose to them. In the shadows they look menacing, but that’s all they do. At one point they are looking for a sacrifice to the volcano. The Captain intends to give them Harold.
Price of course is the best part of the movie. When he walks into a room the mood becomes dark and foreboding. When he is not present everything falls apart and the comic relief falls a little flat.
The cinematography is good. There is a bit of a steam punk flavor to it. Towards the end there is an underwater chase scene that goes on forever. For an adventure film its fine. Just don’t expect it to be well defined. It’s interesting to look at and a decent fantasy story. Vincent Price alone is worth it.
The movie was loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe story “The City in the Sea”. The science fiction/fantasy/adventure movie “War Gods of the Deep” AKA “City Under The Sea” was released in 1965 and was directed by Jacques Tourneur. It stars Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Susan Hart, David Tomlinson, and John Le Mesurier. The film seems to be an attempt to capitalize on the Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe series of movies.