This rather simple-minded 1950s story of the conflict between Greek and English sponge divers on Florida's west coast has a couple of good things going for it.
One is Bernard Hermann's stirring score, alternately romantic and seagoing.
Another is the way the director and photographer have captured the colorful industry of small-scale diving among all the tiny islands and turquoise inlets around Key West and Tarpon Springs. You have to love those beat-up old boats and the primitive diving equipment with the guy in the rubber suit and goofy helmet trudging along the sandy floor and scooping up the valuable sponges. Alas, all gone today. The sponge you're using in the kitchen is some kind of synthetic polymer or something.
Another is the ethnic stereotyping which, for a change, gives the story an added kick. The English (or "conchs") may be sullen, ruthless, and greedy -- led as they are by the growling Richard Boone and his bully son, Peter Graves. But -- by Saint Demetrios -- the Greeks are a lot of fun. Like all peasants in all movies that have a peasant community, they eat, drink, dance, work, and sing with gusto. (It may have helped that the story was written by somebody named Bezzerides.) They have their ritual tests of strength among the men, all ending with laughs and back slaps. And they are great lovers too. Gilbert Roland returns from a few weeks sponging, takes his wife aside, and murmurs to her, "When we are alone, I give you big hello, eh?" She smiles and blushes.
But that sort of thing can get you into a world of trouble. Gilbert Roland is Hollywood's idoneous Mediterranean. He's been everything. But it's a bit of a surprise to see Robert Wagner as a curly-haired ebullient young Greek kid, spreading his arms and declaiming, "Hey, I'm a very beautiful young man!" (If anyone had told me when I first saw this that R.J. would wind up as my supporting player years later, I -- well, I wouldn't have believed it.) Wagner and his teen-aged conch girl friend, Terry Moore, are unusually well directed by Robert D. Webb, who never did anything else of note. I mean, "Seven Women From Hell"? Yet he's able to take a perfectly ordinary, if well-written, scene of flirtation between Wagner and Moore in a beach-side palm grove, and add some genuinely inventive touches. And not just that one scene. When Roland has a fight with Peter Graves, then sits on his chest and humiliates him by making him eat a cigar, you can feel Graves' fury as he snarls and shakes his head, trying to spit out the tobacco shreds.
Then, too, there is Terry Moore. She's powerful cute for a conch. She winds up in one of those aquamarine estuaries alone with Wagner on his sponge boat. She wears a tiny pink blouse and tight white shorts. They dive overboard and swim together. It's the equal of Julia Adams in the Black Lagoon.
Several scenes of adventure and suspense add to the film's impact. For what it is -- or what it could have been -- a routine story of conflict over dumb cellular colonies in Florida -- it's not at all bad.
One is Bernard Hermann's stirring score, alternately romantic and seagoing.
Another is the way the director and photographer have captured the colorful industry of small-scale diving among all the tiny islands and turquoise inlets around Key West and Tarpon Springs. You have to love those beat-up old boats and the primitive diving equipment with the guy in the rubber suit and goofy helmet trudging along the sandy floor and scooping up the valuable sponges. Alas, all gone today. The sponge you're using in the kitchen is some kind of synthetic polymer or something.
Another is the ethnic stereotyping which, for a change, gives the story an added kick. The English (or "conchs") may be sullen, ruthless, and greedy -- led as they are by the growling Richard Boone and his bully son, Peter Graves. But -- by Saint Demetrios -- the Greeks are a lot of fun. Like all peasants in all movies that have a peasant community, they eat, drink, dance, work, and sing with gusto. (It may have helped that the story was written by somebody named Bezzerides.) They have their ritual tests of strength among the men, all ending with laughs and back slaps. And they are great lovers too. Gilbert Roland returns from a few weeks sponging, takes his wife aside, and murmurs to her, "When we are alone, I give you big hello, eh?" She smiles and blushes.
But that sort of thing can get you into a world of trouble. Gilbert Roland is Hollywood's idoneous Mediterranean. He's been everything. But it's a bit of a surprise to see Robert Wagner as a curly-haired ebullient young Greek kid, spreading his arms and declaiming, "Hey, I'm a very beautiful young man!" (If anyone had told me when I first saw this that R.J. would wind up as my supporting player years later, I -- well, I wouldn't have believed it.) Wagner and his teen-aged conch girl friend, Terry Moore, are unusually well directed by Robert D. Webb, who never did anything else of note. I mean, "Seven Women From Hell"? Yet he's able to take a perfectly ordinary, if well-written, scene of flirtation between Wagner and Moore in a beach-side palm grove, and add some genuinely inventive touches. And not just that one scene. When Roland has a fight with Peter Graves, then sits on his chest and humiliates him by making him eat a cigar, you can feel Graves' fury as he snarls and shakes his head, trying to spit out the tobacco shreds.
Then, too, there is Terry Moore. She's powerful cute for a conch. She winds up in one of those aquamarine estuaries alone with Wagner on his sponge boat. She wears a tiny pink blouse and tight white shorts. They dive overboard and swim together. It's the equal of Julia Adams in the Black Lagoon.
Several scenes of adventure and suspense add to the film's impact. For what it is -- or what it could have been -- a routine story of conflict over dumb cellular colonies in Florida -- it's not at all bad.