Terror Beneath The Sea

This is one of the many 1960's era Japanese films that starred boatloads of Caucasian actors who mixed together for some very odd film results..and this film is perhaps one of the cheesiest and most ridiculous films I have seen, but it is also very entertaining and creepy. Many of you adept in Asian films should recognize the name Sonny Chiba (the Street Fighter and Kill Bill films) and this film is one that showcases his bishonen or 'pretty boy' looks before he became the hardened, sinister looking badass of the Street Fighter films.

SPOILER: A young JDF officer named Ken Abe (Chiba) discovers an underwater base off the coast of Tokyo, headed by post WW2 Axis scientists (and played by real Germans who were living in Tokyo at the time) The scientists have found a way to creat a race of amphibious mer-men who do their evil bidding, and Chiba and his young American cohort (played by the lovely Peggy Neal) must find a way to stop the scientists before they creat an army of water cyborgs who look like someone mugged the monster costume closet on the Ultraman set. Also, as usual in this short lived crop of international train wreck films, the UN sits back and does nothing but speculate and engage in useless conversation

Many of you may have seen this one on late night TV as kids, only to wake up the next day asking yourself if it was a real movie or a bad dream. Like many others, I found out that yes it WAS a movie and YES, it was so bad that it was good. That's usually the case with these types of movies :)