cult film freak: IRWIN ALLEN'S 'CITY BENEATH THE SEA' WITH STUART WHITMAN

Title: CITY BENEATH THE SEA Director: Irwin Allen Year: 1971 Rating: ***

Between his b-science-fiction series and a-list disaster films, Irwin Allen combined both in a TV-Movie that plays out like a hopeful series pilot, CITY BENEATH THE SEA stars Stuart Whitman who, halfway through the 21st Century, is called back into the Modern-Atlantis underwater world he once ran...

Feeling more like a sequel to a previous installment since so many plates are dangling, including a beloved employee who'd been killed, blamed on Whitman by sulky ingenue Rosemary Forsyth... completely overshadowed by insanely-gorgeous secretary Susana Miranda alongside a fish-man diver and the token bad guy in Robert Wagner, out to rob Fort Knox's gold, placed within the city...

Susana Miranda and Stuart Whitman in CITY BENEATH THE SEA

Coinciding with this heist-plot looms the disaster since an asteroid's about to hit the ocean, which would destroy everything, making BENEATH a kind of science-fiction waiting game where the characters stand around, stressed out, staring at monitors, waiting for an outcome a lot like the upcoming STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE also in that Whitman replaces the city's disgruntled leader in an underused Robert Colbert, demoted to his silent second...

With familiar faces ranging from Richard Basehart (The President) to Paul Stewart to Joseph Cotten to Sugar Ray Robinson, who all come and go within the neat-looking futuristic sets inside with sporadic pockets of random action outside (mostly repeated establishing shots) that, while the story's too busy and contrived, effectively brings the viewer to another world... which was obviously Irwin Allen's intention.