Classic Horrors Club

If you grew up in the 1970s, you knew ABC news anchor Howard K. Smith. If you watch Trapped Beneath the Sea (1974) today and hear his familiar voice narrating the movie, a wave of nostalgia will wash over you. It reinforces the fact that it’s based on a true story as well as lends authenticity to the story.

About a year and a half earlier, during a routine dive off the coast of Florida, the mini-sub Johnson Sea Link became trapped in underwater wreckage. When it was eventually recovered, two of the four divers had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I don’t remember the incident, but Smith tells us that “a whole nation held its breath.”

I suppose it was the 70s equivalent of the 2010 accident in which 33 miners were trapped underground in Chile, or even the 1987 incident in which “Baby Jessica” was trapped in a well for 56 hours. In these cases, the truth is not always as exciting as fictionalized accounts that compact days and hours into movie-length adventures.

When our lives continue during these potential tragedies, we may not be thinking about them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, media outlets push them to the top of the news and we are drawn into the drama. All this is to say that when we ourselves are trapped for 97 minutes watching Trapped Beneath the Sea, it just isn’t the same. It’s not exciting.

To add suspense, the story flashes back and forth between the accident and a subsequent hearing in which officials try to determine what went wrong. There were no alterations to the plan. There were no equipment malfunctions. The pre-dive check was perfect. They’re called “accidents” for a reason… they aren’t planned in advance.

Rather than making it suspenseful, this structure made the story disjointed, which had the opposite effect. The stakes were also not clear to me. Who are these people and why do we care? One minute they’re partying aboard a yacht and the next they’re going underwater to lay traps. And what exactly is it in which they become tangled?

I don’t know if this reflects the true story, but the movie tries to give us sympathetic characters. Grace Wallants (Barra Grant) is the daughter of one of the divers, Sam Wallants (Joshua Bryant.) She’s a thrill-seeker who takes a successful dive earlier in the movie. Jeff Curley (Roger Kern) is a young musician reluctant to dive, but Grace convinces to do so.

The sub is tiny and there’s a feeling of claustrophobia, but it also seems to be built of two parts. Pilot Jack Beech (Paul Michael Glaser) pilots from one chamber with one of the untrained passengers (Grace or Jeff.) Two other crew members ride in a separate chamber from which they can exit the craft and swim outside.

I hate to blame a movie for not sensationalizing the details of a tragedy, but there’s a reason far-fetched disaster films are so entertaining. Maybe Trapped Beneath the Sea wasn’t meant to be entertaining. Maybe that’s why Smith was involved and the creators wanted a factual recreation more suitable for World News Tonight than the ABC Movie of the Week.