Classic Horrors Club

Writer | Max Ehrlich, Gail Ingram, Harry Ingram
Based on | the novel by Jules Verne
Director | Don Medford
Air Date | Jan. 25, 1952 and Feb. 1, 1952

The first episode of the one and only two-episode story on Tales of Tomorrow, an adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, Twenty Thousand Under the Sea, is missing. Luckily, the opening of “Part Two: the Escape” gets us up to speed with a sentence or two. There’s a “terrifying mechanism” under the sea. U.S. naval officer Farragut (Leslie Nielsen) sets sail on the Abraham Lincoln “to seek out and destroy the monster of steel.” Then the Abraham Lincoln itself is destroyed and Farragut and Peters (Brian Keith) are taken aboard the vessel and held captive.

It sounds exciting, doesn’t it? I can’t speak for “Part One: The Chase;” however, if part two is any indication, it was only as exciting as a 1952 live presentation from a television studio could be. I don’t mean that to be derogatory; we’ve seen exciting episodes on Tales of Tomorrow. However, an underwater adventure confined to the interior of a submarine, no matter how “science fiction” it’s supposed to be, seems ill suited for the format. I’m not familiar with the source material, but any adaptation without a giant octopus is likely to disappoint me.

The “submarine” of which we speak is the Nautilus, piloted by Captain Nemo (Thomas Mitchell), who has the best intentions for ruling his underwater kingdom, but takes extreme measures to protect it.

The ocean does not belong to despots!

When Farragut and Peters refer to their detainment as life-ending, Nemo replies:

Your lives are not ending. On the contrary, they’re just beginning.

Nemo’s daughter, “the Girl” (Bethel Leslie), knows no other life, but after meeting Farragut, in convinced there’s more to it than existing inside a big tin can, even if you can look out the port hole and see a fuzzy image of Atlantis. When she mentions it to her father, he reveals that he once lived on land and had a wife. He trusted this existence, but something happened to him and he was “through with land and all that lived on it.” We don’t know from this version of the story what exactly happened and I don’t know if it’s a plot point in any other adaptation, but it’s a compelling facet of the character.

As days slip into weeks and weeks into months, Farragut and Peters ponder various plans of escape. Their first effort lands them in chains, but by this time Farragut has charmed the Girl enough that she’s willing to not only help him, but to also leave the Nautilus with him. We witness only the prelude to an exciting conclusion, though. The Girl hits Nemo hard by telling him she used to love him and that you can’t make freedom, you can only give it. He releases them and makes an indirect promise to do no future harm.

I can hardly sink a ship when I know someone I love might be aboard.

I don’t know all the versions of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea that came before the one on Tales of Tomorrow other than a 1907 French silent film and a 1916 silent film. Whether or not this is the version that set a ball rolling, the Canadian serial, Tales of Adventure, produced a 6-part version seven months later and Disney made the only version to which I’m loosely connected a year after that. There have been multiple adaptations since then. I prefer my sci-fi in space rather than underwater, but if you focus on the drama without the spectacle, the Tales of Tomorrow version is OK.