top 5 submarine movies

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Das Boot is Das Best
Hunt for Red October
Below
U-571
Throw in a B/W classic of your choice...
Thanks, I'm planning on watching Hunt for Red October soon and Das Boot too (I have seen both but long ago). I wanted to find the 293-minute version of Das Boot, hopeful I can.

Impressive list. Some others I can think of:

Run Silent Run Deep (1958)
Above Us The Waves (1955)
The Spy in Black (1939)
U47 Kapitänleutnant Prien (1958)

Naval ship films, from that general area and timeframe I can think of:

Away All Boats (1956)
Gift Horse (1952)
In Which We Serve (1942)
The Cruel Sea (1953)
The Battle of The River Plate (1956)
They Were Expendable (1945)
Action in The North Atlantic (1943)
The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954)
The Sea Chase (1955)
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Sink The Bismarck! (1960)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
The Gallant Hours (1960)
The Silent Enemy (1958)
Under Ten Flags (1960)
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)
Mister Roberts (1955)
Forever England (1935)

Hope that helps some.
Perfect, thanks...lots there I hadn't heard of. Should be a treat watching them.



Black Sea (2015) is a very good thriller from not too long ago that was mostly ignored. Directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void, The Mauritanian) starring Jude Law and Ben Mendelsohn.

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Has anyone mentioned On the Beach?




Has anyone mentioned On the Beach?
Probably but it's worth mentioning again. I just seen it a month or two ago and it's quite a different film...more about the feeling of dealing with the somberness of the end of the world after nuclear fall out.



Has anyone mentioned On the Beach?

Having seen it last month, I would strongly recommend it. But as far as submarine action goes, there's little of it. Of its 2+ hours runtime, they spend about half an hour on the submarine.
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I'm bumping this old thread again as I've been watching a boatload of submarine movies. I need me some more recommendations.

I've seen these:
49th Parallel (1941)
Crash Dive (1943)
Das Boot (1981)
Destination Tokyo (1943)
Hell And High Water (1954)
In Harms Way (1965)
Morning Departure (1950)
Operation Pacific 1951
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Submarine Command (1951)
The Bedford Incident (1965)
The Enemy Below 1957
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Torpedo Run 1958
Up Periscope (1959)
We Dive at Dawn (1943)

I'm mainly looking for 1940s-1960s sub movies...but above the sea naval ship movies from the 40s-60s are good too.
Not sure if you read my review on other threads, but last month I saw The Wolf's Call; French submarine film from a couple of years ago. It's not excellent, the lead is very bland, but as far as submarine action goes, it's tops; especially the opening 20 minutes.



Not sure if you read my review on other threads, but last month I saw The Wolf's Call; French submarine film from a couple of years ago. It's not excellent, the lead is very bland, but as far as submarine action goes, it's tops; especially the opening 20 minutes.
I think I did see your review of The Wolf's Call. I seen that one too, I liked it...especially the drama of the passengers on board.



I forgot the opening line.
Not quite a 1940s to 1960s sub movie as per request but Kursk (2018) is quite an excellent submarine film - it's otherwise known as The Command. Based on the Kursk submarine disaster.



"How tall is King Kong ?"
I tried I tried. It's hard. Because, of course, you have the top two :

1) Das Boot (the definitive ww2 sub movie)
2) The Hunt for Red October (the best nuclear sub movie)

And then... all the others. Which are just weaker versions of the same stiff. There's not that many things that can take place in a submarine, you have your "oh no depth charges" scene, you have your "can't breathe, will sub ever go back up" scene, you have the mutiny, and you have needles on gauges. And that's it. Once a movie does it perfectly, there's not many other directions to explore.

I have a huge fondness for :

3) Ice station Zebra. Because McGoohan, because ice, because cold war and Alistair MacLean. Half of it takes place aboard a sub, so it qualifies. It's not an excellent movie, its whodunnit aspect is a bit weak. But I love its style and music and cast. Plus, did I mention it, MacLean.

But afterwards I'm stuck. Not out of ignorance (I happen to collect book on submarine warfare and have a huge collection of sub war DVDs), but simply because no other movie really thrilled me. I feel I've been on a quest for some "new Das Boot" for ages, but what's the point ? Everything is just deja vu, no matter how well done. U-571, for instance, is a noble effort, but still, at its best, feels like a postcard from Das Boot.

So, trying to stretch it to #5 :

4) The Enemy Below is fun because of the nice dynamics between Mitchum and Jürgens, even though many tactical and psychological aspects prevented me to suspend disbelief for most of it. I still have to read Mulligan's "Neither Sharks nor Wolves", but after a few WW1 submariner autobiographies, and knowing how tight the surveillance and discipline were in german WW2 u-boots, I found the openly anti-nazi u-boot commander a bit too hollywoodian.

5) Le Chant du Loup is okay. It has some extremely silly parts (the early helicopter scene !), and very bad acting (as often in french movies that try to sound like american epics), but the focus on sonar work is nice, and it's one of these recent films (like Hunter-Killer) that attempt a bit more uptodate realism than Red October. That's also why I didn't describe that one as "the definitive" : I still expect some more modern films to be more accurate than that. Which is a bit like dreaming of an physically accurate space movie, or a faithful Dracula adaptation. But still...

Also worth mentioning : two movies could have taken the 4th and/or 5th slots : Greyhound (despite that stupid idea of having the u-boots tease the convoy by radio like internet gamers), and The Bedford Incident. But as these movies only show the surface perspective, I'm not sure they'd qualify here.

(Oh, just remembered Les Maudits. It's a good movie set on a German submarine fleeing the nazi defeat, but it's so much not focused on warfare or submarine-specific tension that I was oddly merging it, in my head, with Morituri. Oddly similar atmosphere.)



You guys are forgetting the two greatest submarine films, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and "Up, Periscope" ('96).
I think you mean this one:
Down Periscope..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116130/
^ watchlisted, Up is from '59..



Actors get very claustrophobic shooting in subs



Morituri (1965 film) - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Morituri_(1965_film)







Morituri is a 1965 war film about the Allied sabotage during World War II of a German merchant ship carrying rubber, a critical product during the war.
Music by: Jerry Goldsmith

Starring: Marlon Brando; ‎Yul Brynner‎; ‎Janet M...


Screenplay by: Daniel Taradash

Based on: Morituri; 1958 novel; by Werner J











I'm bumping this old thread again as I've been watching a boatload of submarine movies. I need me some more recommendations.

I've seen these:
49th Parallel (1941)
Crash Dive (1943)
Das Boot (1981)
Destination Tokyo (1943)
Hell And High Water (1954)
In Harms Way (1965)
Morning Departure (1950)
Operation Pacific 1951
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Submarine Command (1951)
The Bedford Incident (1965)
The Enemy Below 1957
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Torpedo Run 1958
Up Periscope (1959)
We Dive at Dawn (1943)

I'm mainly looking for 1940s-1960s sub movies...but above the sea naval ship movies from the 40s-60s are good too.



Morituri (1965 film) - Wikipedia

Morituri is a 1965 war film about the Allied sabotage during World War II of a German merchant ship carrying rubber, a critical product during the war.
Thanks Diehl, I haven't seen that one and it sounds like a good one too.