Neptune Factor, The (1973)
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 11:34AM There are several moments in every film aesthete’s life when they must submit to the idea that the particular film they are watching could be the worst thing they have ever seen.
Usually something occurs in the progression of the film that invalidates this feeling: an improvised move by an actor; a director’s singularly beautiful mise-en-scene; a clever use of light or shadow by the cinematographer; the way the film was marketed by a savvy producer; a bizarre yet inspired casting choice; an economy of sequence by the editor; a memorable line from the screenwriter; or maybe the caterer provided quality food for the cast and crew.
Whatever it is, you are saved by that aspect. Something can always go right, even in Hollywood, and you come away with a sense that the current abomination you are viewing is not destined for the bowels of filmic damnation.
It is not the most irredeemable movie ever made (Only Patch Adams can hold that title).
It actually can be enjoyed on a camp level or as a mismanagement of cinematic time and dollars so epic that it plays like a practical joke on anyone or anything it touches.
It can be called The Neptune Factor.
And it is a crown jewel of ineptitude.
The “Rosetta Stone” of crap.
The Ark of the Covenant of schlock with a Nazi’s head melting next to it.
The Neptune Factor lacks any pacing, urgency or sense of suspense, despite being an underwater disaster/rescue picture. The special effects look like Spielberg did them, when he was six... and had the flu.
The film is atrociously acted, even with Ben Gazzara, Walter Pidgeon and Ernest Borgnine in it. It is a waste of their talents. No, wait… it is a rough, unprotected anal rape of those talents.
And oh, Man, have you got to see it!
Throughout film history there have been some cinematic travesties made in, around and under the water. There have also been some very good ones despite the nightmare that filming en aqua entails. Jaws immediately comes to mind, as does The Bounty, Open Water and Apocalypse Now. However, the production woes for Jaws and Apocalypse are legendary and documented.
For water is one of the “Three ‘W’s”.
Let me explain.
In the early ‘90s, before CGI technology handled everything, I developed a small mnemonic theory called “The Three ‘W’s”.
It simply stands for water, whippersnappers, and war.
Too many of these elements or any one of them in abundance, I reasoned, was sure to skyrocket a film’s budget, make shooting extremely difficult, and often destroy a production’s box office potential via negative press before the film even wrapped. Aspiring filmmakers and producers with financial issues needed to avoid these themes like the plague.
The use of whippersnappers tends to waste rolls of film and stall schedules because kids can’t act, continually miss their marks, have meddlesome handlers and refuse to smoke, drink or do sex scenes. War, of course, poses logistical nightmares, pyrotechnic issues, and thousands of extras for battle scenes. But water, oh, water, can sink even the most well thought out productions before you can even say, “cue the rubber octopus”.
It was a sound theory, now perhaps defanged by CGI, but I stick by it nonetheless.
Unfortunately, the theory was born about twenty years too late to thwart Sandy Howard from making The Neptune Factor. Howard and Neptune screenwriter Jack DeWitt were fresh off successes with two admirable Richard Harris vehicles, Man in the Wilderness (1971) and A Man Called Horse (1970). With Neptune however, Howard not only bit off a little more than he could chew, he proceeded to swallow it, gag on it, stare wide-eyed with no ability to respire and then expected an audience to Heimlich him out of career and tracheal peril. Two million dollars went into this budget and none of it can be seen on the screen except for a helicopter rental to shoot the establishing shot for the film’s opening. That’s money that could have been used for medicine, education, help for the needy or a mountain of cocaine (1973 prices remember). All better uses than a sputtering attempt to cash in on the success of the previous year’s The Poseidon Adventure.
No Homer or even Arthur C. Clarke he, screenwriter Jack DeWitt begins his odyssey with an intriguing premise. A research ship (the Triton) is umbilically tethered to an ocean floor exploration station (Oceanlab). An earthquake hits and the lab plummets into the murky depths. Communication with the remaining crew of three men is lost and the outlook is grim. Enter Commander Adrian Blake (Ben Gazzara) and his mini-sub “Neptune” who will go down into the menacing crevasse to search for them. Good premise, room for suspense, clock is ticking. But, no.
We are introduced to the Oceanlab crew before the quake. They all are bickering about one thing or another. One is claustrophobic and popping pills. One inexplicably attacks another diver with a wrench (underwater no less). “I popped my cork”, he defensively claims. The lab’s physician is boning one of the research doctors from the Triton (Yvette Mimieux). Mack (Borgnine) weighs in at about 290 (it’s a small lab) and the rest of the crew’s ages (for such physically demanding work) hovers around forty-five. Who the hell is doing the hiring pre-screens?
Do we really want any of them to live? Of course we do. They have to deliver the unenergetic performances and lazy dialogue that make the movie so unintentionally bad.
Gazzara, who shined in five John Cassavetes’ films in and around this period, tries a southern accent. Sort of Lower East Side Manhattan meets Marietta, Georgia or a pastrami sandwich at Stuckeys. He slips in and out of it for the first half hour then abandons it altogether when in the sub.
Walter Pidgeon is hardly spry. When not doddering around, picking up a clipboard and muttering some ineffectual orders to a crewmember, he sleepwalks through vague flirtation with Mimieux. He feigns incredulity (“Good God, Man!”) at Gazzara for weighing the risks of the rescue mission and continually looks at the clock, probably more in wanting the director to call it a day than any concern for fatal deadlines his crew may be under.
Mimieux is even better. An oceanographer and doctor, she unconvincingly frets over her possibly dead lover (the two have never met onscreen) and transfers small fish from one container to another, repeatedly. At one point, she is so upset she drops one of the containers. The fish is saved however, by the quick thinking of Borgnine who grabs her small aquarium fishnet and places the studied guppy into another container.
Symbolism?
Perhaps.
Except for guppy transference, it is never really stated until midway through the picture just what this entire research project is for. Borgnine finally admits they are researching “… what causes earthquakes plus the full ecology shtick”.
Was Jackie Mason head of the EPA in 1973? Does the Borscht Belt Foundation fund their research?
After the second act- as murky, confusing and mysterious as the ocean depths themselves- we get to the meat of the picture. The film’s final thirty minutes is a clinic in egregious special effects and false peril. The Neptune now descends into an unexplained world of giant… well, aquarium fish, magnified to cheesy effect outside the sub’s portal windows.
Billed in the film’s trailers as, I kid you not, “A world that is awesomely beautiful and beautifully awesome”.
The ocean is surprisingly bright at this depth. The pressure threatens to crush the sub (although Borgnine’s stunt double, noticeably 100 pounds lighter, can scuba dive outside it and be stalked by a gigantic Lionfish). A myriad of undersea terrors wait in the forms of a crab, a lobster, a seahorse, catfish, triggerfish, tetras, eels and, I’m not positive, but pieces of sashimi and a Mrs. Paul’s fish stick as well.
DeWitt’s script, by focusing entirely on the Neptune and Triton, forgets to show the lost crew at any time. While the drama of not knowing whether they are alive or dead might add some suspense, we have absolutely forgotten who the hell these people were in the first place. Only Mimieux’s half-assed pouting reminds us they were special to anyone. We only met them briefly in the first few scenes, with a few lines of trite dialogue, in what seems like thirteen weeks ago.
I refuse to spoil the ending for you- the eels, my god, the eels- but this needs to be seen to be believed. It’s the sort of folly that seldom comes along in a cinematic lifetime. Moviemaking at its overshooting, miscalculating best. It is no Glen or Glenda, Plan Nine from Outer Space, Robot Monster, Showgirls, or even Forrest Gump, but it is a true car wreck of a motion picture that requires rubbernecking, judgment, anger and howls of laughter.
A must see for the trash seeker in us all.
Reader Comments (2)
Yes, the aquarium fish were the pathetic last nail in the coffin for this stinker. I did finish it, but barely half awake.
Why on Earth did 20th Century have you review this old film anyway?
JM
It was part of their sci-fi classics re-releases that had been sitting in the vaults forever, along with Fantastic Voyage, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. One could argue over the term "classic". I didn't. They were paying good money. I gleefully reviewed them all - which you can read right here on the blog.