we're on a mission from god

wendy so i got that going darling

i picked the wrong way to quit sniffing

blue light of my life

we enjoy your films

i thought they smelled bad on the

outside

[Music]

welcome to vintage video where we're

re-watching the 80s so you don't have to

we'll be reviewing every major film

release of the 1980s in real time

over analyzing what you've seen and

spoiling what you haven't i'm patrick

o'reilly i'm jesse bayless and i'm

richard wells and today marks the 40th

anniversary of the release of raise the

titanic on

august 1 1980 it was written by adam

kennedy from an adaptation by eric

hughes of the novel by clive kessler

directed by jerry jameson and released

by associated film distribution

who earlier this year distributed saturn

iii ironically though the score here

is provided by john berry the composer

of the bond theme and not john berry who

was originally slated to direct

saturn 3 before his untimely death

working on the set of empire strikes

back

so for two credits on adaptation

and screenplay yes which are different

credits by different people

so are we to assume that the there

wasn't a screenplay written by the

adaptation credit that was then further

changed there was a book written by

clive kessler right it was adapted into

a screenplay

by eric hughes and then and then written

rewritten by adam kennedy

and then they brought in a bunch of

people to do rewrites and then they had

adam kennedy come back and do the last

one so he got the official

solo screenplay credit okay um but eric

hughes wrote the one that clive kessler

liked that never got made

interesting in 1973 the first

of clive kessler's dirk pitt series of

books the mediterranean caper was

published

three years later the third title in the

series raised the titanic was released

and quickly optioned for 450 thousand

dollars along with two other pit novels

iceberg and the sea dweller by lou grade

who saw potential for a series and

discovered director stanley kramer was

interested in taking on this project

in pre-production a 10-ton 50-foot scale

replica of the titanic was built

from the original blueprints of the

actual titanic at a cost of five

million dollars five million

dollars for that ten ton fifty foot ship

which if you're keeping track is about

five hectares if we're using saturn

three's budget that's

as a reference well cause is it a hector

an actual

unit of measurement yeah but this is uh

i'm using a hectare is one million

dollars of feature film budget

because that's what the robot cost lou

grade argued that this prop was two to

three times bigger than necessary

and together with the three million

dollar tank it would be submerged in

they had blown a million dollars past

the cost of the actual titanic before

inflation

the tank constructed in malta was the

only one big enough to film all the

underwater sequences

though he did have a contract to direct

kramer couldn't see making the movie for

less than 14 million

when the studio was looking to keep it

under nine meaning they had already

spent four-fifths of the budget on one

prop

kramer was released from his contract

and paid 500 000

which is a pretty sweet deal yeah

getting paid for walking away from a

project

inexplicably six months after dropping

kramer over creative differences and

budgetary

differences lou grade announced a new

director jerry jameson and a new budget

of 20 million dollars he also touted the

absence of stars as a selling point

insisting that the ship itself was a

star i

don't think that he's wrong i don't

think so either but

don't pretend like that's a selling

point like if there were famous people

in it it would be even better

right yeah yeah the budget however

spiraled out of control from there

during the search for a ship to double

as the full-size titanic eventually one

was found in athens

although adam kennedy wrote the first

and last drafts of the screenplay

and retained sole credit for it as many

as 17 writers were employed during the

process of rewriting

one of whom novelist larry mcmurdy

reportedly hated the book

which he described as more of an

instruction manual on how to raise a

sunken ship than an actual story

he was the only screenwriter of the 17

who didn't petition for a credit on the

finished product

which i think is funny because when they

actually talk about the logistics of

this whole thing

it comes up for all of five seconds in

the film and if that's what the book was

mostly about they

took very little from the book i wasn't

able to

find a copy of the book to read before

this

but i get the impression that it's kind

of like the martian where it just delves

into the science of a lot of it

it's not as much about the story of

these characters

to lock in the cooperation of the us

navy rewrites were demanded to prevent

the russians from appearing to outsmart

the americans

which is why the end of it has a weird

curve ball that feels

awkward and rushed wait you mean the

original

they did outsmart the americans well

they at least seemed smarter

in places the problem was that they won

at the end of the book no but it

probably was closer to

the russians not making fools of

themselves where they were both being

very smart and tactical

and they pulled one over on us but we

were able to you know save the day or

whatever

custler felt like his book was gutted by

the script and disagreed with all the

casting as well

in 1977 for whatever reason it was

announced that charles bronson would

star

although he was never officially

attached steve mcqueen

kessler's second choice after james

gardner felt the story was flat

and turned it down elliott gould was

offered the role of dirk pitt and passed

to do last flight of noah's ark for

disney

a different movie about reconstructing a

crashed ship into a functional boat

jason robarts fully admitted that he did

this for the money

by the time they actually started

filming 15 million dollars had already

been spent on the tank and models

keep in mind kramer was suggesting keep

in mind kramer was dropped from the

project for suggesting it might cost 14

million and they'd spent 15 million

before they started shooting

apparently after it was released 12

minutes were cut from

the film we may have actually watched

the edited version yeah because

there's i have questions yeah um i also

i read something about a second scene at

the end with alec guinness

which was originally planned to shoot in

a church but a terrible storm destroyed

the church the day before they were

going to shoot

so they had to move to a different

location there's no second scene with

alec guinness

the budget eventually settled at 40

million dollars and it made seven

million back

oh dear approving of the final product

producer lou grade

blamed its poor performance on being

beaten to theaters by sos titanic one

year prior

ironically distributed by emi a company

his own brother chaired

the failure of race the titanic is part

of why lou grade withdrew from the film

industry in

in general and kessler refused any

future adaptations of his work for 20

years

the film was nominated for three razzies

at the inaugural ceremony worst picture

screenplay and supporting actor for

david

selby that's the guy playing seagram

it didn't win any but don't worry lou

grade also had a hand in bringing can't

stop the music to theaters this year so

he didn't leave empty-handed

i don't think it deserved worse picture

nomination

yeah obviously the titanic had not been

discovered at the time of this film's

production but it was soon after in 1985

and the movie got a lot of stuff right

and a couple things wrong there were

conflicting reports from survivors of

the wreck that the ship went down in two

pieces

kessler bet on the one piece testimony

assuming people had misdiagnosed the

sound of

the collapsing smokestack and exploding

steam engines as the ship splitting

but aside from that he got a surprising

amount of stuff right including the

reason they were looking in the first

place

in 1984 dr robert ballard was contracted

by the u.s navy

to locate and check on the status of two

nuclear-capable submarines the uss

scorpion

and uss thresher sunk in the region in

the 1960s

their concern was that russians might

have found the wrecks and scavenged them

for nuclear technology

the navy gave ballard the cover story

that he was hunting the wreckage of the

titanic

an effort he had publicly undertaken in

the past ballard agreed to do the search

for the navy on the condition that

if he discovered the sub wrecks ahead of

schedule he could use the remaining time

actually seeking the titanic he found

the subs untouched

and with the remaining 12 days moved to

the basic strategy scene in the film

based on the last known locations of the

ship and mowing the lawn

survey which is up and down and up and

down across

he discovered the wreckage on september

1st 1985.

ballard also takes credit for the

discovery of the bismarck sunk in world

war

ii the uss yorktown sunk in the battle

of midway

and the wreck of john f kennedy's pt-109

rammed by a japanese destroyer in 1943.

apparently an actual effort to raise at

least part of the titanic was attempted

in 1996

and a large portion was raised to about

200 feet below the surface

before the seas got rough and while

towing the hull portion to a safer area

it broke loose from the attached

flotation devices and sank back to the

bottom where it obviously remains today

another thing kessler got right but the

movie cut completely was that as soon as

they got the ship

up in the book they were hit by a

hurricane which is not dissimilar to how

the 1996

attempt ended we open with black and

white still photos

of the assembly and launch of the

titanic underwater footage of a ship i

think this is the titanic

there's just footage of the ship sitting

there at the bottom of the ocean

under the title and we cut to somewhere

snowy

we'll later learn this is svalbard or

something sparred like

a man is breaking into an underground

mine through a snow cover

and he has a geiger counter with him uh

there's rails

in this mine i was so uncomfortable at

this moment because he's

he's all alone and he's digging in the

snow and at first i'm like oh no is he

digging somebody out of an avalanche and

then he gets

like he breaks through a little bit and

he just crawls into this snow hole that

just just barely

wider than his body and i was freaking

out i mean i'd get claustrophobic but

this i'm like i would not

go in there that snow is just going to

collapse on you but it does seem like

he's the first one

in there in in some years 60 years yeah

but also the moment he turns on that

geiger counters it's like oh yeah i

don't know if you want to be down in

this tunnel

uh he walks through it until he finds a

person completely encased in ice

except for a hand which is protruding

from the ice which has rotted down to a

skeleton

a nearby placard displays a carving that

says here lies captain jake hobart

united states army frozen in a storm

february 10th

1912. back at the white house a pair of

men this is

admiral james sendecker and

dr seagram they're discussing keeping

some russia business out of the papers

that's what we just left

in svardlov was happening technically on

russian land

well it's disputed land right but it's

not american land

i would guess well they said everybody

claims this territory but russia tends

to put

people on it yeah the admiral and dr

seagram are notifying the military in

case they'll need assistance extracting

their

their man who is there in the in the

cave

they've developed a defense system which

utilizes invisible beams

which are impenetrable to missiles so

it's basically the star wars

defense yeah it's it's a it's a laser

shield

yeah but they need an extremely powerful

battery for it

and that's where byzanium comes in

which is a non-existent element that

they're going to be using

as a power source i really wish

this had been the part that had changed

or i

hope that maybe they changed it from the

book and that the book isn't this

because

this plot doesn't seem i really don't

like this idea

like if they were just they're just

trying to make a shield yeah like if

they just said like

you know we're gonna build a new kind of

energy source that's gonna power a whole

city that's

just as required as

a laser defense shield i know it's not

as timely

but it just seems too too futuristic

yeah i don't know i kind of liked the

the premise

uh because i felt like you needed to

you needed to justify spending endless

amounts of money

on this and i think the only thing that

you could

justify is some is something to do with

defense

or national security or national

security sandecker

is making a note of the fact that this

guy is a few days behind schedule and

svardlov

and he suggests sending a man in to

retrieve the guy

but they really need to get it right

because they don't want to spark an

international incident

but that's part of why they're meeting

with the military in the first place is

to make sure that

we're at least aware and preparing

something yeah it's quite possible he's

been intercepted already which is why

he's late

yeah we cut back to the cave where right

as the man is surfacing

he is shot at by a russian soldier and

then chased and bit by a dog

the man escaping the cave is actually

hit by

the gunshot and is knocked to the ground

in the snow and

then suddenly the rescue mission arrives

it's a one-man

rescue crew who the very first thing

that our hero does dirk pitt does in

this movie is shoot and kill a dog

[Applause]

and and and then the russian soldier

yeah a russian soldier who was just

doing his job

and as far as he knows is on russian

land yeah i think this could cause an

international

yeah i think it does in this movie and

then

uh dirk pitt our hero picks up the

wounded american

and throws him up over his shoulder and

marches

unknowable miles through frozen

wasteland at first it looks like he's

just walking

like to a dead end on an icy river

but we just cut to a pair of russian

agents

discussing having found this dead

russian soldier and they know

immediately that americans are

responsible because who else would do

that

i'm sure they can tell just by the

ballistics yeah well the ballistics are

the same everywhere because we sold all

the guns

one of them makes mention of the chess

genius

boluslovsky's sicilian defense and uh

just kind of drops it that's the end of

their conversation

we see sandecker and seagram waiting at

the airport for dirk pitt to land with

the agent from svardlov and sandecker

says that

pitt is a former navy man who only works

when he feels like it

and seagram says pardon my expression

colonel but he sounds like a major pain

in the ass

they need to rush the american agent to

the hospital because he's lost a lot of

blood since getting shot

and seagram is being a big baby about it

because he just wants to

interrogate this guy in debris from

right now but people want to keep him

alive

this guy's the the american agent that

was in the cave is named coplin

and apparently he told pitt that there

was a half ton of byzanium in this mine

that had been stripped out by americans

from colorado at like the turn of the

century in like 1910-12

which is weird because the geiger

counter was still going off like crazy

so there's still a lot of it there yeah

i mean

i guess i don't know what a usable

amount of byzanium is when they just

said it's like

seven or eight times more powerful than

uranium so you would think that you

would need

seven or eight times less of it well

because they say specifically how much

they need later and it doesn't seem like

that much like it seems like there

should have been enough in this mine

but they don't want to fight over it but

there might not be any left you don't

really know what the half-life of this

made-up you know

well yeah but the geiger counter was

going off like crazy so there's

something there

i guess he reads the placard that koplin

copied down from

the frozen corpse in the cave and then

we cut to a newsroom

seagram meets with his girlfriend or

wife not clear

and she asks for a lead on whatever's

bumming him out but he can't share

she says that he lately he's turning

into charlie chan

which i don't understand the reference

but it reminded me that next week's

movie is basically a charlie chan parody

because

i think she just means that he's really

cryptic in his explanations

oh okay he asks her if she's ever heard

of dirk pitt and she says no

and then five minutes later says

actually

did you say dirk pitt oh that dirk pic

but yeah we cut right from them in this

newsroom to them

walking to the end of a dock off of like

a lake house

and they are about to go fishing but she

doesn't like hooking the worms because

she's a little squeamish

and so he offers to do it but this is

where she admits

oh you know what i've when you said dirk

pitt yeah i do know him

uh he used naval intelligence and he's

like oh did you guys use to date because

that's the only reason that

you would have pretended not knowing him

and she's like no no no i just

i know him and he was it was never that

kind of guy for me

and he says dirk pitt what kind of name

is that sounds like a pirate

and then she laughs about that suddenly

a helicopter calls down to them on the

edge of the talk

it turns out that seagram needs to head

back to washington not clear why they

needed to do this from the helicopter no

this is such an unnecessary use of money

in this film

it's really annoying literally could

have had some dude in a suit just

walked out the dock and be like we got

you we need to take you

or just a phone call while he was still

in the news yeah his uh his girlfriend

slash wife reporter lady

is mad that he even gave them an address

to come reach him at

they fill him in on the story in 1910

some byzanium was discovered on this

island

and hobart and brewster and some other

miners went

there illegally to collect it from this

mine

a ship took them from svardlov to north

of aberdeen

with their payload of 500 pounds or

something like that

or a half ton a half of byzanium yeah

but they were being

trailed on their way back by russians

right

so they they tried to keep changing it

up they plan to send the byzantium home

from southampton

to escape the russians

and the last man with the byzantium was

a man named southby

so they lowered the byzantium into a

ship that set sail on april 10th

in 1912 which was the titanic

apparently they only need 200 ounces of

it for the generator

but there should be a lot of it on the

titanic when seagram arrives

dirk pitt basically gives them the

backstory that they got from some letter

that someone had

and it turns out that in 1910 this team

of men discovered

byzanium and svardlov and that hobart

brewster and a team of miners went to

the island

a ship took them and their half-ton

supply of byzanium

to north of aberdeen and they were being

pursued by russians

the plan was to hide it on some sort of

commercial vessel to get it all the way

back to america

and then it just so happens the ship

that they chose was the titanic

it turns out they only need 200 ounces

of it for the generator that they're

envisioning

and the whole group gets on a boat at

night they're on the back of a yacht

and they conclude that it's 12 and a

half thousand feet

under water they can't send divers that

low so they're gonna have to raise the

titanic to sea level

are you talking about raising the

titanic

and then uh somebody says well it's

never been done before we know that

but we did raise that nuclear sub three

years ago nearly a third the size

so it has been done before yeah but also

it was in shallower water

right uh all these other things that

were known about it

right but it's still it's like there's a

clear done if it if it was a third the

size

and not in as deep of water then it's

not equivalent

they've raised other ships yes they've

raised other ships it's

it's like saying we know that no one's

ever raised a titanic before

it's like there's only one titanic no

that's the point you could get to

you know mars because you've been to the

moon it's like well not necessarily

those aren't equivalent

technically like space travel is a thing

so i'm just saying ship salvage is a

thing

they've done it before with things not

this deep and not this big so

it's still a unique task yes but it just

seems weird to say

we know that it's it's never been done

before and if by it he means

specifically the titanic has never been

raised from the bottom of the ocean and

that's accurate

then it's like yeah sure that has never

happened but we've done other things

i think he means that something this

large and this deep

yeah the odds are terrible it costs a

ton of money

but it's not impossible sir if we get

full cooperation from the navy

which i think is exactly how someone

pitched the final countdown it's

expensive

it's difficult but it's gonna be totally

possible with the full cooperation of

the us navy

we're gonna get so much footage yeah a

lot of in-air refueling for no reason

jim the sandecker character is willing

to work with the president and get his

approval

on pitt's word that this is in fact

doable and

pitt says yeah let's do it i mean this

sounds totally crazy why would we not do

it

later he just by coincidence bumps into

dana that's

seagram's wife girlfriend on a street

corner

and he invites her for a cup of coffee

and she says oh no

sorry i'm meeting with uh with gene he's

like oh

seagram and she's he's like he's not

good enough for you

and she's like okay well i gotta go yeah

this is like the most awkward

conversation

yeah it it felt real only because like

her smiling just felt like

very fortunate i really wanna get out of

here and he's still talking to me

but they part ways here dr seagram and

pitt are trying to roast each other in

an office while they wait for sandecker

to show up

and tell them what the president said

pitt says that

seagram looks like a country club tennis

pro and dr segram says well that makes

us even i wouldn't take you for a pirate

sandecker shows up and he does have the

president's approval so they're in

business

pitt is introduced to captain joe burke

and master chief walker these are

actually friends of his

but they're rounding out the crew of

this mission seagram shows up and asks

burke to get all of the navy's

meteorological info loaded onto the

onboard computer

and burke says oh that's a fine idea and

then after everybody leaves but pitt and

secret he's like hey don't [ __ ] boss

these people around like

he's the captain he's in charge of this

mission you don't get to tell him what

to do

and then pitt does a presentation

for the heads of the navy to discuss how

they're even going to go about finding

the ship in the first place

because like we said before it wasn't

discovered until 1985

so they're using the last radio position

combined with the

carpathia and mount temple reported

rescue locations

which none of them match up but they

form a triangle that they're going to

start from the center of and sort of

spiral out

they're going to be piloting

submersibles in concentric circles from

the center of this triangle

this is all top secret as russia would

love to intercept the mission

nobody's allowed to even the people that

are participating in the mission aren't

allowed

to know except for the the highest up

people yeah they they know that they're

looking for metal

that's what all they they're allowed to

know i feel like

if you are in the navy and not

an idiot you and you're in this

particular

area of the ocean looking for something

on the bottom of the ocean

you could have figured this out well you

could certainly figure out that they're

probably looking for a ship

yeah um why the navy wouldn't be

involved in searching for the titanic

would i guess would be my question

yeah i would have assumed that it was

like a nuclear sub like what actually

happened in 85 when they discovered it

was that they were looking for bombs

that we had

that had been lost based on these

predictions the ship could be anywhere

inside of a two mile wide triangle

i would be surprised that you would say

that it's

within a two mile wide triangle because

the angle at which it could have gone

down it could have traveled much further

than from the spot at which it was last

seen by another ship or

heard from where it went down yeah it

depends on how straight down it would

have gone yeah

yeah i mean it could have drifted at an

angle and gone much further than the two

miles

and from what we know about the titanic

now is that the two pieces the two

halves are

not next to each other right they

collect

the official blueprints of the actual

titanic as well as

a crew list and they're able to figure

out that bigelow who was a junior third

officer in charge of cargo on the

titanic

is still alive and might have some

information as to where the shipment

that they're looking for was stored on

the ship

so pitt goes to meet with him somehow

this old man remembers specifically that

it was cargo hold number nine

and the d deck on the port side and that

he actually interacted with the man who

loaded it

who had a great big bushy beard the

bearded man

as the ship was sinking pointed a gun at

bigelow and demanded to be led to the

hold and stayed in the vault muttering

thank god for south speed to himself

while the ship was going down pitt and

bigelow head back to his local bar

the woman at the bartender here says

what are you at

the whiskey or a nice point of dinner

and bigelow's flirting with

the bartender a bit when he introduces

his retired friend

pit and she's like oh you're pretty

young to be retired hands off him sarah

uh they head upstairs this one's mine

i found him fair and square he said

you're a navy man right they head

upstairs to his apartment to see his

titanic collection

and uh he's got a little model of the

ship a couple little trinkets here and

there

and then a big pennant that he took off

of the ship as it was sinking

but he's describing the ship as he's

mourning it and he says

standing as tall as one of your

skyscrapers it's like

no no no it wasn't well i guess if you

stood at the

end at the time maybe it was well he's

talking he's talking about

the height of the ship in the water i

think oh yeah i would i would i thought

like

if you like took the ship and then stood

it up right yeah before it went down it

was as tall as the skyscraper

but uh yeah he's he's mourning the loss

of the ship and obviously all the souls

on board

and then he takes the pennant down from

the frame and

he folds it up and hands it to pitt and

he says if you managed to raise that

ship

would you do me the favor of reattaching

this pennant

and we cut to a pack of

massive navy ships at sea and they send

out submersibles to begin the search

at around ten thousand feet with sonar

and they haven't had any luck so far

the men in the submersible are

complaining about searching for

something

when they don't even know what it is but

these submersibles are built and

operated by pneuma

which stands for national underwater and

marine agency which started as a

fictional agency exclusive to clive

kessler's novels

but was officially founded in 1979

alongside the shooting of this film

and is dedicated to the preservation of

maritime heritage

through the discovery archaeological

survey and conservation of shipwreck

artifacts

in 1999 pneumo was actually responsible

for the discovery of the rms carpathia

which famously came to the aid of the

titanic as it sank in 1912.

but it sank as well uh it sank in a war

later

but uh it's neat that clive kessler

formed the organization that found the

carpathia when

his books are about famous shipwrecks

yeah i guess because sahara was about a

shipwreck too even though

the whole series is is about this

they're all maritime

like sunken ship mystery stuff is this

isn't this the same agency that then

found

um the merrimack noma

yeah i don't know i feel like that

happened in the 80s too

that's possible was it the merrimack or

the monitor that they found

i always get them confused those iron

clads

yeah it made it in the monitor because i

think that they raised the gun they

actually brought the gun turret back up

the merrimack was found in september

1982

by numa there you go okay there you go

the monitor was the monitor it was found

right

yeah okay it looks like that was earlier

no monitor found

okay the monitor was found in 73 so yeah

so but numa did find the merrimack

yeah uh as everyone heads back to the

ships at night burke suggests holding a

briefing

to inform the men what they're actually

looking for to boost morale

because they'll probably get really

excited a russian ship floats by

a marine research vessel but they don't

know what the americans are up to yet

they're just very curious and they've

decided to set up shop and keep an eye

on them

right because it's international water

so that the us navy can't tell them to

go away yeah um which is funny because

it's the second movie this year where a

russian boat is just like i'm just gonna

float around you guys because you can't

do anything about it

suddenly the submersible i think this is

codenamed starfish

springs a leak and begins descending

uncontrolled because of electrical

problems

and the flooding inside of the capsule

and they take too long to drop the

weights attached to the submersible and

it implodes violently

yeah in full view of the other

submersible vessel who then requests

permission to surface

teams of divers do experiments with a

miniature titanic

and i wondered if suddenly the budget

didn't get cut a lot because you just

see this really bad

titanic boat getting just floating

around in the water and you're like what

the hell is this now

but they're doing experiments seagram

meets with pitt again

to announce that by mistake they were

projecting the titanic's location based

on

a full replica forgetting that one of

the smokestacks had reportedly broken

off before it went

under and they will now have to move the

search tens of miles to the new position

where the boat would have landed with

this broken smoke stack which

which i was like okay so now we're gonna

go move to this new position

cut two it's like they're already there

yeah and they're already searching

around in that area it's like

i was like what are we we're here

already we're just trying to space this

out and you're just

just wasting time but i think it also

just proves the fact that their original

theory of

well if it's in the middle of this

triangle of known position it couldn't

have possibly

like drifted at an angle further away

nope that's exactly what it is it's

definitely going to be right here

the other submersible turtle finds

something in the rocks on the ocean

floor

and they grab it with their general

electric robot arms

it looks like some kind of horn when

they get it up they clean it

and it's beautiful i'm impressed with

the spit shine they're able to put on a

musical instrument horn i'm just going

to specify

yeah it's not a it's not a an antler at

the bottom of the ocean

that would be great how did the deer get

here but apparently this horn has an

inscription

uh for graham farley who was a member of

the band on the titanic

and someone says that if the horn looks

this good then the ship must be in great

condition

because of the temperature of the water

and the fact that it's so far

below the surface that there shouldn't

be a lot of

organic material that would break it

down

the russians have somehow put together

that the titanic search is going on

and the dead russian and svardlov had

something to do with this

and they're on the hunt for their

byzanium the sea cliff another

submersible seems to have found

something big with their metal detector

and pit is in a second submersible on

approach when they find a smoke

stack and follow it to a massive drop

off pit takes his submersible the deep

quest into the hole

and they find something huge the ship is

so big that they literally break their

metal detector which doesn't seem

possible

[Music]

unless they're turning this thing off

every time they head back to the navy

ships like

this does this happen every time you

pull in um

but they have found the titanic and they

spend a few minutes just sort of

floating around it in awe

while this is going on uh on the surface

vessel

they keep getting these weird reports of

static on a radio frequency yeah like

intermittent static that occurs like

every night at a certain time and

they're trying to track that down

yeah and we get a shot of a mysterious

stranger on the deck of the ship with

some kind of

device yeah uh we cut to a party

happening at the kremlin maybe

some russian government building and

elia baskin and his boss

walk outside to speak elya confirms that

the titanic has been discovered

and his boss tells him to leak the

titanic and byzanium stories to the

press

in america specifically and to mention

admiral sandecker

a news report on television reports the

entire story but i feel like they might

have checked with government officials

before

they announced that byzanium was

discovered and that it's a part of this

defense program

operation because they probably wouldn't

want to breach national security

information

wow i also feel like this whole

storyline of the russians being like

okay let's leak it to the news

and then there's a news story and then

they have to announce what's actually

happening like they have to you know the

government has to be accountable for it

is totally pointless yeah it totally

defeats the purpose of having them all

because now they're just admitting to

everything on tv well nothing

happens because of it yeah like there's

no like complaints sequences

there's no complaint about oversight or

there's no group

protesting no the titanic should be left

down there complains

yeah there's no reason why anybody cares

that this happened

but seagram goes to meet with his wife

does he get on a plane and fly all the

way back

new york he he's suddenly in her office

upset

that she leaked a story that and she

didn't even leak a story she just

reported a story that was leaked to her

right which because he has told her

nothing she had no idea was connected to

him in any way shape or form right

but he got on a plane and he flew back

to america from this boat

where they just found the titanic today

um

which seems even more suspicious if

you're trying to claim that this

story wasn't leaked by you yeah by

immediately flying

to your girlfriend who's a reporter yeah

but he's like oh now they're gonna think

i leaked it to you and it's like

okay i don't care yeah you didn't then

also

nothing comes from that either well i

also think it's sort of crappy of her to

say

so what if they think you did because

the so what if you think you did

is i'm gonna get fired and never work

for the military again

that's kind of a big deal because that's

my job yeah but like

if they can't prove that he did it they

can't fire him for it but still

i you wouldn't you wouldn't get work

again if they thought you did it that's

that's

possibly true he demands to find out who

leaked her the story but she's obviously

not going to say anything because she's

a professional

and seagram assumes that pitt told her

because she admitted that they knew each

other

and this is when she just blows up at

him and admits that not only do i know

who dirk pitt is

but i lived with him for two years and i

was crazy about him and he says

if you're so damn crazy about him why

didn't you stay with him and she says

because i was stupid

and then he flips out and just turns

around and walks away

and she's chasing after him because she

realized she realizes she said something

extremely hurtful

but uh she she can't get him to turn

around

later at a press conference sandecker

explains how they plan to patch the hull

of the titanic with metal plates and

then pump the ship full of

syntactic foam and then attach tanks

filled with

high pressure hydrazine gas to the

outside and then

launch explosives yeah cause like that

part makes the least sense to me yeah

there's a lot of thought put into this i

think that was necessary yeah you gotta

rock it loose from the silt that it

settled into yeah i think that makes

sense

it makes sense but also underwater

explosions

there's just very crippling ships but

they set all these explosive charges

they're going to be

in the ocean floor to jar it loose from

the ground and then

someone says if you can raise the

titanic what will you do next then he

says

then we will hold another press

conference and then he turns and he

starts to leave

on his way to the limo he's getting the

the harder to answer questions

uh from reporters focusing on the

byzantium and its capability as a weapon

potentially

but he's not answering these questions

pit burke and emma

walsh listen to radio interference that

they've been dealing with

and are able to determine that this is

code possibly something being sent from

their own ship

likely to the russian ship nearby

sandecker shows up and explains that

they figured out who their mole is there

was a guy whose wife was

from north vietnam i think yeah but she

they claimed that she was

japanese on on his uh official record

and he met her as a pow and that they

have connections to russian intelligence

and we never see this guy and we never

see any consequences we never deal with

the story at all i mean

there is sort of consequences and so

much as russia knows exactly what's

happening all the time but

there is no resolution to there being

consequences for him right that they

figured this out

yeah i suppose it means that the

russians are no longer giving them

information

yeah see like that but they don't they

don't need it anymore because now they

have all the information from television

they start lowering the hydrazine tanks

to the titanic and one gets hung up on a

smoke stack

deep quest grabs it with a robotic arm

to reposition it but the netting that

they used to parachute these things down

is still caught on the stack as they

pull it away and it tips backward and

pins deep quest to the ocean floor the

guy

immediately tries to run the engines at

full thrust to get out from under it

but they can't budge and the instrument

panel indicates an electrical fire and

now battery acid is leaking

out of their equipment and it's smoking

in the capsule so it's

probably some kind of deadly gas from

the battery yeah yeah

and so they all throw on masks and they

have to conserve their energy and

breathing because they're

they're running out of electricity well

i think it doesn't pin them against the

floor of the

sea it pins them against the ship yeah

they're on their own they're on the ship

and and he they basically get stuck in

between the tank and a skylight oh okay

i think there was just so much silt on

the deck that i thought it was actually

there yeah but part of the problem is

that they're actually

like wedged in like a skylight which you

know was surrounding them

yeah partially but they can't give the

submersible unstuck with

the other submersibles and they only

have about six hours of air

so without any other options uh pitt

suggests that they just move forward

raising the ship now

but they're two weeks away from their

target date right

so this project yeah so the next step

would be

just double time adding all of the rest

of the tanks and planting the explosives

now pit is suggesting to double all the

explosive charges to raise the ship

ahead of schedule

and they plant them as quick as they can

we get these cool shots of

robots fist bumping all the bombs yeah

and uh

starting activating them i think it's

crazy to think that you could

complete two weeks worth of work in

under six hours i could at my job

they activate the hydrazine generators

to inflate the tanks around the ship

and the charges start going off one at a

time for some reason instead of all at

once i feel like it would have made

more sense if they all went off at the

exact same time i can't tell if they're

going off all at once

or if we're just no they staggered them

they staggered him because they

the idea was to get the ship to rock but

again

you'd want to rock from side to side not

like the bow left the bow right you

wanted like the whole ship to go left

and right yeah so it seems like they

should have detonated all the right side

and then all the left side

yeah well i think that they wanted to

just create general vibrations to sort

of

liquefy the sand that it was sitting in

yeah but it doesn't look like the

titanic's going anywhere

until a couple of charges go off late

and just

barely manage to jostle the ship loose

enough that it starts its ascent

um i get i got really frustrated at

the constant redrawing of the titanic

simulation yeah it's like just show the

amount

of feet that it is down and when that

number changes we'll know if it's coming

up

you don't need to go through this

redrawing of the ship every single time

but the titanic then surfaces or a

decent miniature of the titanic is

surfacing i believe this is the the

50-foot

10-ton scale model that they built

so interesting about that is that that's

actually bigger than james cameron's

model right but the difference is that

this one was made to look like it had

been set on the bottom of the ocean so

you could fudge things on it

and excuse it a way that oh it's just

damage damage damage

yeah where james cameron's uh 45 foot

had to look like it was brand new

yeah that's interesting but it's got

you know the white foam of the water

splashing over the top of it in super

slow-mo

the crew on the navy ship are cheering

as the titanic settles at the ocean

surface

and water's just gushing out of every

porthole

i think aesthetically they did a really

good job this this moment in the film

makes the whole thing worth it because

you're just like this really feels like

you brought this ship up

yeah it's a cool moment yeah the and

because the model is so large

it feels a little bit more real than if

you had something that was only like 10

feet

long but still too small yeah it still

feels weird though

a little bit a little bit i i attributed

that more to the stop mo or

the slow motion then yeah maybe than the

water itself

but sandecker's worried about deep quest

because it's not on the deck of the ship

uh as it rises but then suddenly it

surfaces out in the water

and the mission is a complete success

short a few

imploded guys we pan across the deck of

the titanic

and there's like a weird mini

animatronic man

did you see this um i didn't see it but

i read about it

and i didn't read about it i read about

it and i was looking for it and i still

didn't see it

well we'll pull it up and i'll show it

to you backed it up a couple times like

what

is there supposed to be a guy on there

yeah there's a there's a tiny man on the

ship just like

leaning forward and back like one of

those drinking birds it's like what the

[ __ ] is that supposed to be because it's

clearly an animatronic

but there's not even supposed to be

anybody on the boat yet so i don't know

what it was supposed to be

um what did you read about it um i can't

remember where i read it because i was

just doing some research and they they

said that that the special effects guys

did some kind of like goof

where they put something on the ship

that wasn't supposed to be there yeah

like a dude

yeah it's like one of those things like

where you like the

the c-3po and r2d2 hieroglyphics

and razer's lost ark or something like

that you know that bothers me less than

this though

well yeah honestly this looks like a tin

toy that somebody

like put on it that was wound up and

just let to go

it would bother me less if it was harder

to see but it like kind of stands out in

the shot a little bit

um well yeah it's the only thing moving

aside from water

a helicopter drops supplies and a few

men on the deck of the titanic

pit explores the interior of the

resurrected ship toward the grand

staircase that we know so well from

james cameron's film

suddenly the deck of the titanic is

overflowing with men who are cleaning

and

drying and removing all that foam pit

moves to the bow and reattaches the

pennant for ol what's his name

and i believe it's the white star line

flag

yeah they start to attach a tug boat but

it gets a distress call well the

military ship gets a disgrace goal

oh right so they basically leave all

these guys on the titanic in the middle

of the ocean yeah with just these

tugboats

and it's like i have so many problems

with everything that they're doing it's

like i get it

like they they made a point of saying

like oh the ship's probably in in better

condition than you expect because of the

temperatures and things like that but

like

i would still find a better hold for

those tugboats to grab than this rusted

old pole most of that post was missing i

don't know why they put the rope on that

but that's what they're gonna tug it by

yeah but at this point i was like

okay cool we we raised the titanic

this movie's gotta be over right and

there's like another

half an hour left but uh as the ship is

leaving they said well we can't ignore a

distress call

and pit says we have a force 12 storm

russians

and a famously shitty boat we're in

distress like this is the definition of

distress yeah i like the

the he says we're on a ship never

learned how to do anything but sync

that's distress but then they get uh

communication from the russians

who are offering a hand in case the

weather gets bad and the titanic sinks

again

this is where everything gets super

weird for me i think that i was really

good with this movie up until this point

this is where the writing just kind of

loses it they want to send over their

captain prevlov

that's ellia's boss from earlier and

prevlov offers to

take them aboard his own ship and

they're like okay well then what happens

to the titanic and he's like well we'll

just salvage it and take it apart it's

like oh yeah we spent millions of

dollars to come out here and raise the

titanic from the bottom of the ocean

so you could just strip it for parts no

we're not going to do that

and he says well we know about the

byzanium it's like yes so does everybody

who's on the [ __ ] television

it's not a surprise that you know that

and he said well we know it was stolen

from this russian mine

and my boat over there actually has

torpedoes

it just looks like a research vessel and

it's gonna fire on the titanic in eight

minutes unless they agree to this offer

it's like really you're gonna blow up

the titanic and this captain

and just sink them all to them out of

the ocean just so that you can lose the

byzanium over again

they basically want to arm themselves

with the byzantium because they think

it's a weapon

even though this team is trying to use

it for defensive purposes

and sandecker and pitt admit that they

were only pretending to need help

because they knew that this was going to

happen and that the russians would

extend this offer

and so they call on the radio to bring

out the surprise package

which consists of a full power nuclear

submarine and air force jets that are

just

at the ready waiting for the russians to

make it yeah so if there are jets that

means that there's an

aircraft carrier uh how would the

russians

not know about an aircraft carrier they

would yeah

yeah um but all you know i can see them

not knowing about the submarine

but maybe but the the aircraft carrier

is a definite thing

but also what you just went through all

that complaining about like we need that

ship because we're gonna be left alone

here

it's like but if you knew you had a

submarine in an aircraft carrier who are

you putting it on for

yeah they were literally just saying

that in case the mole was still around

them

to message the russians and say maybe

hey they're desperate now they need help

and they're here on the titanic

i thought we found that guy i think they

did but i don't know that they removed

him right away

maybe they were utilizing him at that

point since they knew who it was that's

what i thought the surprise package was

going to be

i thought you bring out the surprise

package it's going to be their mole and

their moles already told them everything

and they're like hey here's this guy we

found out he's your mole and he's like

what i'm not and i just shoot him in the

face in front of the russian guy

his blood splatters across his now it's

your turn but it also just seems like a

lot of unnecessary

theatrics like why even let the guy come

on board like just be like

we got a sub here you could leave us

alone bye

yeah or just have the sub stay on the

surface yeah if you're gonna reveal it

anyway circle you the whole time

yeah yeah like just don't go through

that they just wanted a gotcha moment

against russia

this is definitely part of the rewrite

to make the navy happy to be like

let's have one part where a russian

shits his pants on the titanic

they were like okay here's that part so

the tugboats finish

attaching and they tow the titanic to

its destination in new york

he says the titanic just arrived

and the titanic sails into new york

under brooklyn bridge for some reason

uh i don't know new york but it seems

like they're going under brooklyn bridge

which

doesn't seem like it would be necessary

i don't think it would be necessary to

take it that deep into new york city

yeah

like there are plenty of of ports

on you know the newport news virginia

like i mean the places where they build

ships and have dry docks that's why

that's where you would take it yeah with

the equipment in new york they have what

they need to bust into that hold and get

out

all that precious sweet byzanium inside

the safe

they find arthur brewster's corpse

defending the payload he sunk with the

titanic

and they open a box to find that it's

full of gravel and then they open the

rest of the boxes

and they're all full of gravel and the

geiger counter is getting zero registry

on this

which to me instantly says this geiger

counter is broken

yeah because even if you are in just a

normal

outdoor area you are going to get

radiation once or twice because there's

just

it's all around us you can't stop it but

yeah

well wouldn't they have been able to

point it at the hold

before and gotten some kind of click if

there had been byzanium in this thing

or would this thing have actually kept

all the radiation inside well i

what i thought the joke was going to be

was like what jesse was saying earlier

was this like

yeah this stuff had a half-life of about

10 minutes yeah

and it's just they didn't know it

because they had so much of it

yeah um i thought that that was gonna be

the twist

but they head back up above deck and

sandecker says

well you know maybe it's a blessing

because if we'd found the byzanium it's

entirely possible the us government

would have used it for a weapon

instead of for defense and then he said

well you said the president was totally

on board with this defense program

he said yeah but he's not the president

for life he's the president for a term

and the next president could throw it

all out and start over and right now

there's already a think tank

working uh working up a byzanium bomb

and if they really were thinking this

way

like they had to have thought of this

before yeah i mean clearly sam decker

did

why did we why did we do this at all

yeah and that's exactly what seagram's

point is

he's like wait if you had even remotely

considered that was a possibility why

would you have agreed to any of this

mission because i wouldn't have

if i knew i was helping make the next

like uh you know

massive uh what should i call it

well i uh i mean i know we still got one

more thing about

the one button for the movie here but i

feel like

at this point they have to because they

got the

russian soldier got shot near that mine

they're gonna find the mine they're

gonna find out that the american the

americans were mining

they're gonna figure out what they mined

and they're gonna they're gonna put the

pieces together and figure out that that

stuff's on the titanic

and they're gonna start looking for the

titanic but sandecker knew that before

he sent a guy

to svardlov to go to the mine in the

first place that's true

so obviously they didn't know this mine

was there because

everything was left in it yeah so this

does have an interesting like

uh inception question like

when did they know that there was

byzanium

on svardlov yeah when did seagram or

sandecker who discovered the

byzantium they were in the first place

yeah well but well we know that that was

brewster

but but that all that information had

been lost

so how did at what point did seagram

because seagram didn't know anything

about brewster

or or the us military being involved is

that that first person

yeah who set that first person there and

why how do they know that's where the

place was to send him

also there's definitely 200 ounces left

in that mine for russia to build a

weapon

there was a half ton there's at least a

little left yeah

um it's not like there was exactly a

half ton like god like measured it out

and cut it flat

he was like all right that's a half ton

i'm going to tuck this in the edge of

the cup and

pour that in for sure for sure there's

more and there's already a team of

russians digging it up to make a bomb

and sand decker says well i i decided to

go through with it anyway because i'd

rather we had the bomb

than them if that was what our

governments were going to decide to do

with it yeah

and seagram tells pitt that sandecker's

an [ __ ] for doing this

and he doesn't understand either of them

and pit's like well hold on

like you don't understand him that's not

that's not that's never been my angle on

this

but are you saying right now that if you

knew where the stuff was that

you wouldn't tell the government and you

would be okay with just leaving it where

it was and he said that's exactly what

i'm saying

and so then he kind of makes him prove

it because he figured out this postcard

that he found in brewster's papers

has a photo of a cemetery and south be

and so when people kept saying thank god

for south be they realized that's not a

person that's a place

so they go there together just pit and

seagram to this cemetery

and south be and they find a headstone

for hobart who we know is not buried

here

because he's buried on svardlov or

probably dug up already by russians

and the geiger counter here is off the

charts yeah when they pointed at the

grave so everyone's just dying

yeah everyone's been dying and this

graveyard is massive and i was like

are they dying because there's just so

much radiation here now

yeah oh this poor town also pit

and seagram are now dead they're they

are walking dead

yeah um yeah their their film badges are

black

yeah and uh they these two

like lowly cemetery employees bring out

shovels and they're like all right you

want to dig this guy up

like cool like we don't have a lot to do

we just let people

just come and dig people up occasionally

also like i i know it's kind of like a

backtrack moment but

when again this stuff is seven times

more powerful than uranium and they

they open up the vault that it's

contained and not wearing any kind of

protective gear

and it's wooden crates wooden crates and

they just start handling it's like it's

like the guys in chernobyl picking up

the graphite rocks yeah

and going because there's rocks hugging

the elephant foot

just like oh this thing's smooth it's so

warm

i was like you guys are idiots

but uh pitt says when they ask all right

so you want us to dig up this corpse and

just hand it to you for some reason

and he's he's like well why don't you

ask this guy if we're gonna take up the

body

and he's like no we're not going to do

that and they leave the byzantium there

and contaminate the groundwater yeah to

kill everyone in this small town of

south b

and uh and then we replay the whole

surfacing of the titanic under the

credits

and that's the end of our film they're

killing south bee

with radio kills slowly killing you know

also again

the mining in 1910 would have been

dangerous

and also maybe that's why only brewster

survived to the titanic

because everyone else was just slowly

dying of cancer as their teeth are all

falling out yeah

and see that's the thing another thing

is

i don't know what practical use

uranium had in 1900 let alone

something that's seven times more

powerful than you we need a half ton of

this

glowing deadly rock so that we can make

watches out of it

because they knew i mean yeah exactly i

mean like they knew

uranium was dangerous and uh you know

and they did use radium in

in things like watches and clocks yeah

uh because it glowed

but this stuff is way more powerful the

geiger counter really hadn't been

invented yet

so how do they know anything about this

material

yeah these guys should have had that's

why they put it in wooden crates

stuck it on a boat yeah maybe that's the

reason that titanic said see that's

right

that's what i was kind of hoping like it

had like it had weakened the metal

somehow

oh my god they caused the sun the

sinking of the titanic

our director here was jerry jameson he

directed airport 77 but mostly tv stuff

big packs of murder she wrote dr quinn

walker texas ranger and this movie which

felt

very tv movie yes it did uh writer adam

kennedy wrote

domino principle for stanley kramer and

he was

stanley kramer obviously was this film's

original director the adaptation by eric

hughes

he also wrote against all odds and white

knights

the novel here was by clive kessler he's

the author of 25 books in the dirk pitt

series

of which raised the titanic is three or

four because

the first book written was published

after raise the titanic

so now it's the fourth in the series but

raise the titanic was the third one to

come out sahara

is number 11 and in 2005's adaptation of

sahara

the jason robards role of admiral

sandecker is played by william h macy

richard jordan's role of dirk pitt is

played by matthew mcconaughey

and m emmett walsh's al jordino

character is played by steve zahn

they changed the character's name to

vinnie walker in the film because in an

early draft of the script

the character was killed off and they

didn't want to waste a popular character

from the book series

uh i think it would have been funnier if

emma walsh had come back to reprise his

role yeah that would have been great

um i don't think he would he could pull

off what steve zahn does in sahara but

uh we have goofy faces yeah he could do

that

that's true walsh is the master of goofy

face

and we also have clive kessler cameos in

the film as one of the reporters

harassing

sandecker on his way to the car jason

robards was admiral james

sandecker we reviewed him in ballot of

cable hogue

for a patreon exclusive episode and he's

also in once upon a time in the west

all the president's men parenthood i

think magnolia was

one of if not his last movie yeah and a

thousand clowns is a personal favorite

quick change quick change there you go

richard jordan was dirk pitt

he was jeffrey pelt in hunt for red

october i

was looking up the cast while i was

watching the movie yeah and i

got confused with whose name i had read

last and i read that someone

was in red october and i was

certain that it was seagram i was wrong

but because seagram has that kind of

more country accent

and that and that jawline is like yeah

that's the guy from around october and

then i was like

oh wait dirk pitt was the guy from red

october

is it the same guy that you were

thinking of yeah it was the same guy i

was thinking of

but i felt that the other actor looked

more like he would look like younger

than this guy well he's probably clean

shaven right correct

yeah he also played duncan idaho and

dune he's francis and logan's run

he was originally cast to play dr

nichols the main antagonist of the

fugitive film

even getting as far as shooting some

scenes with harrison ford before a

diagnosis of brain cancer forced him to

withdraw from the role

and he passed away three weeks after the

film's release anne archer was dana

archibald

we had her earlier this year in hero at

large as jay marsh

she's also beth gallagher in fatal

attraction the the wife not the mistress

she was the wife of jack ryan in a

couple movies those are the harrison

ford ones i think

and she's the mother of d and dennis on

always sunny in philadelphia

alec guinness was john bigelow he's

obi-wan he's the blind butler and murder

by death

and he plays yev grav in dr zhivago

now you said that there was another

scene

or we we believe that there was another

scene that that had a button with him

see i thought for sure he was going to

be involved with something

yeah with this like where he kept

kind of looking off ominously and i was

like is he mourning

or is he trying to hide the fact that he

knows something yeah

like you just walk up at the cemetery at

the end and be like oh you found it

yeah exactly that's what i'm i was like

i was expecting him to have known

something

and didn't want to say but they just

leave it at

he was a guy that worked on the titanic

and was good at his job

i'm also confused as to how he could

have

he could be alive and be have been

working on the titanic

like this was like almost 70 years later

and i mean presumably he was maybe 20

when he was working on the titanic

so he'd be in his late 80s yeah and i

just like he does not look like he's in

his late 80s well he's not he was he was

negative two years old when the titanic

sank technically

yeah but you know you could tack 20

years on to him and

it would be believable if he was like a

late teenager i don't think it was

believable who knows

i think i think you needed a much more

frail man playing that part

it's hard in 2020 to judge what's a

believable titanic survivor

in 1980 because it's it was a different

time and also the movie

was originally going to be shooting in

76 probably when he was cast

well i think i think in 1996 we had a

more believable

uh titanic survivor you need to know how

old was she she was supposed to be a

hundred and some years old but how old

was the actress

oh well when was she born okay because

the last person that

was alive on the titanic that passed

away the last survivor to pass away it

was in the last 10 years

yeah but it's probably a kid yeah but a

kid can work in the

shipping department a kid can lots of

kids did lots of work in those days

so i could i could i could easily see

him being a 13 or 14 year old

like i suppose that's like worker

old rose old rose was born in

1910 so she was two

yeah so leonardo dicaprio had sex with a

two-year-old

inappropriate no but i guess what you're

saying is in theory he is actually just

a few years

he's he's only four years younger he's

four years younger than old rose was

yeah in a movie that was 16 years later

yeah yes

all right touche well they would stay

the same age relative to each other

he will always be four years younger

than her

what their birth dates don't change as

they age

emmett walsh was master chief i'm just

going to leave it at that no he's master

chief vinnie walker

[Laughter]

uh he was private detective visser

and why did i just write private

detective visser in

mm

his more menacing role he's private

detective visser

in blood simple he plays bryant in blade

runner he's harv

and critters i think that's the sheriff

i think he dies in a

easter bunny costume unless yeah i

believe that's him

uh he's dr dolan and fletch

babar is that with two b's or one b

one b b

we had him earlier this year in

brubacher as the contractor guy that was

trying to cheat them out of money

and i also just saw him in knives out as

mr prufrock he's the guy who had a video

recording of

the nurse leaving the property jd cannon

was captain joe burke

he was society red and cool hand luke he

was the new york d.a in death wish 2 and

he played phil chalk in scorpio

norman barthold was admiral kemper he

was a knight in westworld

he was ohio tolls in close encounters

and he plays the president in capricorn

one

david selby who played dr seagram was in

312 episodes of dark shadows

that's about it not a whole lot there

and he's the one who

got the razzie nomination for this film

elijah baskin was marganine uh he plays

mr ditkovich in spider-man's two and

three that's spider-man's landlord

in 2010 the year we make contact he's

one of the cosmonauts

he's in three macgyver episodes two of

the original series and one of the

reboot

he also plays cosmonaut dimitri in

transformers dark of the moon

we had dirk blocker in here as merker

i'm guessing he's one of the guys

in one of the submersibles because we

have several teams of guys in the

submersible well

merker is supposed to i believe the

animal

the mole oh okay but i don't know when

we ever see when we ever see him

maybe that's part of the 12 minutes that

got cut uh he plays hitchcock currently

on brooklyn nine-nine

he's mullins in prince of darkness and

he was blaylack in midnight madness the

leader of the green team

which i think was called the meat

machine or something like that

michael c gwynne was bohannon he plays

dr burke

and the macgyver pilot charles mccauley

was general dale busby

he's the president in splash mark l

taylor is spence this is definitely one

of the guys in the submersibles

he was a member of the cult in serial

earlier this year

and he'll be back later this year in any

which way you can he is also dr

niles in inner space yeah dawn forester

and honey i shrunk the kids and jerry

manley in arachnophobia

i i definitely remember him from

interspace yeah uh

he i had to really think hard about who

he was and honey i shrunk the kids

but he just plays some guy that uh matt

frew were supposed to go fishing with

oh okay at the beginning when they're

gonna leave the house yeah like he shows

up and he says

i can't go because my kid's something or

other yeah

paul twerp that's how i'm choosing to

pronounce this name t-u-e-r-p-e

twerp paul twerp plays clink

he's richard donner favorite he plays

cops in superman and goonies

he's a mercenary and lethal weapon a

poker player and maverick

and he actually plays a different

character in all four lethal weapon

movies

and he was the stage manager and

scrooged which is also richard donner

michael ensign was lieutenant northacker

yeah saw him in the background of

the submersible that gets crushed

ironically he also dies in james

cameron's titanic film because he plays

guggenheim in that movie

he was the hotel manager in ghostbusters

he was behringer's aide in war games

uh he plays a neighbor in the first

house film and he was in a macgyver

episode called soft touch

and uh we interviewed him for that show

and he was a very nice gentleman

and he had fun stories to tell us from

the ghostbusters set

i enjoyed this film but there really

wasn't much to it

it felt like if they envisioned this as

something to compete with bond

there's there's no stakes they forgot to

build in any sort of like

enemy it's just like man versus nature

and even then it doesn't matter

as we determine at the end of the film

when we're like you know what we don't

even want the byzantium like the whole

point of this movie we don't even want

that stuff

well i think that you know they started

to build that in

with the whole russian plot but they

needed to make it more of a cat and

mouse game

uh going back and forth you know as

opposed to

well the u.s the whole time had control

over

what was happening and that was it

yeah and also to have jason robards just

at the end admit like

oh well there was always a chance that

we would use this to kill a bunch of

innocent people with a bomb again

and then it's like oh well why don't we

don't want to do that it's like no one

else considered that

no one else here thought that that was

even possible oh we found this new

crazy radioactive [ __ ] and it's way more

powerful than our other radioactive [ __ ]

it's like no one's going to use this for

evil right we're just going to build a

shield out of it

it's not vibranium it's radiation and

it's going to kill people

and i don't know i i understand like

that there's

salvage laws and like maritime salvage

laws like you know if you find it

such and such but it seems to me that

they have information about what was on

this ship that had been stolen

and i don't know how much of that got

leaked to the press because it's never

really clear

it'd be like if you found a ship

that had like confirmed stolen some

famous artwork

from a museum the museum would probably

ask you to bring it back

and not not keep it for yourself because

you found it

well it depends on where the ship is

though but also that's generally the

case

now as we're giving things back to all

the countries that we stole them from i

don't think that was necessarily the

mindset in 1980

or even 70 when it was written yeah

that's true belongs any museums that

we're going to

say it belongs in my museum

at my house i have a really great museum

it's got the ark of the covenant and an

alien head

it's pretty good but yeah i i don't

think this was ever going to compete

with the james spawn movie

i think if they'd played the russians up

as more of an enemy

or if they had actually done the whole

because originally was supposed to end

with

the whole last third of the movie was a

hurricane affecting the titanic

yeah where they're left alone it's like

that would have been amazing like

they're battening down the hatches and

trying to keep the titanic afloat a

second time

meanwhile trying to fend off russians

who are trying to board it and steal it

yeah yeah

you have a shootout on the titanic how

awesome would that be

yeah i mean prohibitively expensive sure

but also they already spent a lot of

money on unnecessary things yes i think

they could have

shifted some of it to a cool firefight

on the titanic

but they also screwed up all elements of

mystery that this

thing had so every time there was any

question about what was going on it was

just sort of like

well we got a bunch of information from

a guy we've you know found frozen in the

hole oh we got a bunch of information

off these papers

and or this letter this letter that we

found you know like so they just

keep unraveling this stuff in a way

where they just regurgitate all this

information it's like

there's no real intrigue here yeah and

especially after the news report says

oh there they found the titanic and

byzanium which is this

horrendously radioactive material and

it's like okay now russia knows

everything so why were we worried about

a mole before

if russia knows everything we're doing

and it's all over the news

like none of it matters anymore because

we didn't even try to like fight back

and hide any of it

and the sicilian defense like i kept

waiting for that to be

yeah more like it's like he's like are

you a chess player it's like

oh is this some kind of like thing like

i mean

is is the sicilian defense unbeatable is

that like a

is that a thing about chess i don't know

enough about chess yeah but it would it

would have been nice if it had sort of

come around again and maybe we revealed

something about the sicilian defense at

the end

that we realize why we were wrong in the

first place to have done this or

something

but it's not clear enough why dirk pitt

and seagram went along with this whole

mission

never having even considered that this

could be used as a weapon

and then now that they realize that

they're like oh well then never mind

let's just go home because none of this

matters and it's like

no it's just a historical find the ship

doesn't matter well okay so all of that

being said

i really enjoy the film you know i think

that i actually enjoyed it a lot more

before we started thinking too hard

about it and i think that that's the way

you need to watch this movie

just don't think too hard about it enjoy

the submersible footage and you know the

the silliness of the whole concept of

what they're doing

it's not don't take it too seriously and

you'll probably like this film

and i have to say not only did

they really get right a lot of what

happened

aside from the fact that the ship was

split in two um

and separated into two places before it

hit the

ocean floor a lot of what they they

envisioned as far as the submersible

process

and what it would look like down there

was weirdly accurate

and i even watched the ghosts of the

abyss documentary

just as a refresher because i hadn't

seen in a long time and so much of the

footage just looks exactly like footage

from that movie

of them getting these spotlights on the

ship under the water i just think they

did a really good job

they did a really good job of trying to

portray this as realistically as

possible

and i feel like their attention was so

focused on realistically portraying the

retrieval of the ship

that they didn't care as much about the

story

whereas like with the movie the martian

i think there's a really good balance of

the tension of

is he gonna get off of this planet with

the technology

of how everything's gonna work with his

limited equipment

but in this movie i'm never worried

about if they're gonna survive

yeah i mean that's the thing is like

when the

submersible got stuck and they had to

suddenly change their plan and bring it

up

i suppose we're supposed to care because

seagram's on there

yeah he wasn't supposed to be on there

but he is but we don't really like him

right now so

at this point in the movie it's the

stakes aren't that high for us

but also i feel like they could have

done a better job of mounting the

tension in that scene

where we could have had some back and

forth maybe communication still worked

for a little while and we're hearing how

dire it is from up

top and we watched them up top working

so hard to save these men and they

strategize about how you fit

two weeks worth of work into six hours

because you only have one working

submersible now

to accomplish two weeks worth of work

yeah

it it seems like it seems like what we

needed

was and i would say like this movie

needs to be extended for time

i i needed for i needed them to have

more time

such an advanced submersible would have

some kind of emergency like

oxygen connection like if it gets stuck

they could have another submersible

could like bring an oxygen tank to it

and they could tap into it we've got

that midair refueling

yeah yeah well just something like so we

can we can get them another like

you know four hours gives like may give

us a little bit extra time or something

some i don't know there's something but

if what if they catch the mole

and communication is cut off to the

russian ship and then while they're down

there

just before the launch a russian

submersible shows up

and starts [ __ ] with them yeah

something

i just i needed more of a threat from

russia because

what russia here is just like give us

your ship

yeah give us a ship we got a gun and

then they're like yeah we have guns too

and he's like oh never mind

bye and he leaves and it's so

it's overly simplified the whole stand

off that thing in that moment though i

did want him to take out like the

cyanide pill and just like chomp it down

on the sides like

like russia's not gonna let him back on

his [ __ ] he failed his mission

can i be american mountain no

oh no that was a real tooth hold on ah

oh god

you have dentists in america uh like

yeah like a russian submersible chase

and and you could really like tap into

that too and with the implosion stuff

like

you can only go so deep chasing you like

and the russians don't have the the

technology to go that deep and

but they they still try to chase him

down so it's like the iron man scene

again

yeah but he's he's tricking them into

exploding or imploding their own ship

right that's good i like it we've

written a better uh

more exciting raise the titanic and we

only doubled the budget

oh man do you know how expensive it'd be

to redo this movie

it would be so much cheaper to do now

well but you make but you make

three billion dollars yeah james cameron

did you would

you would do it all cg though and that

wouldn't look good

i think it would look as good as the

ship in this movie

and the stuff at the end looked real bad

when they're pulling the boat into the

new york heart oh yeah that stuff was

terrible

yeah it's like oh we'll just make it

seem like it's really foggy in new york

yeah but only right on top of this ship

everything else is perfect it was taken

in 1912

but i guess that was all footage from uh

the bicentennial in 76

they got all this footage of all these

boats out in the harbor so that's why it

was low quality footage

and probably like well it wasn't that

doesn't explain the footage problem but

it

explains why there's so many boats out

in the harbor because

they were out there to celebrate the

bicentennial and then

they made it oh they're out there to see

the titanic

i mean i thought that was clever you

know like of course if the titanic were

being pulled into new york harbor and i

had a boat

i would be on that if i had a skydo i

would crash into the titanic with it

just like i've made the statement before

i'll make it here on the record if

anyone ever clones a t-rex to adulthood

i will get into its cage somehow and be

eaten by it

you can take that to the bank jess up or

down i'm gonna give it

up even with all its problems i think

that it's uh

it's a fun watch i do think it's a fun

watch

i i no it's a down for me i think

um i i am giving it an up a reluctant up

as well

i find the whole premise of it

fascinating and i probably would have

found it more fascinating in 1980 before

the titanic had been discovered and

before

you know james cameron's movie had blown

up

about it uh and then everyone's talking

titanic yeah

i i feel like there was still a little

bit of intrigue

yeah about the titanic and and even like

the next year which i still haven't

watched i really need to watch this

movie

uh the goliath awaits where they find

a titanic like ship that sank but people

are still living on it and they have

like their own crazy society what year

is that

81. oh man wait what's it called goliath

awaits it's a tv movie oh i was going to

say i don't remember that

yeah it's for anyone it's a two-part tv

movie it's got christopher lee

and uh yeah it's like all about like

these people like living in a

crazy like bioshock society

let's go watch a movie so yeah i feel

like this movie probably inspired some

of those

trends of like underwater movies kind of

coming back for a little while yeah

but um i'll give it an up i wish that

numa had had some part in discovering

the titanic i think that would have been

cool

if kessler had written this book about

raising the titanic and then

it sold so well that he was able to

found an exploration

arm that actually found the titanic but

i think the fact that they found the

carpathia is pretty awesome

on its own um but yeah i i would say

that it's a down just because um i

i do think it takes a really long time

to get where it's going

and uh there's not look at it from the

titanic's perspective

yeah that took the longest to get rid of

it's going but

uh it's just uh i don't think there's

enough there to warrant the time you

wait for it to happen

where does this go on your list jess um

you know it's not

too terribly far down it's still in the

it's amongst the movies that i liked

quite a bit

um i think i i lowered it a little after

our discussion here realizing how many

issues the script really had i put it

it's in 19th place right now for the

year it is

above mad max and below the earthling

okay

uh i i have it uh considerably lower

but but still well above the windows

threshold um i actually have this just

below

galaxina and just above die laughing

which puts it as 39. okay

yeah i mean i guess i should make the

point that my list is basically

the order in which i want to watch these

movies again

and you know just just because

it wasn't a great movie doesn't mean

that it's not an

enjoyable watch i think it's one it's a

spectacle movie yeah right

and i think that that it has a lot going

for it in in terms of that

it does and the sequence of actually

raising the ship is incredible

um but for me it's 57th

it's going just between alligator and

bronco billy

for me which alligator i liked so that's

not super low

bronco billy's probably the first one

where i'm like i wouldn't say liked

but it was okay but um yeah it was all

right

i think that's everything for this one

if you guys have any thoughts you'd like

to share with us we're vintage video pod

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thank you so much for listening and i

hope you'll join us next time when we'll

be discussing

the fiendish plot of dr phu manchu which

imdb describes like so

fu manchu's 168th birthday celebration

is dampened when a hapless flunky

spills foo's age-regressing elixir foo

sends his lackeys

to round-up ingredients for a new batch

of elixir we leave you now with the

trailer

for the fiendish plot of dr fu manchu

one hour after seeing the fiendish plot

of dr manchu

you will want to see it again

[Music]

i love it let's have some fun

peter sellers in the fiendish plot of dr

fu manchu the far east has never been so

far

out rated pg opens friday august 8th

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