Hell and High Water – 1954
The visual effects for this movie were, honestly, a little disappointing. Most of them were just fine, but not all of them. There were a few obvious flaws, things that I’ve seen some of their contemporaries do better. It just doesn’t seem like the filmmakers really stretched themselves. These were all effects that we’ve seen before. There were diving submarines, fuel explosions, gunfire, and torpedoes. There were a few interesting visuals, but for the most part, they seemed to be standard run-of-the-mill effects.
What I liked were the underwater submarines. Clearly, these shots were accomplished using miniature models, but they seemed to be perfectly detailed. There were two different models that were both, according to the plot, of Japanese origin, but they looked distinctly different so the audience could tell them apart. The scene where the good guys rammed the bow of their enemies was pretty cool. They punched a massive hole in the hull that gushed black smoky clouds. The underwater sequences were always murky and dim, which was appropriate, but some of this action was a little difficult to see properly.
And there were several scenes that took place above the surface of the water, in which the actors were performing in front of a blue-screen. You could tell, because you could still see a little outline of discoloration around the actors and the sets. The effect wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. I’ve seen worse. The same could be said of some of the explosions that took place on land. The actors and sets in the fore-ground didn’t seem to belong to the backgrounds. But then there were several shots of men running between patches of real fire. As for the fire effects, there was one shot, in particular, that showed burning liquid fuel flowing down the side of an embankment, and that was pretty cool.
An effect I didn’t particularly care for was when the exterior shots of the sub under the water specifically showed it to be lying at an angle, for example, on the ocean floor. They would then cut to an interior shot, and the camera was tilted, but the actors were either kneeling or standing on a set that was clearly upright and level. When the sub was being rocked back and forth. They showed the heroine lying on her clearly stable bed, rolling back and forth. It was obvious and a little cheesy.
And finally, there was the nuclear explosion that was shown both at the beginning of the film, and at the end. It looked incredibly realistic. No wonder, because my research told me that it was actually real. The explosion footage was obtained from the U.S. government, with one condition. The filmmakers were instructed to eliminate certain spectrum colors from the shots. Apparently, there was a concern that not doing so “could reveal nuclear secrets.” Who knew?