Trapped Beneath the Sea (1974) Reviews

• Suspense-phobic

  budikavlan2002-10-23

  A pseudo-documentary treatment of a true incident, this was framed as an inquest into the events. While the dramatization of what happened is fine, and the performances are believable, it is as if someone was afraid making the story exciting would undermine the documentary realism of the piece. This could have been so much more if they had allowed it more suspense.

• fun facts for the subs

  g_boland2010-10-03

  Some interesting facts about the movie. It was indeed about the tragedy of the Johnson Sea Link but not due to a collision. It was the accidental trapping of the Sea Link due to a snap hook that contacted a cable on a wreck. There was no way to cut or disengage the cable during those early days. The sub used to make the movie was the DSRV Diaphus from Texas A&M Univeristy in College Station, TX. A fiberglass shell was used to make it look bigger and added a fake lock out hatch like is on the Johnson Sea Link. The Diaphus can only be entered through the observation tower and typically only holds 2 people and at the most 3, never 4 people and it only has one compartment. The Diaphus could only go to 1,200 ft as opposed to 3,000 ft for the Sea Link. Some employees who operated the sub for TAMU were used in the movie.