THE CITY UNDER THE SEA (1965) ** Even at the end Jacques Tourneur wasn't convinced that color added anything to his film. He still works primarily with shapes and shadows that would have been most evocative in the starkness of black & white (the house on a Cornwall cliff!). His concerns notwithstanding, he apparently thought that a darker hue of aqua was worthy of experimentation, in the nearly interminable underwater scenes but also to great effect early in the night time land shots. Orange he reserves for the interior of Vincent Price's absurd and ancient scuba mask. It's probably enough to say that as usual Tourneur gets stuck with precious little plot and no acting (I wonder if he thought that they might distract from his technique). Price is entertaining on the occasions when he understands that he's going over the top, pontificating profusely within the collapsing ruins of an underwater civilization in his sailor suit, but more often sounds like an unaccomplished Shakespearean desperately trying to make up for the rest of the audition in the final two lines. Hey, are Tab Hunter and Susan Hart nominees for the all-time Mr. and Mrs. Vapid and Vacuous or what? Oh, they would have had the "As the World Turns" set in a dreary tizzy of an uproar. Tourneur's stuff is worthy of admiration, but the most engaging moment is provided by David Tomlinson and his pet chicken.
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