A famously expensive money loser from RKO which made me scratch my head as to how it could have cost so much money. Location shooting maybe, and water - but it may as well have been done in the studio. Old Paramount/Universal south sea movies have better production value; a boat on an ocean pretty much looks like a boat on an ocean.
The dim plot has married couple (why have them married?) Richard Egan and Jane Russell go diving for treasure with their old friend Gilbert Roland and a girl than Roland meets who has a boat, Lori Nelson - plus some random priest. You keep expecting there to be some twist - someone of these to die, or turn traitor, or have a love triangle... but nothing. Everyone kind of gets along.
I expected to at least have plenty of shots of Jane Russell in revealing costumes and plunging cleavage, but she doesn't do much, just wrestles with a Mexican accent. You get more cleavage from Richard Egan, who looks like her strolled off the set of a peplum, and walks around in his shorts a lot, as does Gilbert Roland. Nelson doesn't even get into a bikini that much.
There are some racist villains - some dopey Mexican shark hunters who are like the bandits in The Treasure of Sierra Madre - who are no real threat (get this: the finale ends when the baddies are just paid off instead of being overcome). The goody goody priest feels like something from out of Mara Maru, the underwater footage looks murky and dull, the plot is unexciting. Lovers and Luggers did this much better over twenty years before.
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