CLASSIC or ANTIQUE: The Frogmen (1951)

                        Have you enjoyed movies about the Navy SEALs?  Do you watch “SEAL Team” on CBS?  You might want to check out the father of the subgenre on YouTube.  “The Frogmen” is a 1951 black and white WWII movie.  Many SEALs have acknowledged that the movie influenced their desire to join the SEALs.  In a recent episode of “SEAL Team”, Sonny mentions that he wanted to be a frogman when growing up.  The movie was directed by Lloyd Bacon.  It was his only war movie.  His helming shows that the movie was not considered to be a major production, and yet it was popular and is still beloved.  The movie is a tribute to the United States Navy Underwater Demolition Teams which conducted reconnaissance and cleared underwater obstacles before amphibious invasions.  Although they participated in D-Day, they were more involved in the Pacific Theater.  Bacon was given a nice cast headed by Richard Widmark.  Widmark made “Halls of Montezuma” the same year.  He starred in several good war movies. 

                        The movie leads with a claim that it is a true story based on various incidents that occurred in the latter part of WWII.  Underwater Demolition Team 4 is chilling on deck of a transport and gets into a tiff with the ship’s crew.  Lt. Commander Lawrence (Widmark) is a by the book disciplinarian who has replaced the popular now deceased previous leader.  He tells the men that they are not special and they should respect their hosts.  In other words, he gets off on the wrong foot from the start.  Chief Flanagan (Andrews) leads the grumbling.  How dare frogmen be treated like sailors!  The dynamic is very similar to “Flying Leathernecks” with Dana Andrews playing the Robert Ryan role.  Speaking of other movies, the ship’s captain (Gary Merrill) plays Davenport (Merrill) to Widmark’s Savage (“12 O’Clock High. The dysfunction is ramped up after Lawrence makes the command decision to leave Flanagan and another survivor of a blown-up boat behind in order to get valuable information back to the ship.  He doesn’t seem very concerned with the dead men because he isn’t.  The whole unit wants to transfer.  Sound familiar?  If your answer is yes (and if it’s no), you know these heroes will stay to win the war and Lawrence will earn respect and become more empathetic.  To get to this resolution, we get scenes involving leaving a welcoming sign on the beach for the Marines, disarming a torpedo that inconveniently penetrates into the sick bay where heartthrob Jeffrey Hunter is laid up, and blowing up a submarine pen.  This rousing finale includes a vicious knife fight underwater.

                        This was the first time I have seen this movie and I have seen hundreds of war movies.  I am pretty ashamed of that, but excited by the fact that after 900 posts there are still good war movies I have not seen yet.  And some of them are on YouTube.  “The Frogmen” is much better than I expected.  It has a very good cast.  Besides the actors I mentioned already, we also get Harvey Lembeck and Robert Wagner.  They are given manly dialogue and put in manly situations.  No one has to bother with a mushy romantic subplot.  In fact, there are no women in the movie.  They do a lot of scuba diving and the underwater cinematography is excellent.  Those scenes are done without music which was a wise move.  It adds to the suspense.  The conflict between Lawrence and his men builds to a grand last mission and a satisfying conclusion.  As far as the “true story” claim, I can see where all of the scenes occurred at one time or another, just not all to the same unit.  The movie does not specify which island they are involved with, but it has to be Okinawa because their previous commander died at Iwo Jima.  The real Underwater Demolition Team 4 did serve in the Pacific and participated in the invasions of the Philippines, Saipan, Guam, and Okinawa.  They did have a boat blown up and they did leave a welcoming sign on a beach on Guam. 

                        If you have seen a lot of war movies (and if you haven’t), you have seen all of this before, except it’s underwater.  Don’t let the familiarity scare you away.  The movie is very entertaining, especially if you are a teenage boy.  You might even go and enlist in the Navy to become a SEAL.  They probably won’t let you in if you haven’t seen it.

GRADE  =  B+