Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

LeonLouisRicci It Seems that MGM was Determined to give Audiences Their Moneys Worth when They Bought a Depression Era Ticket to this WWI War Movie. If You Look for the Kitchen Sink in this don't be Surprised if You find it.The Most Impressive Elements of this Mostly Exciting Entertainment are the Battle Sequences that Play Realistic and Pack Quite a Wallop. There are Air Raids that Almost Destroy a City, Submarine Peril, Machine Gun Battles with Bi-Planes, Destroyers being Destroyed, Death, Poison Gas, and some Undersea Suspense that has become the Staple of Every Submarine Movie to Follow.The Comedy Bits, mostly with Jimmy Durante, are OK but Overdone. But it is the Romantic Subplot that Keeps this from becoming Great Cinema. The Lovers Speeches are Badly Written and Delivered by the Actors even Worse. The Triangle is so Melodramatically put in Place for who knows what Reason, is a Show Stopper and not in a Good Way.The Cast of Walter Huston, Robert Montgomery, and Robert Young, Among Others, do Their Best Work away from the Awful Acting of the Female (Madge Evans) Central to the Overwritten Plot. The Movie is just too Full of too Many Things to be a Coherent Whole. But the Best Parts are Outstanding and Manage to Compensate for all of the Extra Ingredients.Note...Some prints (like the one on TCM) are Re-Release versions and have some dialog clipping to satisfy Hays Code requirements that is abrupt and intrusive at times.

Robert J. Maxwell It's World War I and a US submarine under the command of Walter Huston is battling German destroyers and minelayers in the Atlantic.There's a rather routine romantic plot. Huston's executive officer is Robert Montgomery. He meets and falls in love with Huston's daughter, Madge Evans, and vice versa. It's only later that he discovers she's already married to a paraplegic RAF (or RFC) officer. Evans is perfectly willing to leave her bedridden husband because she's truly in love with Montgomery. Of course when Huston discovers the affair -- and it WAS physical because of the emphatic way Montgomery delivers lines about "we were in each other's arms" -- he's extremely disturbed and protests the arrangement.Already at odds with Huston, Montgomery defies him at sea, manages to get himself cashiered from the navy, then rediscovers his conscience and completes a self-sacrificial mission that saves many lives.The romance is dull, but the scenes at sea are surprisingly well done. Even the visual effects, primitive by today's standards, aren't jarring in their lack of verisimilitude. The scenes aboard the boat are interesting technologically. We've all gotten used to the equipment on the submarines of World War II. At least I think we have. There seems to be hundreds of them lurking about, surfacing on TV from time to time.It's curious to see that in the first world war, the equipment available looked quite different but did just about the same jobs. It's also a little amusing to see that the submarines of the day were subject to the same sorts of perils as those of the World War II movies -- strafed by enemy fighters, depth-charged by destroyers, bombed by enemy bombers, firing back with small arms on deck, having to submerge and leave men stranded on the surface, having to reach the bottom although that depth exceeds the builders' specifications. This one adds the liberation of chlorine gas from one of the batteries.I suppose it's understandable that these elements should run through just about every submarine movie ever made, up to and including World War II. How many dangers can an undersea vessel be subject to? I mean, nobody is going to parachute out of one of them. The crew can't be trapped in a trench behind enemy lines. Nobody is going to run about and clean out an enemy machine gun nest with a tommy gun and a grenade.Robert Young has a minor role as the nice guy who is left on the surface to die because the boat must dive under attack. Jimmy Durante is the cook who makes wisecracks and funny faces. Eugene Palette is along for the ride. Some scenes generate more tension than you might think -- when the boat is nose-deep in mud and the engine won't start -- and sometimes tragedy -- as when Sterling Holloway is stuck in a dogged-down compartment filling with chlorine and can't be let out.The plot isn't to be taken seriously. Montgomery, now a civilian, sneaks back aboard for the final mission and Captain Huston gruffly orders him to "take your post." What IS his post? And, when Montgomery merely hints at his honorable reasons for deserting Huston's daughter, Huston seems to grasp the entire situation as if by an avalanche of intuition.Small stuff though. It's an exciting movie for its time.

Scufovo It's funny, I am diving the wreck of one of the ships they sank for the movie tomorrow. The former USS Moody, a WWI destroyer. The filming locations list Hawaii, but not California.A pretty good movie, nice tension, so-so subplots. I enjoyed it. Jimmy Durante was an interesting piece in the mix, he almost pulls you out of the plot at times, but then he meshes perfectly at others. The tension between the CO and XO worked well.Pretty intense death scenes for 1933. I thought the self sacrifice ending was a trifle predictable. Films of this time period used this device with a little too much frequency. It's sometimes tough, critiquing a film that was made that long ago. Still, overall, a nice piece of film making.

luannjim As I type these comments I'm watching a DVD of this movie that I just got from a mail-order dealer, and I'm finding that it holds up extremely well, with strong characterizations, believable situations, and well-staged action scenes.It's been a good 45 years, maybe 50, since I saw HELL BELOW, but the one scene that made an extremely deep impression on me was Sterling Holloway's death scene, which several other commenters have mentioned here. I haven't gotten to that scene yet on this viewing, but I can vouch for what other comments have said: once you see Sterling Holloway's death scene in this movie, you will absolutely never, ever forget it. Judging from how strong the film so far is holding up, I fully expect that scene to live up to the memory of it -- as unquestionably one of the greatest death scenes in movie history. The movie's worth seeing for that moment alone, but even without it, it would be a first-rate early submarine drama.