Blood "N" Bubbles

The History of Diving In the Movies.

Big time film directors worry about using their big stars to actually don scuba gear and get wet. How can you finish a movie if your leading man has been bent? In this James Bond movie the problem was solved by using stunt men wearing hoods and face masks. In this scene divers are duking it out near the wreck of an airplane, can you name the movie?

Answer

Thunderball. Made in 1965, the fourth movie in the Bond series starred Sean Connery and Claudine Auger. This 007 thriller began a trend of introducing underwater scenes into the action flicks. This time there are nuclear weapons hidden in the waters off the shore of Miami. Although diving was a relatively new thing in movies, it was handled like a traditional western. Watch for the big submerged battles between warring gangs of aquanauts around the sunken British bomber which carried the Bomb! It was easy to follow the action because the bad guys and the good guys wore different coloured wet suits! The Underwater Director was Ricou Browning who once played the monster in the Creature From the Black Lagoon film series. The Underwater Cinematographer was Lamar Boren and the Underwater Engineering duties were handled by Jordan Klein.