MovieChat Forums > Torpedo Run (1959) Discussion > Why did they use crappy little ship mo...

Why did they use crappy little ship models ?


Even if you were like 5 years old you can tell they used little ship models. to blowup other fake ship models.They used stock footage of war ships getting blowed up. the submarines look fake, rather then show these stupid scenes ,they could have just cut them out. Its just a silly story. The Captains family are captured on Manila. then interred in a prison camp of course he has to sink the transport ship taking them to Japan. It makes the Navy look stupid.The wrtiers were trying for this melodramatic *beep* Other sumbmarine movies were superior that were made in the 1940's .this is like McCale's Navy.Gleen Ford acting like he was psycotic. Would they let a Captain in this mental conditon to Command a War time Submarine.?? this was a cheap wanna be war movie.maybe I should use the word Economical. The studio's ddn;t want to spend a lot of money. I would really consider this like a B movie.

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Because real ships cost a lot to just blow up fool.

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What was the alternative in 1958? Remember there was no CGI - it's impossible to film full sized ships and get any sort of resolution/visibility that the models allowed.

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I saw it last weekend, it has great special effects.

Half the CGI crap these days looks more fake.

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Its McHales Navy and Glen Ford and the acting by the old pro's made the movie not the lousy special fx....

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The reason I watch a movie (whether it is on TV or in a movie theatre) is to watch a story NOT to watch and comment about the qualities of special effects.

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Despite the OP's bomb-throwing attitude designed to elicit emotional responses, he or she does have a point: Torpedo Run is a B-movie, a derivative war film that I don't think even qualifies for the blanket description TV Guide used to use to describe this kind of movie: "standard action yarn."

The revenge angle is straight out of Run Silent, Run Deep, which was coincidentally released the same year, albeit with an A-list cast (Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster) as opposed to the two leads here, Glenn Ford and Ernest Borgnine. What really hurts is that Ford seems barely engaged throughout Torpedo Run, damaging because his character is the only one with any backstory to give the film emotional interest. At least Borgnine reins it in, and he does what he can to be a counterpoint to lackluster Ford, but this too echoes the Gable-Lancaster interaction in RSRD. And although both films were in production at roughly the same time, RSRD was released several months before TR, so filmgoers in 1958 would have recognized elements of the former in the latter.

However, the special effects are quite good for 1958, and director Joseph Pevney does frame what he has to work with in workmanlike, if not spectacular, terms, particularly the sinking scene at the end with its underwater escape. But among the several World War Two submarine films available (Run Silent, Destination Tokyo, Das Boot, et al.), Torpedo Run is non-essential viewing. Two stars out of five.

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In 1958, Ford and Borgnine were both A-list stars.

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Fair enough. B-list may be uncharitable as Borgnine won an Oscar for Marty in 1955. Perhaps I meant that while both saw plenty of work, neither were marquee names like Gable and Lancaster.

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