The Queen Mary carries so many spare parts (even parts for "secret submarines)that even the captain of the Queeen assumes they have the part, with out ever even asking the submarine Capt. "What part are you looking for"?
If you are in a submerged sub....hiding under the Queen Mary, just look up at the ceiling of the sub and you will know exactly where the Queen is.
Yea, it seems like the whole hide-under-a-large-ship-to-avoid-sonar-detection routine happens in every submarine movie. Overall there's not a ton of stuff different and exciting in this film - it's basically Oceans 11 meets Run Silent, Run Deep. Assault on a Queen is nowhere near as good as either of those but it's still good old popcorn fun. Given the fact that going into this movie the viewer is guaranteed to see (1) below deck claustrophobic submarine drama (2) super cool heist planning details and (3) Italian bombshell Virna Lisi at sea, well then just about every red-blooded male from the age of 6 to 86 would take an interest. It was pretty hard for them to screw this movie up.
What stinks the most is that this movie could have been truly awesome with the talent involved. Seems like a lot of people just phoned it in. It was surprising to see the great Rod Serling wrote such a tepid screenplay. Hard to imagine this came from the same guy whose writing in television and science fiction is virtually unparalleled. Duke Ellington - one of the greatest composers in history, the man who transformed jazz into an art form, a true American master - did the music for this? It wasn't bad by any stretch but completely forgettable. I think Sinatra was always undervalued as an actor but some of his delivery here was pretty cheesy.
Overall I gave Assault on a Queen a 6/10. Could have been truly amazing, but ended up as merely okay escapist cinema with no glaring problems.
On the contrary, it's a wonderful screenplay and a crackerjack little film. By the way, they weren't trying to "hide from sonar" under the Queen Mary, they were avoiding getting shot at/depth-charged.
shareSaw the film last week for the first time. Seems like it done on a VERY tight budget (did Sinatra have his own money in this?) Didja notice some cost cutting in the underwater scenes? I never saw ONE fish swimming around; the Atlantic Ocean would have countless species of all sizes moving constantly. I guess there was no money in the budget for "fish extras."
May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?