Take her down to 20,000 Leagues

I can't remember the last time I saw 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. Seeing it again Saturday night on TCM was a kick. Reminded me of those Sunday nights watching The Wonderful World of Disney when they'd play this kind of movie regularly.

20K is very much a boy's own adventure. There are no girls in the story to ruin the fun, in fact it reminds me of Johnny Quest in a lot of ways. With Paul Lukas as a frenchy Dr. Quest and Kirk Douglas pointing the way for Race Bannon and Brock Samson. Which I guess makes Peter Lorre both Johnny and Hadji. It's a shame they don't have more for Peter Lorre to do in this movie, but then he's up against James Mason.

James Mason's Nemo is THE perfect Bond villain. Brooding in his combination bachelor pad/weapon of mass destruction. Lounging on gilded red velvet couches while gazing on the endless bounty of his domain. Playing Bach on his state of the art sound system and making gourmet dishes out of undersea foodstuff. It's Iron Chef Nemo and the Giant Killer Squid Challenge! Oh yeah, file off the serial numbers and he'd make James Bond sweat.

But the real star of the movie is is the Nautilus. The Nautilus is quite possibly the coolest steampunk set piece ever. From the first moment you see it you wish you could have one, too. How cool is it that they use sunken treasure as ballast for the Nautilus? And how cool is the atomic powered groovy light show engine room? And everything is finished off in ornate brass work and iron. That's not only cool, that's classy. The Nautilus is like one of those custom hot rods, it's fast, it's got fins and they've got a furnished bar inside.

They never really say that the Nautilus is powered by a nuclear reactor in the movie. Which I suppose lead me to some confusion when I first saw 20K. Nemo's argument that his power supply could be used as a weapon made little sense to me. They could use your bright light to kill? Wha? Seeing the scene now, as James Mason shields his eyes against the bulkhead while raising a heavy lead plate for Professor Frenchy, who's wearing a massive metal and riveted helmet, to stare into the blinding light of ENERGY, and nobody's worried about little things like radiation poisoning. But this is back when we had battlefield tactical nukes, and we were blowing 'em up everywhere we could think of. I had a vision of Captain Nemo slamming together raw atoms with his bare hands like flint and steel, an atomic spark to heat the Nautilus's silver engraved boilers. Shazam!

God bless Jules Vern.