After losing their much-loved commanding officer at Iwo Jima, the men of the UDT 4 greet his by-the-book replacement, Lt. Comm. John Lawrence (Richard Widmark), with suspicion and contempt. Hitching a ride aboard a destroyer**, the UDT men are already at odds with the other sailors (whose numbers include an uncredited Jack Warden), who regard them as prima donnas, and now Lawrence mixes with them like oil and water.

(Mild Spoilers) After scraping his leg on some coral and unable to command his next mission, Lawrence is branded a coward. In his place, Jake Flannigan (Dana Andrews) fouls up the mission by allowing Pappy (Jeffrey Hunter) to pull a prank which results in him getting shot. Lawrence's hard-lined reaction further alienates him from his men. Will the top secret mission to blow-up a Japanese submarine pen provide Lawrence with the opportunity to redeem himself? You betcha.

The Frogmen ladles heaping helpings of war movie cliches, from the Brooklynese comedy relief (Harvey Lembeck) to the easy-going, pipe-smoking senior officer (Gary Merrill) Lawrence turns to for advice, to the endless phrasing from Anchors Aweigh on the soundtrack. The wrong assumptions Lawrence's men make about their commanding officer, and the overbearing by-the-book leadership he offers them are tired cliches, with no effort made to expand upon or go beyond them. Indeed, the conflict is resolved more by default than action.

If there's any reason to watch The Frogmen at all, it's for the interesting glimpses aboard real ships and submarines (even most of the interiors seem authentic) and real UDTs in second unit footage. Particularly interesting are the gee-whiz roll-outs and pick-ups: aboard a fast-moving cruiser, the men jump one-by-one into a rubber raft tied alongside her, then roll off like paratroopers jumping out an airplane. They're picked up with equal speed, using lasso-like ropes which the men use to swing themselves back on board the moving craft.

The underwater scenes are, by contrast, much more dated, and the absence of music during these scenes makes them especially sluggish. The black and white photography, despite being nominated for an Academy Award, is unimpressive by today's standards, or even those of just a few years later (both 1953's Beneath the 12-Mile Reef and the following year's Creature from the Black Lagoon have superior underwater lensing).

The film does have one good scene, in which an unexploded torpedo threatens to explode and flood the ship's infirmary. The sequence begins quite tensely, but it too soon becomes bogged down in hoary cliches.

Video & Audio

The Frogmen is presented in its original full frame format. (The opening titles are windowboxed.) The image is a little dull and variable. Bits here and there look very nice, but overall the available film elements seem to have been limited. The mono sound is perfectly acceptable for its vintage. The film is offered in both English Stereo and English Mono, but I honestly couldn't hear any true stereo at all. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are included, along with audio tracks in Spanish and French.

Extra Features

The sole extra is a set of three Theatrical Trailers, complete with text and narration. They do an excellent job selling the film, making it sound a lot more exciting than it really is.

Parting Thoughts

Navy buffs interested in, as the trailer calls them, the "fin-footed, gargoyle-eyed, beach-blasting heroes" of the Second World War will want to check out The Frogman. Others beware.

**Your humble reviewer confesses a total inability to properly identify the various ships and hardware seen in this picture. Any corrections are welcome.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. His new book, Cinema Nippon will be published by Taschen in 2005.