Ahoy for the heist of all time!
Frank Sinatra made some pretty decent films. He also made a few turkeys. 1966’s Assault on a Queen falls relatively firmly in the latter.
Assault on a Queen is a heist movie, taking the somewhat typical motif of showing the audience a tremendous amount of exposition prior to the big event at the finale. Here it’s Sinatra as Navy veteran turned sea diver Mark Brittain who is approached by a couple looking for divers to help in their search for sunken treasure. He finds an intact sunken German U-Boat and his ragtime team decide to raise it and become pirates. I can only assume that they weren’t that attached to their treasure diving efforts.
This group, comprised of Virna Lisi, Anthony Franciosa, Richard Conte, Alf Kjellin and Errol John in addition to Sinatra, decide to refit the submarine and hold up the RMS Queen Mary, presumably off the Bahamas. The cast play various roles but the script is so lackluster (with Rod Serling’s name on it, no less) that the characters rather blur together. Lisi is of course the romantic interest in the film, but she doesn’t seem to have much else to do except distract
the gang as Sinatra and Fanciosa vie for her attentions. For added fun Alf Kjellin is a former U-Boat commander himself. The cast mostly sleepwalk through the proceedings, with Sinatra in full cynic mode leading the way.
Serling’s script is not only unrealistic but also plodding. Most heist movies build the excitement with a backstory on the preparations for the heist itself. But in Assault on a Queen we are instead presented with a half hour wasted on treasure diving followed by another forty minutes or so of meandering scenes where the gang preps the sub. Primarily this seems to entail scrubbing encrustations from the hull, though a little time is spent on the engines and diving. We get one scene of what one could term strategy where the gang breaks down the plan minute by minute but it’s almost as if they don’t take it seriously themselves. The final twenty minutes or so are the heist itself, which runs its course quickly and without any surprises.
Even a poor script can be lifted by superior execution in either directing or special effects. Sadly, director Jack Donohue fails to infuse any excitement or suspense into the proceedings. Lastly, the effects are extremely poor, even by standards of the day. Most of the underwater scenes featuring the sub were clearly filmed in a pool as you can see the walls of the pool and in at least one case the bottom as well. We’ve can also see a hand shaking the sub later on in addition to several other similar flaws. Perhaps most egregious is one of the last scenes where the sub is rammed by a Coast Guard cutter. Though very similar in theme to a scene in 1957’s The Enemy Below, here we are “treated” to a poor rear projection shot of the bow of the cutter closing in on the conning tower of the sub. As the bow nears, a bucket of water (or two) are thrown across the frame as the conning tower lurches towards us.
As unrealistic as it sounds, Assault on a Queen could have been a half-decent picture. Unless you’re a Sinatra completist or a die hard fan of the genre, you’re better served saving your hundred minutes for other ventures.
At least the movie poster is really nice.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7ecXTJJMlE[/embedyt]