You know, the ocean is great. It’s fantastic. It’s wonderful! Without the ocean where would we be?

I’ll tell you, but only because I know a great deal about many things, and because you are asking nicely.

Makes you think, doesn’t it? The ocean makes up 70% of our planet, and it’s the one thing that’s keeping us all here. Much respect to H2O, both the liquid, and the awesome Hall & Oates album with the homoerotic cover. The blue stuff gives us life, and in turn, I give it mad props – and so does DIMP.

So, I think it’s a great thing that DIMP has celebrated my second favorite beverage by devoting a week to the aquatic art. But you can’t pack it into a week’s worth of DVD reviews. Jaws, Leviathan and Titanic are not the culmination of water cinema. Esther Williams is great, but she still swam through some less than great films. But there are some great flicks that owe their success to liquid without even really having anything to do with water itself. As you go through this column, I want you to think about the scenes I mention, not necessarily the films themselves. Think about the way they shaped the movies, either into something completely awesome, or just more memorable than they would have been otherwise.

Without further ado, here are the four GREATEST gifts that the cinematic waters have bestowed upon is.

MONSTERS FROM BEYOND MORE THAN SEVERAL FEET DEEP!
The water is a mysterious place. The Challenger Deep is something like 7 miles straight down. What do you think is at the bottom? Hell if I know, but there is probably all sorts of crazy shit. If you’re into reading oceanography logs and science news, you’ll notice that we find out new stuff about the ocean and its life ALL THE TIME, and yet there is so very much that is unexplored. When you think of outer space and the films set there, all the possible aliens and monsters that are faced might strike you as silly – especially so, since we haven’t yet found intelligent extra-terrestrial life forms. Not so in the water where there are all kinds of monstrous things. There are sharks that can kill you. There are whales that will jump through a hoop, let you feed him a fish – and then might kill you. There are even ancient fish that surprise us by not being extinct, and LOBSTERS WITH HAIR! I can’t even imagine what a hairy lobster might do to me (must… hold back… joke… too easy).

What can outer space do to you? You can only asphyxiate and/or burn up entering some masses gravitational pull. Outer space is for pussies and the oceans are for the hard core monsters, and here are some of the best…

As I mentioned in my review for Leviathan, 1989 was the year of water horror, and Deep Star Six was one of the other greats. The monster and gore effects are a lot of fun, but nothing is more fun than watching Miguel Ferrer try to escape from their underwater facility too fast, without decompressing the air, and ultimately generating his own demise. Brilliant! Creepshow 2, while an anthology of stories, had a great chapter called “The Raft” in it, horny teens face an oil-slick looking monster that slowly floats over to them and starts eating them alive a la The Blob. The monster is emotionless, but the ill-fated teen’s cries of pain are not. I hesitate to mention shark films, since Jaws so obviously trumps everything in the genre, but Shark Attack 3: Megalodon should not be missed. It’s got horrible acting and dialog, but even worse special effects which often feature stock footage of a shark doubling in for a monster-sized shark and spliced in death scenes that look like they were created with MacDraw. This is perfect pizza & a six pack cinema. But if you are going to only see one or two aqua-monster films, you have to make them the original Gojira and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Fellow DIMP writer Cary Christopher and I took a look at the aquatic pimp’s entire film series, but Gojira (aka Godzilla) now has a chance to be reexamined by the mass audience now that the original Japanese version is available uncut in the States. Watch as Godzilla rises up out of the ocean and decimates Tokyo Bay. Sure it’s more of a nuclear era warning, but it’s a monster movie religious experience with an unsettling ending and one that everyone needs to experience.

SUBMARINES AND SABOTAGE!
When men (usually just men) get trapped together on a submarine in a movie, chances are there is going to be some kind of mutiny attempted. If you’re really lucky you’ll get to see other characters breaking down to some degree of psychosis simply because they haven’t been laid in a long time, or the food is for shit, or the fact that usually these types of movies have too long a running time. But I can’t help but fall in love with these films because they usually make interesting character pieces or have craptacular dumb action. Either way, I’m rarely disappointed. It doesn’t need to be on a sub either. Ships and even small boats are enough to drive people to the brink of insanity which has often made for some of the greatest suspense films that have ever existed.

If you ever get a chance, the full 762-hour version of Das Boot is worth watching and I’m sure that submarines haven’t been done as realistically before or after that. For on-the-water suspense, both the original and remake of Cape Fear are incredible, with the remake deserving special attention due to its fantastic direction by Martin Scorsese - See both if you can. Don’t forget Lifeboat from Alfred Hitchcock, the true “Master of Suspense.” Imagine being stranded in a lifeboat lost at sea. Then imagine picking up another passenger. You would be thrilled to see him right? Not if he’s the goddamned Nazi captain that stuck you on that floating tombstone, you wouldn’t. This is a lesser known film in Hitchcock’s catalogue and worth every minute of your time. If you are in the mood for some really dumb fun, then nothing beats a half-asleep screening of the Steven Segal epic Under Siege in which be plays Casey Ryback, a cook who just so happens to be an ex-Navy SEAL and uses his skills to kick ass to save an entire battleship from falling to terrorists. If anyone does a poll to see which cook could kick your ass the hardest, Casey Ryback would rank second only to Giada De Laurentiis.

For what it’s worth though, I think the best water-based espionage film ever made has got to be Thunderball, the fourth James Bond film. The film has some of the greatest underwater sequences, especially action sequences, ever shot. So impressive were these sequences that the film was awarded the Best Special Effects Academy Award, and they remain a treat to watch to this day.

CRAZY WEIRD SHIT!
Going back to the mystery of the sea, there are many things that are just curiously odd about some movies. They aren’t bad, and they should be experienced, but they certainly exist in a state of fantasy that either toy with your mind in a playful way or just make you have your fill of “did I just see that?” moments.

The Life Aquatic is an example of one such film. Here’s a film – worthy of a much longer review – which gives realistic emotions an examination through a very funny camera eye.  The fate of Ned (Owen Wilson) actually touched me emotionally while the events surrounding it couldn’t be more humorous. Equally disturbing is some minor sequences in non-water based films. There are penguins with torpedoes on their back hopping into sewer water in Batman Returns, and Snake Plissken ridiculously CGI-surfs down Hollywood in Escape From L.A. But for as lauded critically as it is, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has some of the greatest PSA-disguised-as-entertainment moments in cinematic history. The thought of future people in present day is always a fun idea, but the idea of sending them back to California circa 1986 to “Save the Whales?” Fuck me raw for watching this repeatedly throughout my youth, but I hope there’s a special place in Hell for whoever approved all the Greenpeace bullshitery.

HOT BABES LOOKING HOT!
I can’t lie, hot chicks make me happy. I love seeing them, and while I love seeing them fully clothed – those fuzzy sweaters make the winter season my absolute favorite – I am manpig enough to say I love them equally with as little clothing as possible. Water is wet and wet ruins clothes, so I again give my respect to water for getting women to shed their clothes and allow it to run all over them. Water is like liquid pimp. Thank you, water, for once again providing me with everything that’s right in the world.

Never has beauty been on display with varying degrees of wetness then the entire James Bond series. Climbing onto boats, getting out of swimming pools, stepping out of showers, etc. Watching a James Bond marathon can be equated to watching the entire run of America’s Next Top Model, but with more explosions and less crying. It all started in the original film when Dr. No gave us Ursula Andress emerging from the beaches of Crab Key to electrify the libidos of every male in attendance and other women have been lining up to follow in Honey Ryder’s naïve shoes ever since. Proving that natural bodies of water are not needed for a sexy water scene, the fountain bit of La Dolce Vita will forever remain one of the most memorable, as the quite voluptuous Anita Ekberg splashes around the Fontana di Trevi with Marcello Mastroianni. As for more modern influential examples, I know nothing that got more teenagers aroused than Phoebe Cates exiting out of the pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High wearing that red bikini. It’s a well known scene, but I feel it’s only another decade away from being truly iconic. When I was growing up, The Blue Lagoon was the film that really introduced me to cinematic sexuality, although while Brooke Shields was magically babelicious, Christopher Atkins’ hair almost qualifies it as a horror movie. I also hold the unpopular (and completely biased) opinion that the Milla Jovovich jizztastic Return to the Blue Lagoon is superior, but regardless of that, no one can argue the beauty and yes, fetish angle, of an island girl living in a beautiful tropical paradise with a beautiful ocean all around her. Subtlety and sensuality isn’t your thing? Go rent Into the Blue. It’s easily the most beautiful underwater film I’ve seen in years and it’s made all the better by the fact that the filmmakers actively try to get T&A in nearly every shot possible. Gratuitous? You bet your sweet ass! But it’s surprisingly well made, intelligent and engrossing. Besides, you know you want to see Jessica Alba and Ashley Scott in as little gear as possible, and Into the Blue provides just that.

So there you have it. A shopping list of water related films that you should see and what you’re gonna get out of them. Not all of these films are great, but they all have a great deal of something awesome to offer, and if you can’t deal with these monsters, madness and mega babes, you can always go back to an old standby for comfort…

Grow a pair, Mary, and check these flicks out!