As I wrote before (here and here) I often receive e-mails from people who look for movies. Luckily I find many of them but not all of them. This week I received an e-mail from someone looking for an “obscure WWII Pacific movie”. While I couldn’t find which one it is, I have a feeling, someone else will as for some reason the description sounds familiar and I think it’s a known movie.
Here’s the mail
I haven’t been able to find a movie that sounds like this one on any list of WWII movies. At the time (admittedly, I was still pre-teen at the time) it seemed like a very striking movie to me. I don’t know, perhaps I would think it was terrible now but I’d like to find out.I saw it, I would say, between 1960-1964, in a movie theater. I don’t believe I ever heard of it since. I don’t remember the title.It’s an American film, in color. My memory of it is that it was an American destroyer versus a Japanese sub and they’re locked in a struggle to the death. I think the destroyer gets torpedoed. Then it rams the sub. I think that the two vessels are locked together after the ramming and they may even end up beached on some island in the South Pacific. That’s all I can recall but it seemed very gripping to me at the time.
*****
Does it ring a bell? Any idea? Couldn’t it be a John Wayne movie? It would be great if we would find it.
While hunting for the movie I found this website which looks interesting War of Our Fathers.
All About War Movies 
Caroline: Wikipedia has a page SUBMARINE FILMS which is considered a sub-genre of the War Film. It may not be complete, but your e-mailer may want to check it out.
Thanks, Guy. I’ll let him know. Might be interesting from me as well to have a look.
Sounds like the plot of The Enemy Below, except it’s a German sub…
I agree with Nem. It absolutely has to be “The Enemy Below”.
Thanks, Kevin, two votes for the same, sounds good.
Thanks a lot. Memory does play tricks so, it’s quite possible. I’ll let him know.
I have bad news. It’s not The Enemy Below. He watched it a while ago because he thought it could be it. The movie he saw was much more bloody and darker it seems.
I knew it was too easy.
The thing is, on imdb there are not many movies tagged with either ‘submarine’, ‘navy’ or ‘U.S. Navy’ and released beetween 1955 and 1965… and among these, only a few are in color, or feature a non-US submarine.
Of course tagging on imdb can be loose, but considering these keywords have a number of aficionados, and it’s supposed to be a american movie…
I suggest writing to the U.S. Naval Institute!
I sent him the wikipedia list Guy mentions. There are quite a lot on it, let’s see if he can find it.
Could it possibly be “Run Silent Run Deep?”
I was thinking of that as well but it’s not that one either. It’s tricky, really.
How about Destroyer (1943 film)?
Not that I have seen it but… google hit… I would say it might be worth trying although no idea where to get it…
No island in the end though.
Ah, of course no colors, so probably not.
Thanks for the help. It’s so difficult sometimes. But we are lucky quite often and someone knows the movie.
Although not the right movie, this looks actually quite interesting.