CNATUC - 50TH!

Can't believe I almost forgot this one... 

CAPTAIN NEMO AND THE 

UNDERWATER CITY
1969

Aye, aye ~ it was, admittedly and absolutely, the hardest thing to do: 

determining who was the true Underwater Queen here - 

Nanette or Luciana? 

For both would have been -for different reasons, somehow- excellent 

choices to portray a QUEEN OF ATLANTIS type; 

the next best thing to an actual flesh-and-blood MERA, indeed! 

And for years this would be the closest we would get to it, too! 

Alas - CHUCK CONNORS would be the closest we'd get to an 

AQUAMAN, also - for many, many years! 

It is no wonder that DC was the first to get their underwater superhero 

into live action and onto the big screen ~ they had been there before! 

Warner Bros will always trump (pardon the expression; these days, 

it has to be pardoned...) miserable envious Marvel and all of its 

aspirations - which have led them to their unholy alliance with the Rat! 

Disney may have had the official 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea 

done up about a decade earlier; but this film from the year of our Lord 

nineteen sixty-nine had it closer to what the filmgoing audience wanted! 

Jules Verne himself would have said so - were he alive! 

They had to replace Kirk Douglas with Chuck Connors - so what! 

James Mason and Robert Ryan were pretty much the same; 

and with ladies Newman and Paluzzi onboard, 

the scales tip decisively in favor of CNATUC! 

So very ironic, is it not: just as Nicole Kidman 

and Amber Heard have made AQUAMAN a hit 

(and OHMSS was saved by the presence of 

Diana Rigg, for the most part!) 

this film also owes it all... to its ladies! 

(And the director's craft... maybe!) 

And its soundtrack music ~ 

here also the work of a LADY: 

~Angela Morley ~

And if you don't agree, you can have some 

Irwin Allen fare instead ~ from 1967! 

...still better than a Disney treatment! 

Or anything that came after...! 

(circa 1975... onwards!)

AQUAMAN approves!