Remember the Titanic movie by that guy who directed The Terminator?The U.S. Navy learns of a killer chemical more powerful than H-bombs but which lies inconveniently at the bottom of the sea. The container that holds this potent treasure is that lovable old hulk, the steamship Titanic. How did this secret weapon end up inside the sunken luxery liner? Don’t ask! And . . . it takes them nearly an hour to get it up. Everything went wrong with this Lew Grade presentation, which won particularly low grades for preproduction planning.Like I say, it’s an ok movie. It isn’t really a sci-fi movie, and a better Navy-rescue movie would be "Gray Lady Down" (1978) starring Charlton Heston. But at least check out the scene in which the Titanic breaks the surface.
The filmmakers spent $350,000 for a devastatingly detailed 55-foot model of the old ship, only to find it was too large for the studio tank in which they planned to shoot much of the film. The solution? Build a brand-new tank with a few extra feet on all sides, at a cost of an additional $6 million. With this sort of quick thinking, no wonder the picture’s overall budget rose to $40 million (making it Britain’s all-time biggest bomb), before it sank without a trace- bringing in less than $7 million at the box office.
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