Review of The Deep (1977) by Jason O — 14 Aug 2009

"The Deep" was made a few years before I was born, but I had always heard it was a good movie. I finally watched it and I liked it....a lot. From what I heard, I was just expecting it to be full of great underwater photography, but it has an amazing plot tagged alongside it. Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bissett are a couple that are on vacation in Bermuda. They go deep sea diving one day and find a small bottle of morphine from a ship that sank in the 1800's. They go to a man who's a known treasure hunter (Robert Shaw) and he tells them what they found. But they are also pestered by Louis Gossett, who is a serious collector that will do anything to get his hands on one of those tiny bottles of morphine. Robert Shaw teams up with Nolte and Bisset after they decide there might be more bottles of the treasured substance and possibly some treasure deep in the sunken ship. All the while, they must stay away from Gosset and his fearsome gang.

There are also more exciting sequences such as an encounter with a deadly eel and of course, the wet t-shirt swim at the beginning.

"The Deep" is one of the most exciting and suspenseful adventure movies ever made. Yes, it does have great underwater scenery (mostly at the beginning) and the background music goes perfect with the movie. Although the wet t-shirt by Jacqueline Bisset might be what's best known about the movie, this is actually a great movie. It's one of my favorites.

As for the DVD, it's not big at all on extras. You do get to select from subtitles in several different languages, there's a scene selection, and best of all, both the widescreen and full screen versions are included in this DVD's one disc. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't very good. While your current volume setting might be too loud or just right on one of your DVDs, it will probably be too low for "The Deep". The picture quality is good enough though. If you're a fan of the movie, "The Deep", I do recommend adding the DVD to your growing collection. NOTE: That was my Amazon review from the year 2000. Yeah, the wet t-shirt by Bisset, very nice indeed. But I love the adventure, scenery, and suspense of this film even more. Very underrated movie and a favorite of mine.