ThiefHott Too much of everything

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

bkoganbing Gray Lady Down is one of the better Seventies disaster films and it's also one of the better films that Charlton Heston did in the later part of his career starting in the Seventies. Heston like so many other of the stars of the studio era was finding fewer and fewer decent film properties to do. This was one of his better choices.Heston plays the skipper of a nuclear powered submarine which goes down in a collision. Things get further complicated when the 'gray lady' is buried partially in an undersea mudslide, blocking the escape hatch.The Naval Rescue service is on the job however, but this will prove a difficult task.The film is divided evenly between Heston and his crew as Heston tries to keep morale up that the survivors will be rescued and on the surface rescue vessel where a conflict between two captains hampers the rescue effort. Stacy Keach is the captain of the rescue vessel and his conflict is with Keith Carradine also of captain's rank who's developed a special undersea two man vessel that can scoop the dirt off the gray lady. Special mention should go to Ronny Cox who is Heston's number two and also not really getting along with him, but who steps up to the plate in a most heroic fashion.In 1978 when Gray Lady Down came out there were still memories of the submarine U.S.S. Thresher which went down in 1963 with all hands lost in one of the U.S. Navy's worst disasters at sea. A lot of what you see in this film was developed because of that tragedy.Gray Lady Down is a no nonsense sea rescue film with the impossible situations that characterized a lot of the films of this type kept out of the story. It's one of the best and yet most unsung of the disaster films of the decade. Should be seen more often. Charlton Heston and the rest of the cast do a fine job on this film.

ranger27 I remember seeing this movie in the theater when it came out and the review in Time magazine. OK I remember one part of what was a positive review. It said that the movie avoids the bane of the disaster genre, the subplot. The best sentence in the review that I think describes the movie perfectly is," It is a job-oriented movie about job-oriented men." I can't think of a better way to describe it. The actors give there best professional naval officer performances (well maybe not Carradine...good performance...not sure about the naval officer part) and the movie sticks its subject, the rescue. An entertaining movie that delivers a straightforward story and there is nothing wrong with that.

dscout This is a great movie for military enthusiasts and disaster buffs both. If you're looking for that, this is a classic.Don't pay attention to reviews about military-based films by anyone who derides the movie as a "waterlogged Naval documentary," which contains two errors in one statement. First, there is no need to capitalize "naval," and second, what kind of snobby theater twit attacks a movie for being too "Naval" when the subject is about...a U.S. NAVY SUBMARINE? Next he'll attack Ghostbusters for being a shill for paranormal investigators.Stupid reviewers aside, this is a good movie.

Libretio GRAY LADY DOWN Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Panavision)Sound format: MonoWhilst heading home on its final voyage, a nuclear submarine is sunk by a careless fishing vessel and lands on a crumbling ledge above a yawning abyss.Arriving at the tail-end of the 1970's disaster cycle, this half-baked thriller toplines catastrophe stalwart Charlton Heston (going through the motions) as an iron-jawed captain who preserves morale amongst his surviving crewmembers while awaiting rescue by military top brass (including Stacy Keach and David Carradine). Unfortunately, the basic scenario - remarkably similar to another sub-in-peril drama, MORNING DEPARTURE, filmed in 1950 - is fairly humdrum, and once it's been established that the survival of Heston's crew depends on work carried out by a unique exploratory vessel created by Carradine, the plot begins to alternate between non-activity in the sub and endless journeys to and from the stricken vessel by Carradine's miniature craft. TV director David Greene fails to generate much excitement, and the outcome is entirely predictable. Co-stars Ned Beatty and Christopher Reeve were re-teamed later the same year in Reeve's break-out movie, SUPERMAN.