Walter Pidgeon and Joan Fontaine are top billed in this entertaining sci-fi outing, but the real star is the submarine Seaview. Accounting for $400,000 of the picture's budget, the glass-fronted nuclear vessel went on to star in its own TV series following its exploits here, as admiral Pidgeon fires its missiles into the Van Allen radiation belt and saves Earth from meltdown. Fontaine is totally out of her depth, but Peter Lorre and the rest of the supporting cast are splendid. Co-writer/producer/director Irwin Allen went on to become the king of the disaster movie in the early 1970s, as the creative force behind such films as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.

The crew of an atomic submarine battle to save the world from global destruction.