The Enemy Below (1957) on Netflix
Approved19571h 38mActionAdventureDrama
In World War II, Lieutenant Commander Murrell takes command of the USS Haynes in the South Atlantic. His crew questions him. A German U-boat under Kapitän zur See von Stolberg is nearby.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.4/1013,566 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
During World War II, the American destroyer escort USS Haynes patrols the South Atlantic, hunting a German submarine. Lieutenant Commander Murrell has just taken command of the ship. He was a Third Mate in the merchant marine before the war, and a U-boat sank his previous vessel, leaving him adrift for 21 days. His crew doubts whether he is fit to lead them. The submarine's skipper, Kapitän zur See von Stolberg, commanded U-boats in the First World War and detests the Nazi regime he serves. Each tries to guess what the other will do next. Murrell's ship drops depth charges by the hour, hoping to force the submarine to the surface.
Cast
- Joe Di Redaas BMSN Robbins (uncredited)
- Robert Boonas Chief Engineer
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Enemy Below (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Screenwriter Wendell Mayes wanted both captains to die, the American killed while trying to save the German he had just sunk. The studio refused, telling him the audience liked both men too much, so Robert Mitchum's and Curd Jurgens's commanders live.- Curd Jurgens, who plays the anti-Nazi U-boat commander von Stolberg, had really defied the regime: in 1944 he argued in a Vienna bar with SS men including Otto Skorzeny, was arrested, sent to a Hungarian labor camp for the "politically unreliable" and escaped after a few weeks.
- The US Navy lent a real destroyer escort and much of its own crew appears on screen, manning the guns, the telephones and the depth charges. The ship's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Walter Smith, plays the engineering officer seen reading a Little Orphan Annie comic in the lull before the action.
- The film's central act is not invention: on 6 May 1944 the lead ship of the very class of destroyer escort shown here rammed and sank a U-boat in combat and captured many of its German crew.
- Although the hunt is set in the South Atlantic, the open-ocean footage was shot in the Pacific off Oahu in Hawaii, while the ship-collision set and the abandon-ship scenes were filmed off Los Angeles.
- The duel between hunter and hunted was carried into science fiction: the 1966 Star Trek episode "Balance of Terror" follows the film closely, with the Enterprise as the destroyer and a cloaked Romulan ship as the U-boat, and Nicholas Meyer has named the film an inspiration for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
