Taking Capt. Nemo out of mothballs

Press, 28 August 1978, Page 12

Taking Capt. Nemo out of mothballs

Drop that ray gun, Professor Cunningham, or the Captain and his junior space cadets wiol blast you from here to breakfast. Come on, there is no time to lose. Captain Nemo and his all-American crew are in trouble. Only our cheers can save the day. That bloke over there in the silver jumpsuit, throwing his weight around in the enemy submarine they call the Raven, who’s he? Can’t say, but he’s an ugly piece of work — gold mask, mirror eyes, talks like Tonto. He may be from outer space, but no-one’s telling. And that ghastly evil genius of a professor, always walking around slightly tipsy with his tie undone. Can you blame him, when the entire free world is trying to do him in?

"The Amazing Captain Nemo,” now at the Avon, has so many baddies they fairly bump into each other trying. to vaporise the goodies. They mean business, and they mean to drop a bomb — several bombs — on cities all over the place. Human life means nothing to them. Raw power is what they’re after, and by heck, they’re going to get all they can.

Enter Captain Nemo, of the submarine Nautilus. We thought he was dead, but he had just gone into a deep sleep inside a glass cocoon. He went in James Mason, and came out Jose Ferrer. Now that he is awake again, he wants to resume his search for Atlantis.

But the free world needs him first to battle the feared Delta Beam and a rotten crew of mean robots that can’t shoot straight. “You need Nautilus and me to stop the fiend, huh?” he asks the American secret service. Exactly. He must fight a submarine duel with the professor, who is stark, staring mad. “Welcome our guests,” the piofessor (Burgess Meredith) sneers when they sneak aboard his sub. “No need to kill them for the moment.” He wants to siphon the

secrets from Captain Nemo's brain. Ender Lynda Day George, “a beautiful lady among the lonely men of science.” And

boy, is she beautiful. Va-va-voom, so to speak. The trouble is, her boyfriend is a traitor. Captain

I Nemo must sizzle him be* ifore he puts the Nautilus in terrible peril. I “We must stroll through Ithis orchard without bruising the fruit,” he says as the submarine is manoeuvred through a minefield. “Only one man could be o ted, and so cold-blood-ed,” he says .as the bad professor pulls another dirty trick. The world must be rid of this shadow being spread over free men everywhere. Don’t you worry, Captain Nemo has a few tricks of his own stored away in that old grey head, and we don’t mean Rosemary Clooney, either.

AT THE CINEMA Stan Darling