Escape Hatch

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

GRAY LADY DOWN Directed by David Greene Screenplay by James Whittaker and Howard Sackler

Gray Lady Down is that old favorite about the damaged submarine resting on the bottom, its occupants growing ever more fearful that they may be done in either by a deficit of air or a surplus of water (Will those hatches hold at this depth?). Topside, expensive efforts, often frustrated, are made to rescue them.

The Navy, ever more sophisticated, has developed something called the DSRV, capable of glug-glugging down to distressed subs, latching onto their escape hatches and lifting sailors to the surface. This time, though, the U.S.S. Neptune is lying in a deep ocean trench, subject to slides of rock and silt from farther up this underwater canyon. These slides 1) cover up the escape hatch and 2) keep shoving Neptune over to an angle where the DSRV can't latch onto that hatch. The screen writers must resort to their imaginations, concocting an experimental two-man sub that can clear the hatch so that the DSRV can do its job. Its inventor is not a standard-issue Navy type and, pleasantly played by David Carradine, he gets into some comical wrangles with Stacy Keach, who plays the officer in charge of the rescue. Down below, of course, Charlton Heston practices his customary agreeable stalwartness as the captain of the disintegrating sub. In the end, Carradine and Keach bring their mission improbable to a satisfying climax.

If, in outline, the film has a predictable air about it, it should also be said that it isn't half bad. There is a crisp professionalism about David Greene's direction, and the writers have done without that bane of the disaster-picture formula, the subplot.

The peril at the bottom of the sea is not expected to bring to dramatic conclusion any marital problems or troubled love affairs. Gray Lady Down is a job-oriented film about job-oriented men, and its only queasy moments occur when, for dramatic punctuation, someone is required to crack under pressure. For the most part, however, a tight rein is kept on emotion and lips are kept well stiffened against adversity.

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