RegalScope: Ghost Diver (1957) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Regal Films

In the 1950s, American film producer and cinema chain owner Robert L. Lippert who was the chief operating officer of the San Francisco based Lippert Theaters, Affiliated Theaters and Transcontinental Theaters (comprising around 139 theaters total) eventually started his own film production company called Lippert Pictures which had a hand in Hammer Films’ output.  

Around the time Darryl F. Zanuck ran 20^th Century Fox and thus announced what would become his CinemaScope 35mm widescreen process, theater owners were aghast at having spent the money on 3D conversion only to have to convert their screens and projection scope lenses again.  Fear not, however, as Zanuck ushered in Robert L. Lippert who founded what became known as Regal Films and under license from 20^th Century Fox utilized the CinemaScope lenses and simply retitled the widescreen process RegalScope.
 
Circa 1956, starting with the B-western Stagecoach to Fury, the films were often characterized by quick shoots usually in a seven-day range for no more than $100,000, generating as many as twenty-five films within its first year of operation.  Delighted with the quick production turnaround and subsequent profits, Fox proceeded to extend Regal’s contract by a further sixteen films characterized by a more exploitative bent sure to usher in sales at drive-ins housing double-features.  

Right around the time they announced a record-breaking ten-picture production schedule in a three-month period, Lippert and Regal forged ahead with a small diving action-adventure sort of swashbuckler called Ghost Diver, predating such underwater thriller fare as Peter Yates’ The Deep, a hint of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark or more recently James Cameron’s The Abyss by decades.  Despite being a miniscule, regional shoot, this little panoramic widescreen effort is among the few intact surviving RegalScope releases still not on DVD or Blu-ray disc.
 
Opening on a small boat in the sea off the coast of the South American cliffs, we see diver Papa Rico (Rodolfo Hoyos Jr.) scuba diving underwater in search of a much sought after Paracan Temple idol when the mercenary dive captain Manco Capao seizes the opportunity to cut his air-line, drowning him before taking the idol for himself.  Selling the idol to a TV show host named Richard Bristol (James Craig), he and his son Robin (Lowell Brown) and secretary Anne (Audrey Totter) hitch a flight to the coast where the idol was found.  

Upon arrival, they meet the deceased Papa Rico’s daughter Pelu (real life swim champion Pira Louis) who believes her lover Manco’s “story” that her father died of a shark attack.  Descending into the sea depths, they discover an underwater cave and grow of the belief that returning the stolen idol to its rightful place will reveal even deeper buried treasures.  However, as before, Manco catches wind of it and quickly goes rogue in an effort to try and steal the remaining treasure for himself, culminating in more than a few underwater battles including with the empty seaweed covered suit once worn by the late Papa Rico.
 
A scenic, taught little B-movie envisioned and co-directed by editors Richard Einfeld and Merrill G. White who later went on to edit The Fly with Vincent Price, Ghost Diver is pulpy and at times nearing sleaziness but overall is one of the first underwater diver thrillers.  Grounded largely in realism save for some pretty hilarious deus ex-machinas which won’t be revealed here, the seventy-six minute runner is mostly nice to look at for its panoramic cinematography by No Place to Land director of photography John M. Nickolaus Jr.  The score, interestingly, was co-written by Polish composer Paul Sawtell and his Ukranian collaborator Bert Shefter who did everything from It! The Terror from Beyond Outer Space to Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, making it an almost overqualified soundtrack for this lean mean little indie. 

 
The cast for this tight little shoot include The Devil and Daniel Webster as well as Kitty Foyle star James Craig as the TV host managing the expedition, Lady in the Lake actress Audrey Totter as his plucky secretary, Greek Twelve Hours to Kill actor Nico Minardos as the nefarious Manco and professional swimmer Pira Louis in her first screen role.  Everyone does a mostly good job across the board though arguably the film’s central star consists of all the numerous underwater scenes which are still striking for their day, budgetary limitations and for Manco’s lungs of steel that never seem to run dry of breath.
 
Among the last RegalScope pictures before an unfulfilled deal with the Screenwriters Guild brought production of Regal Films to an end before Robert L. Lippert ultimately sold the company and its back catalog to television for $1 million where 2.35:1 scope prints were subsequently cropped for pan-and-scan, Ghost Diver is one of those little loosely connected 20^th Century Fox titles that all but completely vanished into obscurity and the proliferation of preexisting films falling under public domain.  As a result, most of the bootleg copies of Ghost Diver circulating the back alleyways of the internet aren’t in the correct aspect ratio and exist in inferior near unwatchable transfers.

 
Perhaps one day that will change but at present Ghost Diver could be considered something of a lost film.  If anyone at Vinegar Syndrome Labs or Severin Films is listening in, you won’t find a masterpiece in Ghost Diver but you will find a rather picturesque little thriller representing one of the only times CinemaScope lenses were used outside of the confines of 20^th Century Fox.  Yes it is ostensibly pulp fiction but you could see aspects of it factoring into the classic swashbuckling adventure serials that would or would not influence Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Deep.  Definitely an interesting regional quasi-exploitation flick with some of the prettiest unofficial CinemaScope beachside photography ever produced by the celebrated camera lenses.

--Andrew Kotwicki