JLRVancouver This is the final collaboration of Toho's iconic kaiju team of Ishiro Honda (director), Eiji Tsuburaya (effects), and Akira Ifukube (music), but is far from their best work. The film follows three men (two scientists and a reporter) rescued by Capt. McKenzie (Joseph Cotton) in his highly advanced submarine "The Alpha" only to find out that their saviour is 200 years old and lives in the titular deep-sea utopia 11000 fathoms beneath the eponymous coordinate (where the equator crosses the international date line). On the trip to Latitude Zero, the Alpha survives an attack by a heavily armed submarine, The Black Shark, which is, commanded by Captain Kuroiga (Hikaru Kuroki) in the service of evil Dr. Malic (Cesar Romero) who is also 200 years old. After touring the idyllic abyssal city, the three rescuees end up accompanying McKenzie on a mission to rescue an atomic physicist kidnapped by Malic. Adventure ensues as the heroes penetrate Malic's secret island fortress and battle his army of giant man-bats, monster rats, and a surgically-engineered griffin, with the clock ticking as Malic prepares to practice his fiendish vivisection skills on the helpless scientist and his pretty daughter. As forgiving (and loving) as I am of Toho's tokusatsu movies, this one is generally ridiculous. The story makes no sense (unless the cryptic final scene means that the whole thing is some alternate reality) and there is little to explain who these fantastically advanced icosagenarians are or how the titular underwater city came into being. LZ 'technology' ranges from the reasonable (the Alpha), to the unlikely (the elevation belts and flamethrower/gas/laser gloves), to the preposterous (the hot tub 'bath of immunity' that makes you bulletproof). Malic's specialty seems to be bioengineering, but the giant rats and the lion look more like evil stuffed toys than actual animals and the 'man-bats' are ludicrous (note how the connection between their 'hand' and their wing changes depending on what the creature is doing). Even the most tired kaiju gimmick, the ability to suddenly increase in size, makes an appearance as Malic uses his "amplification serum" to make the griffin of suitable proportions to threaten a submarine. On the plus side, the underwater scenes are quite good (notably the opening bathyscaph segment), as are some of the images in the underwater city (such as the docking of the Alpha). The cast has lots of familiar faces from both American and Japanese cinema but the star power doesn't help. Cesar Romero essentially plays his iconic Joker character with a less maniacal laugh, Cotton's smug McKenzie is tiresome, Linda Haynes is terrible as the usually underdressed 'surprise, I'm a doctor' eye-candy, and Patricia Medina plays Malic's moll Lucretia, the typical sidekick who serves no purpose other than to have things explained. I don't know what I would have thought of this film when it came out and I was eleven (and probably representative of the target audience) - maybe I would have been impressed, but I doubt that it would hold the attention of a 'modern' eleven-year old. As far as adult viewers go: fans of this kind of schlock or those, like me, focused on their tokusatsu life-lists will find it worth watching, others, likely not.

Brian Washington This is one of the finest of the non-Godzilla epics by Ishiro Honda and Toho. It definitely has all the elements that make for a great film great story, great action and an interesting twist at the end. What really stands out is the fact that Honda pretty much took a near impossible situation in working with several American actors who didn't speak Japanese and was able to do a decent job in directing them. However, the thing that really was interesting about this film was the fact that this film marks what probably is the first and only time that Akira Takarada and the late, great Akihiko Hirata are heard speaking English with their own voices after years of being dubbed. This film is definitely one of the finest to come from Toho.

StuOz Irwin Allen's 1978 Captain Nemo featured old time Hollywood stars - Jose Ferrer and Batman's Burgess Meredith - doing battle with each other in studio-tank-bound submarines with memorable music scoring the show. Latitude Zero (1969) has old time Hollywood stars - Cotten and Batman's Romero - doing battle with each other in studio-tank-bound submarines with memorable music scoring the show!However, the middle sections of Latitude Zero are set in an underwater city with no subs to be seen, but still, those early scenes of Zero are very Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea/Nemo-ish, in fact I almost felt like I discovered some long lost Irwin Allen production when recently viewing Latitude Zero for my first time! The colourful lines given to Cotten and Romero are what stand out in my memory more than anything else.The film is cool.

jondunn I had a friend who would want to play the game 'Apartment Zero' which was his name for the game played by the characters in that movie. I would facetiously suggest that instead we play 'Latitude Zero'. The rules of Latitude Zero are: try to think of a 3rd person who was in the film Latitude Zero other than Cesar Romero and Joseph Cotten. ;)