MGMAround the World Under the Sea’s title makes it sound like a portmanteau of Jules Verne’s two most famous novels, and therefore the kind of hastily assembled knock-off you’d have once found clogging up bargain buckets. But while it boasts an overgrown sea monster and, of course, takes place almost entirely underwater, this deep diving tale has no interest in smushing together the literary classics.It did, however, ride the wave of the aquatic sci-fi that had become curiously commonplace during the 1960s. Indeed, before the film’s release 60 years ago today, cinemagoers had been treated to The Underwater City, Destination Inner Space, and the daddy of them all, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Small screen viewers, meanwhile, could get their nautical fix via the likes of Voyage’s spinoff and Stingray, along with two shows with specific links to Around the World.The movie’s no-nonsense mission leader Doug Standish is played by Lloyd Bridges, the once-blacklisted star who’d portrayed ex-Navy frogman-turned-scuba diver Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt. Brian Kelly, who portrays his assistant Craig Mosby, found fame as the dolphin-owning widowed father in Flipper. And they were both the brainchild of the film’s animal-obsessed Hungarian producer Ivan Tors.Throw in several other TV stars of the day, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s David McCallum as a scientist with ulterior motives, Bond girl Shirley Eaton as an oceanographer with the power to inadvertently seduce every man she meets, and a director who’d previously helped engineer the iconic chariot race in Ben-Hur, and you have the makings of a marine actioner for all the family.Yet Around the World Under the Sea is strangely lacking in the thrills and spills you’d expect from its pedigree, instead confining much of the drama to the cramped, nuclear-powered submarine as it navigates the world’s vast ocean floors. This is very much a save-the-universe movie where planning takes precedence over execution.The Hydronaut’s testosterone-heavy crew. | MGMAs explained in the opening scene, the gung-ho mission has been launched by the UN following a tsunami that’s obliterated the Turkish coast. No fewer than 50 monitoring sensors must be planted with utmost precision along Earth's most powerful fault lines to help predict any subsequent natural disasters. Cue the film’s most entertaining sequence as Standish literally searches high and low to recruit his dream team, a task requiring all his powers of persuasion.Reclusive engineer Hank Stahl (prolific character actor Keenan Wynn), for example, takes a whole lot of convincing to leave the comfort of his diving bell man cave. “I couldn't care less,” he argues. “I got it made down here. I got my research, my books, my music. Why should I leave all this for a bunch of idiots who're going to blow themselves up?” Meanwhile, McCallum’s seismologist, Volker, is more interested in using the Hydronaut to retrieve some valuable crystals lost in a sunken freighter than in playing the hero.On paper, therefore, the group should make for an interesting dynamic. But the script gets too bogged down in scientific mumbo jumbo to make their sink-or-swim discussions compelling. More unforgivably, it leans into the inherent sexism of old-school Hollywood, relegating its only female character to an object whose sole purpose is to lust after — and be lusted after by — the insatiably horny men.The orange submarine. | MGMDespite her impressive qualifications, Eaton’s Margaret Hanford is rarely given more to do than serve coffee. The attitudes toward her range from the dismissive to the downright lecherous, with every single crewmate seemingly incapable of keeping their pervy thoughts to themselves. “Now if I could find me a mermaid built just like that,” remarks Stahl as the camera once again ogles a little too long on the object of his affections (Eaton’s legs are featured so much they should have had their own credit).At one point, she finds herself not in a love triangle, but a love square with Marshall Thompson’s geologist Orin Hillyard, her presumed-to-be ex Mosby, and the scheming Volker. The most galling example of such rampant sexism occurs when the latter, so distracted by slobbering over Handford he almost crashes the sub, blames her for the near-accident, as do the rest of the crew. Even Eaton’s Goldfinger character, who suffocated after being covered head to toe in gold body paint, was treated with more dignity.Thankfully, Director Andrew Marton does manage to tear himself away from Eaton’s body long enough to provide some truly awe-inspiring shots of the deep sea. Filmed with the help of Ricou Browning (the stuntman who also depicted the Gill-man in Creature from the Black Lagoon) in the Bahamas, Florida, and the Great Barrier Reef, it’s the kind of lush, vivid cinematography that wouldn’t look out of place in a Jacques Cousteau documentary.And a handful of underwater set-pieces, including a last-gasp quest for oxygen, a destructive supersized eel, and a climactic volcanic eruption, help bring the jeopardy and tension sorely lacking on board. There’s even some impossibly cute guinea pigs who — don't worry, animal lovers — make it to the end. Around the World Under the Sea, therefore, sits somewhere in the middle of the subaqueous boom. Aesthetically, it was ahead of its time. Its sexual mores, however, ultimately belong in the dinosaur age.Around the World Under the Sea is available on Amazon.