The Atomic Submarine

The Atomic Submarine is a 1959 science fiction film starring Arthur Franz, Dick Foran and Brett Halsey, with John Hillard as the voice of the alien. The film was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet, the script was adapted by Orville H. Hampton from a short story by Jack Rabin and Irving Block. The film is an alien invasion story that showcases the then new technology of nuclear submarines.

This film was made at a time when nuclear submarines were very new, shortly after the USS Nautilus made the first undersea crossing of the polar ice cap in 1958. Atomic submarines caught people's imagination as the embodiment of the idea of harnessing the power of the atom. The trailer and movie posters for the film suggested that it was a more traditional military action movie by playing down the science fiction elements and focusing primarily on the novelty of the nuclear submarine. The extraterrestrial spacecraft is alluded to only obliquely as the unspecified dire threat to the world which the crew of the submarine must overcome, but it is not clearly seen or called a flying saucer or UFO in the trailer.

The movie's few futuristic elements include cargo-freighter nuclear submarines and a mini-sub within a submarine. The impression conveyed was that the events in the film take place in the very near future. The 1950's are often called the Atomic Age because people were very enthusiastic about the promise of atomic power. The word "atomic" meant "high-tech and powerful", even if it was used to describe breakfast cereal. People of the day imagined a bright future where nuclear reactors would allow for electric power to become extremely cheap and plentiful. It must have been very topical at the time to imagine nuclear submarines that were inexpensive enough to be used to carry freight (and indeed, large numbers of civilian passengers) under the North Pole.