If you like your Westerns underwater you'll probably go for this one. It's even got a cast of veteran Western actors with the presence of Gilbert Roland and Richard Boone on hand. They portray rival sponge divers in the Gulf Coast waters of Florida, with offspring (Robert Wagner and Terry Moore) destined to fall in love as the story progresses.

What you have to do here is overlook a number of inconsistencies in the story, including those involving the mechanics of the human body. While Roland's character Mike Petrakis dies from the ill effects of surfacing too quickly from a tragic dive, son Tony (Wagner) engages in a similar dive later in the story, is brought to the surface even more quickly, and never even gets a single spasm. As for how he got away from that octopus, you just have to take it on faith.

The relationships of the characters also didn't seem to remain consistent. Case in point was bully Arnold (Peter Graves) beating up on Tony because girlfriend Gwyneth (Terry Moore) was falling for the younger guy, but simply taking it in stride by the end of the picture when the two hook up for good. Sure, Tony saved his life, but the hunky dory feeling between the two just didn't square with me.

What I really couldn't wrap my head around was the price these sponges brought when hauled back into shore - twenty two thousand dollars for a boat load! In 1953!?!? Maybe I'm missing something here; there must have been some basis for those numbers but it just doesn't compute with me.

Most reviewers here cite the underwater photography as cutting edge, however what I saw, though competent enough, was not that spectacular. Filming in color would have been something new for the era, but everything I saw in the print I just viewed was pretty much shades of blue, and rather washed out at that. I guess I'm sounding a fairly negative note here with my review which I don't mean to be. The story is an OK one offering a venue you don't get to see too often. It's worth a single viewing to catch the young Robert Wagner in an early starring role.

Other than that, my best takeaway from the picture was the sign in the seaside restaurant where a number of scenes took place - 'You hook em, We cook em'. Sounds like a plan to me.

I am a Floridian who doesn't live all that far from Tarpon Springs...the small town in which "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" was set. Even today, it's big claim to fame is their sponge diving trade. And, when you see the youths jump into the harbor to recover the crucifix tossed into the water, well, that's a tradition the Greek Orthodox community still celebrates to this day. It's a lot more touristy today and if you visit the quaint little shops, you'll notice many sell copies of this film.

According to this story, the quality of the sponges the divers are retrieving has declined and the 12-Mile Reef is a piece of virgin territory where the sponges still are abundant. Naturally, it's tougher and more dangerous to go there...and some of it is because thieves and/or folks claiming the waters are theirs sometimes set upon the boats and steal their harvests.

While I really wanted to love "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef", I felt very ambivalent about it after seeing it. The film was okay...just a time-passer and apart from nice nice local scenery and underwater shots, the story just never impresses nor does it annoy.





By the way, some scenes were filmed in the Keys as well as the Bahamas. I assume they were picked mostly because the water is far clearer there and much better for underwater shots. I've scuba dove the areas and know that there's a huge difference in the clarity of these waters.

Although I would not want to minimize the dangers of deep sea diving which were even more before the invention of scuba gear, the idea that sponge diving is the most dangerous profession in the world as Rock Hudson's narration tells us is a bit much. Yet it's the underwater scenes in Beneath The 12 Mile Reef that hold the audiences attention. On the surface it's your average soap opera about two young people who get together despite the objections of the father of one of them.

Robert Wagner is the boy and Terry Moore the girl. Wagner is the son of Gilbert Roland and Angela Clarke and Wagner and Roland are sponge divers, a trade brought over from the old country. They've settled in Florida and continue to work, but when they try to dive in another area Wagner and Roland find that it's been staked out by Richard Boone and his family who is protective of their turf in general and don't like the Greeks that have settled there. Moore's got a nasty boyfriend in Peter Graves, but she sure likes what she sees in Wagner who isn't named Adonis Petrakis for nothing. He certainly was a lovely sight for the teenage girls back in 1953.

Beneath The 12 Mile Reef got an Oscar nomination for best color cinematography in 1953 but lost to Shane at the ceremony. It's because of those underwater sequences which still hold up well today.

This film also gives you one of the very few opportunities to see Harry Carey, Jr. in a non-western film, playing one of Terry Moore's brothers. Peter Graves just does not cut it as a villain, except in Stalag 17 where his all American personality is what makes him the surprise informant. And J. Carrol Naish, Hollywood's all purpose ethnic plays a sidekick role to Wagner and Roland. I'm sorry Roland was not in the film all the way, he's a favorite player of mine, but his death scene is a frightening one and the best in the film out of the sea.

Beneath The 12 Mile Reef is an average romantic soap opera with some really good color cinematography in the ocean depths. Would the players had a better story to go with the scenery.