Vote for your favorite WWII sub movie

John Garfield with that female doll in Destination Tokyo cracked me up..I guess he never got lonely in his bunk at night...

 

Or maybe he did, hence the doll.

 

As I recall, it was his gimmick for picking up girls. He'd take it to a bar and talk to it. "It never fails, some dame comes up and says, 'Is that the best you can do, sailor?' I say, 'That's up to you, sweetheart.'"

 

Das Boot #1 no question, but I also like The Enemy Below, especially when the German captain puts on the record player and has all his men sing. Doubt it ever happened but a great scene:

"And you my friend, and you my friend, and all of us to-gether!"

I did think it was a bit of a stretch that a merchant officer would not only be commissioned in the Navy but immediately made CO of a warship.

Many of you probably know this, but the book was written by Denis Rayner who did command ships and escort groups during the war.

 

I selected The Enemy Below, Das Boat is perhaps more realistic, but TEB shows it from both perspectives and I have always found that if I came across it channel surfing I always stopped and watched it again. At least until the next channel break anyway.

 

In The Enemy Below I always cringe when they are rolling those depth chargers off the racks and that sailor gets his fingers in the way...

 

I bet that got everybody's attention..but there is always one with hands in pockets knowing it all.

 

For me, it is "Das Boot" by a kilometer or a mile! It is as if
Wolfgang Petersen had never seen a submarine movie before he wrote and directed it.
Realistic from my extremely distant view, grimy, dirty, smelly, unpleasant as I imagine a type 7 boat would be in combat.
No heroics, no patriotism, no god and country, just the nastiest part of a segment of WW2 in which roughly 75% of it's members
died, not a casualty figure but a death figure. I have never been in a fistfight, let alone mortal combat so I have no
clue as to what it was like but in my sometimes vivid imagination I think that in the opening scene in "Saving Private Ryan "
and "Das Boot" I at least felt the mere hint of what it might be like. Few movies come even close.

I did enjoy the rather matter of fact aspect of "Our Enemy Below and I too match it whenever it comes up

 

Just ordered the WWII themed Japanese sub movie...Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean..looks interesting...thanks all for voting and commentating.

 

It is interesting...But also not your typical WW2 sub movie.

 

Wonder if you have seen Battle under Orion from 2009?? – Japanese action-drama epic battle between an American destroyer and a Japanese submarine takes place off the coast of Okinawa in the waning days of World War II. ..always looking for different perspectives of the war.

 

While most of us like Das Boot, it should be noted that surviving U-boat men had a different opinion. In the book, Operation Drumbeat by Gannon, he interviewed crewmen from U-123. They universally panned it! For instance, they thought all the yelling and screaming by the actors was a lot horses#$%. They said that you couldn't do that on a sub because the escorts would hear them. Instead, the suffered in silence and kept their fear totally in check. I believe that's called discipline. Of course, it's hard to portray that in a movie.