THE AQUARIANS (1970)
TV-Movie
Article 2637 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-25-2008
Posting Date: 11-1-2008
Directed by Don McDougall
Featuring Ricardo Montalban, Jose Ferrer, Leslie Nielsen
Country: USA

A team of scientists use their state-of-the-art deep-sea diving equipment to find out what is poisoning the waters on the coast of Aganda.

If movies were broken out into species, this would be a Jargonus Imperativus; a movie whose dialogue mostly consists of jargon spewed out in the form of imperative statements. In short, most of the dialogue in this movie consists of people barking orders to each other over a microphone. As a result, very little character development takes place; even an actor brimming with as much style as Ricardo Montalban fails to do more than make his character a slightly eccentric cipher; everyone else (with the exception of Jose Ferrer) plays forgettable nonentities, though I think one of the characters has a baby. This was another failed pilot, and I’m not surprised it didn’t sell. There’s a bit of preaching about pollution, but other than that, it’s mostly underwater footage coupled with people barking orders. It’s not quite as jargon-heavy as the Italian Space Operas of the sixties (which also belong to this same species), but that doesn’t make it any more interesting.