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Morning Departure 1950
AKA Operation Disaster (US title) Only one camera angle on a portion of a submarine model is used a couple of times in this movie based on a stage play about the sinking of a submarine. The first shot...
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Dunkirk 1958
Terrific British film about the evacuation of the British army at Dunkirk in 1940. Nicely handled miniature work is mostly used as rear projected night backgrounds. One shot of a sinking ship is lifted...
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Alien Versus Predator 2004
The visual effects were supervised by John Bruno. Bill Pearson’s UK miniatures crew built the miniature icebreaker ship in this movie. It had a flat bottom and was placed on a flat glossy surface that...
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Captain Blood 1935
Captain Blood really re-invigorated the swashbuckler genre. The previous era of swashbucklers had been made in the 1920’s when full size ships were more the style than the use of miniatures. In fact...
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Destination Tokyo 1943
With Special Effects by Lawrence Butler this movie became the source of submarine and torpedo stock footage for Warner Brothers pictures for many years to come. The miniature work is for the most part...
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Destroyer 1943
Not quite up to the standard of the period but serviceable miniature shots of the Destroyer of the title, the John Paul Jones, as well as a Japanese submarine and attacking aircraft exploding. The...
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They were Expendable 1945
Some spectacular pyrotechnic work by Arnold A. Gillespie’s crew on display as a miniature Japanese cruiser is hammered by torpedoes from PT Boats in this John Ford directed movie. The miniature cruiser...
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Gray lady Down 1978
The photographic effects by Howard A. Anderson Company for this sunken submarine rescue movie are very competently staged and shot. IMDB states that the underwater miniatures were shot in a smoke...
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Two Years Before the Mast 1946
Photographic effects supervised by Gordon Jennings, photographed by his brother Devereaux and assisted with the miniatures by Ivyl Burks. Some solid work typical of the period by some of the legends of...
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Glory at Sea AKA Gift Horse 1952
Glory at Sea – American title, Gift Horse – original British title. This film concerns itself with one of the 50 obsolete four funnel American destroyers that were given to Britain in the early stages...
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New Moon 1940
This MGM musical has a few shots of model ships by the ever reliable Arnold A Gillespie and team. The ships were 1/12th scale with some foreground palm trees at 1/4 scale. The night shots were, as was...
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Storm Over the Pacific 1960
AKA Hawai Middowei daikaikûsen: Taiheiyô no arashi AKA I Bombed Pearl Harbor (US release) This movie recreates, in miniature, the attack on Pearl Harbour and the Battle of Midway.The special effects...
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Titanic 1953
This is generally regarded as the lesser Titanic movie however it has some very creditable miniature effects work supervised by Ray Kellogg. The miniature iceberg shots at the beginning of the film are...
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Captain Nemo and the Underwater City 1969
Essentially an odd adaption of Jules Verne’s 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Nautilus is a decent “steampunk” alternative to Disney’s version designed way before the term steampunk was coined. I...
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The Enemy Below 1957
This was one of my favorite model ship movies growing up. It was one of the first movies on which L.B. Abbott supervised the special photographic effects after being made the head of the 20th Century...
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Torpedo Run 1958
Nominated for an Academy Award for best Visual effects in 1959. Visual effects by A Arnold Gillespie and his reliable crew at MGM with the surface shots done on the Lot 3 outdoor tank and the...
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Submarine Seahawk 1958
This film’s miniature shots are predominantly stock footage taken from two previous Warner Brothers movies, Action in the North Atlantic and Destination Tokyo both from 1943. The only new visual...
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Reap the Wild Wind 1942
Won best visual effects at the 15th Academy awards in 1943. Gordon Jennings and his team deliver some well staged rough weather miniature ship effects in technicolor. There is also a mechanical giant...
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Sea Of Lost Ships 1953
This was a Republic picture and so is interesting to the miniature buff solely because the visual effects were by the Lydeckers, Howard and Theodore. For a reel of more of their visual effects mostly...
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Ships With Wings 1941
This is really a very unconvincing film on every front, from the cornball story, the casting of the actors playing navy types and Nazis and regrettably the miniatures which are very studio bound in...
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