The Neptune Factor is an under-sea sci-fi potboiler loaded with interesting technology and kindergarten plotting. Production, made in Canada, has a dull script, dreary direction by Daniel Petrie and a cast of familiar names for whom audiences may feel some embarrassment.
Script traces the rescue of some underwater scientists whose sea-bottom lab is hurled into an ocean crevasse by an earthquake. The action lurches from the surface control ship where Walter Pidgeon and Yvette Mimieux are anxious observers, to the underwater rescue vehicle, skippered by Ben Gazzara whose crew includes Ernest Borgnine and Donnelly Rhodes, fellow scientists of the lost crew who are determined to find them.
Gazzara’s role demands he project cool concern most of the time; Borgnine, Pidgeon and the others give it the old college try.
