I hate to stay it, but U-571 is sort of growing on me. I'm starting to think of it as the "Plan Nine From Outer Space" of submarine movies, the sort of thing Ed Wood could have done if he'd had a lot more money! But there are lots of other howlers out there, too.

"Crimson Tide," or "Okay, I don't know what the order says, but let's start World War III anyway, and if you don't like it I'll have my dog annoint your trousers." One hopes that, in real life, the only thing the captain would have said under the circumstances was what he'd been trained to say. "Fix the @!*?## radio!"

"Submarine Attack" is sometimes unintentionally funny, with bad dubbing, and Miss Moneypenny clearly speaking in someone else's voice. (I presume she did the lines in Italian and someone else dubbed her part into English.)

The subtle gaffe, Don Rickles happily working the pickle switch for a cable periscope hoist in a boat equipped with a hydraulic periscope hoist in "Run Silent, Run Deep."

And, of course, the ultimate sub movie cliche, where use of stock footage has the crew happily serving aboard the magically morphing sub. (Dives as a GATO, swims underwater as a TAMBOR, and surfaces after again transforming into a BALAO.) That's on the outside. Inside, it's pure, uh, prototype?

"Operation Petticoat" is, I agree, in a category all by itself. Granted, given the premise of early 1942 and escaping from Cavite it was the wrong class boat, but it was also one of the last World War II sub movies made with a "star" that could move under its own power, and even dive if required. It got Tony Curtis aboard a sub, too, which was something he always wanted after serving in relief crews, but never deploying and so never qualifying.

J.T. McDaniel