By Stephen Weir

There is popcorn on your shirt, all over the floor-and even in your date's hair. You have missed your mouth with the last three shots, even though it is open so wide it looks like NASA's wind tunnel.

Who cares? The scuba diver is tussling with a creature at the bottom of the Amazon River. It's a 'loser-drown' battle; now is not the time to worry about a handful or two of misplaced buttered kernels. Saturday afternoon at the movies; It is a time to shut off the reality switch and live the adventures of the celluloid set. And when Hollywood decides to create an escape-from-the-real world environment scuba diving is one of the more popular vehicles for doing just that.

Underwater scenes in adventure motion-pictures began in the pioneer days of Film making. It all started in 1914, when film photographer Ernie Williamson got the notion to point his hand-cranked camera under the surface of a Nassau bay to film part of the original Jules Verne Classic, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.To this day, underwater sequences continue to be part of the movies - witness films ranging from Waterworld to the upcoming Titanic.

Pictured below is a dive film that was released in 1968 by Paramount Pictures. Made by Ivan Tors, the musical comedy starred Tony Randall and Janet Leigh. Can you name the movie?

Answer: If you read this month's DIVER Magazine you know that the movie was Hello Down There. Because of space limitations writer Stephen Weir couldn't give the full story about the movie. What follows is a brief synopsis of this dive movie.

HELLO DOWN THERE-1968 colour, Paramount Pictures 98 minutes Director: Jack Arnold Starring: Tony Randall, Janet Leigh, Jim Backus, Roddy McDowall, Ken Berry and Richard Dreyfuss. Ivan Tors Production had a financial hit on their hands with Hello Down There. It is a comedy movie about a family who live in an onion shaped underwater habitat for a month to prove that subsea housing is a viable concept. A rival tries to sabotage the experiment, while the US navy looks on. Randall's children bring a rock group underwater and cut a record while friendly dolphin and seal patrol against sharks.

Ivan Tors produced Sea Hunt and Flipper for both television and the big screen. They also handled underwater sequences for the early Bond films. R. Browning was the sea-bottom director and Lamar Boren and Jordan Klein were the cameramen.