Here, got a movie for you.
I was completely unaware of this movie until last night, when it turned up in my Amazon Prime recommendations. What is this? I said. Joseph Cotton and Ceasar Romero in submarines? Directed by the guy responsible for all those Godzilla movies in the sixties? I'M IN!
If you didn't grow up watching it on Creature Features, it's probably for two reasons. One is that it's predictably awful. Joseph Cotton seems to be kicking off his late-career headlong dive into humiliation here. It's a few years before Lady Frankenstein and The Abominable Dr Phibes, and how he consented to wearing this costumes (and I swear, it must be a little lipstick and rouge also) can only be explained by a need for money or some really strong kink we never found out about. Romero fares better, if only because he'd been doing Batman for a couple years and was comfortable with camp.
The other reason appears to be the usual legal battles. The movie is an international co-production between Tojo studios and Four Star Productions, an American television production company. But early in the production, after flying Americans to Japan for shooting, Four Star went bankrupt and left the movie to soldier on with half the budget intact. Then once the initial TV rights expired they were held up in a legal battle which kept it out of sight for decades. It's only now that ALL rights have expired that you can see this.
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