The Deep – 3.75 stars

I signed up for Tubi because it has a lot of older movies that don’t get run on some of the other streaming services. This very competent Peter Yates (Bullitt) flick from 1977 beguiled me as a young teen for a couple of reasons. First, it was a Peter Benchley, post Jaws vehicle, with Robert Shaw as yet another boat captain, though this time his quarry is treasure, not a shark.

Second, well … I was 13 years old, Jacqueline Bisset, enough said.

My prurient childhood fascination aside, this is a pretty solid picture. Two tourists (Nick Nolte and Bisset) happen upon two collided shipwrecks while snorkeling. They cross a local drug lord (Louis Gossett) who also has an interest in what they’ve found (tens of thousands of vials of morphine from an old WWII medical ship) and must enlist a wily old diver and antiquity collector (Robert Shaw) to help them find treasure from the other vessel, deliver the drugs, and otherwise negotiate their way out of the mess.

Nolte exudes charisma as the thrill seeker captivated by the jewels of the sea. Shaw is Shaw, commanding and interesting even when he is probably phoning it in. Gossett is oozily charming as a lethal Haitian trafficker interested not in treasure, but in the drugs, until he learns of the treasure and gets greedy.

Bisset is every bit as alluring as she was when I was 13, and it turns out, now that I can focus, she can act. She is menaced throughout the picture and her terror is palpable.

The film gets balky when Gossett inexplicably harasses the trio even though they are working on his behalf, and the ending is the cheesiest finale in movie history. But otherwise, sexy and solid.