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Jinxed from the get-go by an unwieldy screenplay bearing the fingerprints of some seventeen writers (Eric Hughes and Adam Kennedy end up with final credit), and the last minute hiring of Jerry Jameson after original director Stanley Kramer walks two weeks into the shoot, RAISE THE TITANIC, based on Clive Cussler's best-selling 1976 novel, opens to poor reviews and even poorer box-office. Richard Jordan stars as a crack US government operative assigned to oversea the mammoth job of locating and raising the legendary Titanic from its watery grave in order to recover boxes of a rare fissionable mineral which the ship was reportedly carrying. Despite a formidable budget, a strong cast - Sir Alec Guinness, Jason Robards, Anne Archer, M.Emmett Walsh - and some impressive miniature work, the film is a box-office failure, prompting financially compromised producer Lord Grade to remark that, in hindsight, it probably would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic..
