Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

S.O.S. Tidal Wave Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov December 20, 2017

John Auer's "S.O.S. Tidal Wave" (1939) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent distributors Olive Films. There are no special features on this release. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

Brainwashing in progress

Sometimes the most ridiculous plots sound ridiculous because most of us assume -- incorrectly -- that there is a certain rock solid logic that makes them such. But what if there are actually folks out there that bet precisely on that kind of thinking to do some bad things?

John Auer’s film S.O.S. Tidal Wave is precisely about a couple of such very ambitious and very dangerous people that come up with a seemingly crazy scheme to accomplish their goal -- winning the upcoming New York City mayoral race. The two ‘brains’ behind the scheme are the crooked social servant Clifford Farrow (Ferris Taylor, A Man Betrayed) and another even shadier character with extensive connections in the underworld named Melvin Sutter (Marc Lawrence The Asphalt Jungle). With less than a few weeks before the crucial elections, however, their scheme is accidentally revealed by the ambitious television journalist Jeff Shannon (Ralph Byrd, Dick Tracy), who quickly puts two and two together and concludes that the outcome of the upcoming election has already been decides. Determined to do what is right and prevent the bad guys from taking over the mayor’s office Shannon then quickly switches in attack mode and attempts to collapse their campaign, but instead of backing down they bet on an even more ambitious scheme that would guarantee them success. The crucial element of their scheme is fake news.

A couple of years ago S.O.S. Tidal Wave probably would have looked utterly ridiculous because it basically speculates that a fake news report can unleash massive paranoia that can be used to swing an entire election. In the film the bad guys broadcast some vintage footage showing New York City being hit by a massive tidal wave which essentially distracts a large portion of the electorate and they accomplish their goal. Is this really possible in the real world? Let’s put it this way: The film was made in 1939 and while it is far from perfect one of the big warnings it delivers is that you should always be skeptical of ‘reliable’ news reports. I don’t know about you, but I can instantly cite a dozen very good reasons from just this year to agree with the warning. In fact, in the wired world we live in today where social platforms are maintained by giant corporations that can instantly shape up the flow of news and affect the public opinion, it seems to me that what the film argues makes perfect sense.

The film loses steam in the third act where it essentially very quickly shifts its focus from the dangerous scheme to the ‘disaster’. The transition seems like a rushed attempt to wrap everything up with a crowd-pleasing climax that would make the entire production look bigger than it is, but it only ends up eroding the credibility of the main characters and their goals. Regardless, the fact that Auer was able to correctly predict that in the future bad actors would be able to use news broadcasts to manipulate the public ought to be admired.

The main credits identify Jack Marta as the director of photography. In the early 1970s, Marta lensed Steven Spielberg’s cult TV project Duel.

S.O.S. Tidal Wave Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, John Auer's S.O.S. Tidal Wave arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films.

The film must have been remastered rather recently because aside from a few tiny white flecks it looks very nice in high-definition -- it is stable, boasting very pleasing depth and clarity, and overall strong fluidity. The grading is also convincing, though ideally some minor nuances could have been expanded a bit. There are absolutely no traces of problematic digital tinkering. Grain is retained and rather nicely exposed. The entire transfer is also free of sharpening adjustments. All in all, the film has a strong and convincing organic appearance. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

S.O.S. Tidal Wave Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.

There are no technical issues to report in our review. The audio is clean, nicely balanced, and free of annoying age-related imperfections. The overall dynamic movement is unlikely to impress viewers that appreciate contemporary mixes, but this is the nature of the original sound design.

S.O.S. Tidal Wave Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplemental features on this Blu-ray release.

S.O.S. Tidal Wave Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

What John Auer's S.O.S. Tidal Wave attempts to do is very similar to what William Cameron Menzies' Things to Come does -- it warns about a future where people's minds would be incredibly easy to manipulate with advanced technologies. Of course Menzies' film is far bigger and bolder, while Auer's film basically focuses on conventional TV news reporting. Given how the big social media networks have changed the ways we access and consume news, and how utterly unreliable broadcast journalism has become in the last decade or so, I think that it is really difficult not to agree that the film correctly predicted the future. The narrative construction could have been better, but I still enjoyed this film. RECOMMENDED.