Submarine Seahawk

Most notable for its rock & roll/sci-fi/horror/biker flicks and for Roger Corman movies in the '50s and '60s, American International Pictures also offered more traditional fare — in this case, war pictures much like the big-studio offerings but on minuscule budgets. Part of Columbia TriStar's ongoing series of AIP reissues, Submarine Seahawk is a World War II tale about the search for a phantom Japanese fleet; Operation Dames centers on a USO troupe caught behind enemy lines in Korea. Neither particularly lingers in the memory, apart from an occasional dialogue howler (from Dames: ''Did you ever try to stop a woman with an itch?''), and both have obviously impoverished production values. But they're not boring, and for the sheer fun of experiencing the bottom half of a '50s drive-in double bill, they're well worth a rental. B-