Scene: Lord Lew Grade's office somewhere in Marble Arch.

Lord Grade: 'By George, a spiffing year, Profits absolutely top hole.'

Financial Wizz-Kid: 'Yeah, boss, but what about the tax you'll have to pay on it?'

Lord Grade: 'Crikey, I never thought of that. I say, isn't there anything we can do about it? Buy a government department, hire the head of MI5, that sort of thing?'

F. W-K: 'Well, boss, the way I look at it, all you have to do is make a phenomenal loss on something, and cut all those excess profits away. After all, it's turnover that's important, anyway.'

L.G.: 'You're a genius, Hal, a genius. I've got just the thing, here on my desk, I've just bought the rights on this novel, called Raise the Titanic. What say we spend millions on special effects, shoot miles and miles of excess footage, and get some great, expensive international talent? Good Lord, we could even hire the American Navy. We could lose a pretty packet.'

F. W-K: 'Yeah, we could torpedo the whole thing.'

L.G.: 'No, no, that was the Lusitania. What we want is an iceberg.'

What other reason could there be for a film this bad? 'Raise the Titanic' plumbs new depths in every direction, falling into a class of sheer abysmalness all of its own. It is interminable, slow, and full of acting so wooden as to make Thunderbirds look like Oscar material. The only one in the cast who has the good sense to camp it up is Sir Alec Guinness, who, in a cameo appearance from behind two large black bushy eyebrows, is so bad as to be hilarious. (Sample of the brilliant script: grizzled old salt surges up to the bar like an Atlantic breaker and demands 'two pink gins, full measure, and don't skimp on the Angostura.')