Captain Nemo and the Underwater City is a 1969 British film directed by James Hill and starring Robert Ryan, Chuck Connors and Nanette Newman.

[2] Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus rescues drowning passengers and takes them to an underwater city, Templemer (pronounced Temple-Meer) where they are told they will remain forever.

These survivors include thieving brothers Barnaby and Swallow Bath, the cowardly Lomax, Helena Beckett and her son, and Senator Robert Fraser.

This alienates Joab, who helps Fraser and the Baths steal Nautilus II, on condition they leave without bloodshed and allow the crew to return with the submarine intact.

It had stemmed from an idea that led to Roger Corman's failed Captain Nemo and the Floating City, itself based on a combination of two of Jules Verne's stories.

Though that movie never passed the planning stage, MGM producer Steven Pallos managed to re-create the project having read a series of inspirational articles about Jacques Cousteau's experiments with deep sea habitats, and the "floating" was changed to "underwater".

The film drew heavily on the supposed charm of the Victorian era, following agreement between director and scriptwriters to produce a popular escapist atmosphere, more the essence of Michael Todd's Around the World in Eighty Days than of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.