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One of the most underrated and generally underseen films of James Cameron’s career is The Abyss, the Ed Harris-starring underwater sci-fi adventure film that was released in 1989, sandwiched between the iconic releases of Aliens in 1986 and Terminator 2: Judgement Day in 1991
There are two reasons that The Abyss is so criminally underseen: the first being that, given it was a 20th Century Studios film (now owned by Disney), the streaming rights are a bit complicated, meaning it rarely ever pops up on the likes of Netflix or Hulu or Prime Video.
The second is that, for whatever reason, the movie was never released on Blu-ray or 4k. Until now.
Making a surprise appearance at Beyond Fest, the legendary director not only screened The Abyss (and teased when fans can expect the 4K version to release) but also told a wild story about having to punch a safety diver in the face in order to save his own life.
While describing the process by which his team would supervise the actors to ensure their safety, Cameron casually mentioned that he almost died during production. “We had the ‘angels,’ which were the safety divers that were right there, and each one was assigned to one or two of the actors and just kept them in sight the whole time. [But] they weren’t watching me,'” reported Variety.
Cameron’s story is quite lengthy, so let’s just jump to the literal punchline.
“At that point, it was almost check out point and the safety divers are taught to hold you down so you don’t embolize and let your lungs overexpand going up. But I knew what I was doing. And he wouldn’t let me go, and I had no way to tell him the regulator wasn’t working. So I punched him in the face and swam to the surface and therefore survived,” Cameron said.
While Cameron did not specify an official release date, he did say that the 4K rerelease of The Abyss — and his 1996 hit True Lies — would be available “in a couple of months.”
You can find a full transcription of James Cameron talking about the time he almost died on the set of The Abyss below.
“We were working 30 feet down. For me to be able to move the camera around on the bottom I wore heavy weights around my feet, no fins, a heavy weight belt around my waist.”
“When the tank gets low, you get a warning that you’re about to run out of air,” he said. “Well, this thing had a piston servo regulator in it, so it was one breath… and then nothing. Everybody’s setting lights and nobody’s watching me. I’m trying to get [underwater director of photography] Al Giddings attention on the p.a. but Al had been involved in a diving accident and he blew out both eardrums so he was deaf as a post, and I’m wasting my last breath of air on an underwater p.a. system going ‘Al… Al…’ and he’s working away with his back to me.”
“The safety diver gets to be about ten feet from the surface and he sticks a regulator in my mouth that he didn’t check. It had been banging around the bottom of the tank for three weeks and had a rip through the diaphragm — so I purged carefully and took a deep breath… of water. And then I purged it again, and I took another deep breath… of water.”
“At that point it was almost check out point and the safety divers are taught to hold you down so you don’t embolize and let your lungs overexpand going up. But I knew what I was doing. And he wouldn’t let me go, and I had no way to tell him the regulator wasn’t working. So I punched him in the face and swam to the surface and therefore survived.”