By the way, we had two versions of the movie to choose from. We chose the "Theatrical Version" since none of us had seen the movie before.

During the first half of the movie, I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it much, but during the second half, I liked it a lot more. Part of the first half has the same feeling as several movies I'd seen before, like "The Black Hole" and "Event Horizon" and even the part of "2010" where the entry into a ship or craft that has been abandoned or has been through some sort of catastrophe is causing suspense because the people entering don't know what to expect. Sometimes, everything is OK and sometimes, horrible things start happening. I was hoping it wouldn't turn out to be an "Event Horizon" type of movie. Fortunately, it didn't.

Many scenes from the movie made me think of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" underwater, a thought which came into my mind at least a dozen times.

Back in 1993 when we got a new Silicon Graphics machine, back when they were the size of a refrigerator and having four 33MHz R3000 CPUs was state of the art (or close to it), one of the demos that came with it was a scene from "The Abyss" (the water tentacle). This makes me guess that SGI machines were used for the water tentacle scene. It was a very neat scene, and I wish they'd done more with it in the movie. Who knows, in the other version of the movie, maybe they did.

I haven't read about or studied underwater exploring in a long time, but it seems that I remember from long ago that the pressure as far down as the people were in this movie would be enough to crush someone. These people weren't wearing much to protect them from such pressures. Were what these people doing technically possible? Never mind the "breathing fluid" thing.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Information Site

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This editor then told me that perhaps, someday, they'd do a special edition laserdisc and add some of that footage back into the movie. I waited impatiently for a few years but eventually I was pleased to see that the movie had been restored to the original 2 hour and 50 minute version.

These days, tons of movies are released on DVD as "Special Editions" with bonus, behind-the-scenes material. Even today, few DVDs are packaged as well as the original laserdisc release of The Abyss Special Edition... essentially the same as the DVD release (except the DVD offers just a few features not yet invented in the days of laserdisc).

As for the pressure thing, is is possible to be that far down without crushing IF you pressurize to the level over a period of time.

As for the breathing liquid thing, it is very real. I do not know if the actor actually did it or if it was a great camera trick, but the navy uses this all the time on deep sea recon dives. As in the movie, it only lasts a short time, just as air does.