I’m trying to track down a TV movie, from the 1970s or thereabouts, looking back the plot seems so improbable that I’ve been thinking I must have dreamed it! Anyway – a deep sea project is trying to find the wreck of a liner that went down many years ago (1920s?) and when they find it, they find it is still airtight and there are people living in it. They have found a way of replenishing their air (from plants presumably) and food. They have a very autocratic society with the elderly crew officers in control, who are very hostile to the newcomers.
Does this ring a bell with anyone? I had the idea that Vincent Price was in it but looking on IMDB I can’t find anything that matches.
You didn’t dream it.
It had Christopher Lee in it, not Vincent Price. Wrong horror movie actor.
I remember one scene: The “greenhouse” had parakeets flying around. Then one of the “discoverers” is feted at a dinner and is served a “fricasseed micro chicken”.
Thanks, that’s it!
Eh, it could happen!
Someone has posted all 3 hours 11 min. of it on YouTube.
Was it that long? It didn’t seem so…
I watched it from…somewhere. TCM? I’m a sucker for Titanic-inspired movies.
I watched it last night. It was indeed weird, but I was surprised at how much I remembered!
This sort of thing is right up my alley. What a cast! Fallon from Dynasty, Cliff from Cheers, the vacuum cleaner guy from Breaking Bad! Thanks for the Youtube link – it’s otherwise only available as a VHS tape for like $130.
Checks out with your User name…
I remember that! There was a terrific storm that night, and I had just moved into a little flat and was cooking bbq ribs in the oven.
And Frank Gorshin from the original Batman series, if your memory goes back that far! He was in a Star Trek TOS as well.
Wow! I remember watching this!
Me too.
Jean Marsh, from Doctor Who and Upstairs Downstairs.
What a curious story.
I watched it yesterday. It was entertaining, but very different from something that would be made today. Aside from the slower pacing the most noticeable part was that the authorities were unambiguously good, genuinely worked to rescue everyone, and were upfront with the media (except for the diplomatic pouch). Also it was made for network TV so it they immediately cremated the dead: what a waste of food and fertilizer. 
I think I saw it as a kid; I’d have been 11 or so at the time. It’s one of two made-for-TV movies that I vaguely remember as being fairly horrifying to a tween at the time, but that are kind of silly now that I read about them as an adult. For some reason this one spooked me good as a kid.
The other was some kind of thriller about a supersonic transport airliner that somehow launched itself into space by mistake, and how NASA, etc… rescue the passengers, etc… I think that movie was a couple of years earlier when I was 9 (1981), because I watched it later in the evening on the day when I’d broken my ankle, and I was 9 when I did that.
Sounds like Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land.
Oh gawd! The film where the shuttle was used to rescue the plane, in an east-west orbit, and flying the shuttle twice in one day!
Goliath Awaits is a documentary compared to that.