By Richard Winters
My Rating: 2 out of 10
4-Word Review: Ghost ship haunts ocean.
Members of a luxury ocean liner collide with a mysterious ship that comes out of nowhere. The liner sinks, but a few of the passengers manage to survive by boarding on a raft and going out to sea. After a few days of being afloat in the watery abyss they come into contact with the ship that they collided with. Having no other options they board the vessel only to find that no one else is on it. At first they are relived, but then creepy things begin to occur making them feel that it may be haunted. When the ship begins killing off members of the group one-by-one the remaining people look for a way off, but find nothing available.
The film starts out okay with a likable enough cast filled with veteran B-actors. The collision and subsequent sinking of the luxury liner as some definite tinges of The Poseidon Adventure to it and I’ll give props to the shot showing a grand piano crashing several stories down as well as the way the engine room quickly and realistically fills up with water. The ghost ship has a nice threatening quality and is shot in a way that gives it effective creepiness and makes it like a third character.
The performers do their best and giver earnest performances although it’s hard to believe that any of them could possibly have taken the material seriously and could only have been doing this for the money. I did not like the way George Kennedy’s character goes from being this surly prick of a sea captain to a man possessed by the evil spirits of the ship as I liked the way his character’s disagreeable personality meshed with the others and made the group dynamics a little more interesting.
The ultimate problem with the film though is the fact that there is no second or third act and the whole concept would’ve worked much better as a thirty minute episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ instead of trying to stretch it out to feature film length. There are just so many creepy shots of the ship, foreboding music and scared reactions of the cast one can take before it all becomes quite old and redundant.
The ending is unsatisfying and doesn’t explain anything. Yes, we understand this is a ship once used by the Nazi’s to torture victims, but why is it haunting these waters and why did it decide to collide with the ocean liner and if it has collided with other ships then why hasn’t it been detected by world governments and possibly gone under attack by armies in an attempt to subdue it? Again, as a creepy short story or an episode of an anthology series it might’ve worked, but as a film it is boring, one-dimensional and lacking any type of unique spin.
My Rating: 2 out of 10
Released: March 7, 1980
Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes
Rated R
Director: Alvin Rakoff
Studio: Astral Films
Available: DVD
Scopophilia 
The ending with the ship suddenly and fatally turning on Ashland, as better as it was than finishing off Marshal and his family, may have at least been a fitting comeuppance for such a madman. With the drama of a sea captain who dangerously loses his way, due to his bad reputation for treating his ship better than he treated his crew or passengers, Kennedy’s acting and given dialogue could have been better. The TV edit scene dialogue between Ashland and Marshal (after Ashland’s “THIS SHIP NEEDS BLOOD!”) being cut from the main version of the film is especially disappointing. Because I at least felt that it gave some sense of character to Ashland’s descent. Otherwise he is just a blatant psycho.
The talents of Nick Mancuso, Kate Reid, Saul Rubinek and Victoria Burgoyne may have sufficiently served each of their doomed characters and death sequences. But to find a substantial point to all the demonic influences on the ship, even for all the heinous evil that had clearly happened on it, I suppose that’s left to our imaginations. But that was more appreciable in The Shining. Thank you for your review.