It’s October, which means that spooky season is here! I figured it might be fun to review a few ship-based horror movies this month. I’m calling it Horror Movie Monday.
First up is a somewhat obscure film starring George Kennedy and Richard Crenna: 1980’s Death Ship. Directed by Alvin Rakoff, the movie was based on a story by Jack Hill and David P. Lewis. It was a box office disappointment when it was released but has since become something of a cult classic.
Please note: this review contains spoilers. It also contains a good amount of snark and derision. You’ve been warned.
The Unhappy Captain
The film opens to creepy, shaky shots of the ocean and a decrepit, black-hulled freighter. Aboard the vessel, a German-speaking voice is heard over the loudspeaker as a course change is ordered.
Aboard the unnamed cruise ship (crew uniforms suggest the name Empress), we meet the dour Captain Ashland (George Kennedy). We learn quickly that he detests his crew, hates his passengers, and is being replaced as the ship’s master in three days. His replacement, Captain Trevor Marshall (Richard Crenna), is on hand to observe the ship’s operations before taking command. He suggests to Captain Ashland that they join the party, to which the grumpy mariner reluctantly agrees. “Bastard,” says the helmsman as the two captains leave the bridge. “Thank God it’s his last trip.”
A lively costume party is underway. We’re treated to rather freaky close-up shots of masked passengers and crew dancing to tepid disco music. A British passenger named Lori (Victoria Burgoyne) and Officer Nick (Nick Mancuso) tear up the dance floor as the film introduces Captain Marshall’s family: his wife Margaret (Sally Ann Howes), daughter Robin (Jennifer McKinney), and son Ben (Danny Higham). Captains Ashland and Marshall enter, and the former is teased by ship’s entertainer Jackie (Saul Rubinek). Captain Ashland grumbles to himself. Lori and Officer Nick discreetly escape to a cabin where things get pretty steamy. The Marshall children are sent to bed.
The black-hulled freighter is sailing at top speed. The engine telegraphs and other equipment move by themselves. On the cruise ship’s bridge, they pick up an unknown vessel on radar and determine that it’s on a collision course. Uh oh. Despite several course corrections, they can’t shake the oncoming vessel. Captain Ashland, in an awkward conversation with a passenger named Mrs. Morgan (Kate Reid), is summoned to the bridge.
Disaster!
The freighter continues to close in on the cruise ship. Captain Ashland is unable to shake the oncoming vessel, and his ship is rammed. Panic ensues…as well as a montage from the 1960 disaster flick The Last Voyage (in which the grand old liner French Île de France is ripped apart and partly sunk). Captain Ashland’s ship apparently sinks in a matter of minutes. Definitely a bad way to end a cruise.
The next morning, the Marshalls, Lori, Officer Nick, Jackie, and Mrs. Morgan are floating in a lifeboat-thing. They’re the only survivors (which is particularly impressive since they were all in different parts of the ship when it sank). The sun beats down on them, and eventually a nearly dead Captain Ashland floats to the surface from…somewhere. Considering that the ship was rammed and sunk in the middle of the night and that it’s now midday, the man has clearly set a world record for holding one’s breath. He’s pulled aboard, and the bedraggled survivors drift in their lifeboat-thing.
They drift right up to the mysterious, black-hulled freighter that rammed them (though no one knows this). The bow looms ominously over the survivors. Its bow is remarkably intact for having just rammed and sunk a cruise ship. The survivors call for help but get no answer. The ship is deserted…or is it? A window opens by itself and quickly closes again. No one notices this, and further camera shots reinforce the fact that the freighter is deserted.
Finding a lowered gangway, Officer Nick climbs aboard and takes a look. “There’s no one here,” he calls down after exploring the empty ship. The Marshall kids climb aboard next, and Ben eventually takes a leak on the deck (something tells me that this is a bad idea). The other survivors board, save for Captain Marshall who calls down to Nick to help him with Ashland. The gangway collapses, and the three men fall into an extraordinarily brown and muddy ocean (the film was partially shot near Mobile, Alabama). Lori throws a ladder down to them. As they attempt to climb, however, oil spits out onto the three officers. But they finally get aboard.
Aboard the Black Freighter
As the survivors take stock of their situation, a lever moves by itself. Jackie is ensnared by a line and hoisted high into the air by a crane. He’s swung out over the side and dunked into the ocean headfirst. The others look on horrified. Jackie’s hoisted back into the air after a few moments. The freighter’s anchor is raised, and her engines start up. Jackie is released and quickly drawn into the propellers where he’s chopped to pieces in the least gruesome way possible. Despite any blood, body parts, etc., the onlookers are nevertheless horrified.
With the freighter now underway, the remaining survivors explore. Captain Ashland is left on deck by himself, whereupon he starts hearing a disembodied voice speaking German to him. I’m sure this is fine. Officer Nick is later hit in the back of the head by a swinging tackle block and falls onto the deck 15-feet below (crashing through steel beams in the process) and lands hard on his back. So that’s head trauma, severe internal injuries, and spinal damage at the very least. But don’t worry kids…he’s just unconscious.
The Marshalls, Lori, and Mrs. Morgan discover an old bunk room and learn that the ship is German in origin. Captain Ashland is brought to a bed, and — because this is a horror film — the others decide to split up and look for supplies. A gramophone hauntingly plays by itself, and Officer Nick wakes up and goes to find the others. He just wakes up. It’s not like he fell 15-feet onto a steel deck after being knocked in the back of a head by a swinging tackle block or anything like that.
Captain Ashland finally comes to, and Mrs. Morgan tends to him. She takes a few pieces of 35-year-old hard candy from a jar and eats them (eww). Captain Marshall and Officer Nick try to work out the ship’s position and find that the freighter’s just been sailing in a circle. Meanwhile, Margaret, Robin, Ben, and Lori watch Everything Is Rhythm (1936) in the projector room. Mrs. Morgan joins them, but eventually starts to decompose and runs back to the bunk room where she’s strangled to death by a possessed Captain Ashland. He later claims that it was a seizure that killed her, and orders that she be buried at sea.
Up on deck, Captain Marshall begins the services until Captain Ashland insists on taking over. The freighter’s lifeboats lower themselves into the water and drift away. “This damn ship!” Margaret yells. Nick adds, “It’s like it’s alive, trying to kill us!” Captain Ashland smirks and is next seen wearing a Kriegsmarine captain’s uniform. I’m sure this is fine. He tells Captain Marshall that he’s in command and that the ship is his. Okay…maybe this isn’t fine. Lori takes a shower, and the water turns to blood. Ashland, apparently, proceeds to throw her overboard.
Apparently not too torn up over Lori’s death, Captain Marshall and Officer Nick explore the ship some more. They discover a red room filled with Nazi paraphernalia: swastika banners decorate the walls, as well as propaganda posters, and portraits of Adolf Hitler. Running into an adjoining room, they discover a medical facility with dishes filled with extracted gold teeth and pocket watches. “This must have been used as an interrogation ship,” Captain Marshall declares.
The Terrible Truth
Captain Marshall and Nick then find a torture chamber filled with skeletons and desiccated corpses that silently scream at them. Officer Nick and Captain Marshall then stumble into the projection room…somehow. They just kind of fall into the room directly from the torture chamber (I’m pretty sure it was in a completely different part of the ship). Now, however, instead of playing Everything Is Rhythm, the projector shows newsreel footage of Adolf Hitler saluting goose stepping German troops. The two men destroy the equipment, but the film keeps playing as a loud mechanical whine assaults their eardrums and they fall to their knees.
Then, again jumping to another part of the ship, Nick lunges at Captain Ashland but falls (this time 30-feet) into a water-filled cargo hold. Ashland brings up a net filled with the bodies of Nazi victims, with Nick screaming all the while. This part is genuinely creepy. Then the net folds in on itself…and Nick dies. Wait, he just dies? Obviously, he died as a result of this second fall compounded by his previous injuries.
Final Showdown
Still being assailed by the mechanical whine, Captain Marshall finds himself sitting in the captain’s quarters with Ashland. “The ship needs blood, Marshall,” Ashland says with a trippy voiceover. “It must have blood. Blood to survive. Blood. Your blood. The blood of your wife. The blood of your children. This ship needs blood, Marshall.” Coming out his daze, Captain Marshall picks up a table knife and stabs Ashland in the chest. He falls to the deck and is seemingly dead.
As the Marshall family tries to flee the ship, they come across a giant freezer filled with corpses of Allied servicemen. Captain Marshall finds life jackets from some of the bodies, as well as a rubber life raft that’s remarkably unfrozen after 35 years. They make it outside but are met with a hail of gunshots. “No one leaves my ship, Marshall!” Captain Ashland shouts as he fires a rifle at the family. “No one!”
Captain Marshall is knocked out in vicious hand-to-hand fighting, and Margaret is apprehended by Ashland and thrown into a storage locker. The possessed captain has seemingly triumphed. However, the freighter picks up another cruise ship and weighs anchor despite Ashland’s orders. The captain goes berserk and unsuccessfully tries to regain control of the freighter.
The Marshalls get away. Captain Ashland shoots up the bridge equipment in a fury and goes down into the engine room and starts shooting dials and gauges. The ship doesn’t like that very much and knocks him onto a giant turning gear when nearby equipment sparks up. Captain Ashland screams as he’s slowly torn to pieces.
“We made it!” Captain Marshall says to his family as they paddle away from the departing freighter. “We’ll be alright now!” Their life raft is eventually spotted by a Coast Guard helicopter and the day is saved. The Coasties confirm that there were no other survivors and begin rescue operations.
Elsewhere, the freighter bears down on their new target. The film ends with the titular Death Ship ramming the new cruise ship.
My Review
Well…where to begin?
First off, I want to say this movie is bad. It’s not even one of those “so bad it’s good” kind of films. It’s just bad. I found it for free on YouTube, which should probably tell you something. It’s an interesting concept for sure…a movie about an evil, sentient Nazi prison ship should be entertaining. It should be good. But this film was poorly executed and suffers as a result.
Confusing, clunky edits hurt Death Ship the most. Seriously…the editing is on crack. Characters jump around to different parts of the ship at lightning speed thanks to the editing. How did Nick go from the torture chamber to the projection room, and then outside to fall into the cargo hold? How did Captain Marshall wind up in Ashland’s quarters? How were Nick and Lori stark naked on the cruise ship and then fully dressed on the lifeboat-thing?
I know, I know…I’m putting too much thought into this. But still.
Then there’s the fact that this movie is just boring. It drags on and on…and you wonder when something is going to happen. Even the gory parts of Death Ship aren’t all that gory. We do get some excitement as the cruise ship is being rammed, as well as at the end as the Marshalls are trying to escape. There are also some genuinely creepy moments, like when Nick falls into the net filled with bodies and when Captain Ashland is torn to bits. The freighter’s machinery working by itself is also nice and creepy.
The set design on Death Ship was also really well done. Apparently, the production team put a sizeable part of their budget on the freighter. It shows too: the sets are beautifully creepy. I just wish the team had put more money elsewhere…like in post-production.
Not even George Kennedy and Richard Crenna can save this movie. They’re good in their roles as the two captains. In fact, pretty much everyone in Death Ship is good in their roles. But there’s no character development whatsoever. We don’t really know anything about the characters to begin with, or why we should care about them at all. A poor script and bad editing will sink a movie quicker than Captain Ashland’s ill-fated cruise ship.