death ship review

This is a 1980's video and cable classic. One of the most notorious "bombs" of the 1980's, DEATH SHIP actually turned out to be one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a while for a couple of reasons. A mysterious ghostly freighter rams and sinks a modern day cruise ship whose survivors climb aboard the freighter and discover that it is a World War II Nazi torture vessel. The images of the abandoned ship, guided by unsettling noises really chills you. Directed by Alvin Rakoff. External Reviews “The Death Ship promises something for everyone, set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance,” well, maybe Alvin Rakoff’s aquatic horror film is a little light on romance but it does have something for everyone. By the time I was old enough to go rent it, the copy had mysteriously disappeared from the videostore. A communist in Australia reviews B. Traven's The Death Ship, and relates it to the 2002 attacks on the working conditions of maritime workers in Australian waters. A decent horror flick...for the most part, Ship of Death: The Haunting of Unspeakable Acts from the Past, Some castaways from a passenger luxury cruise are trapped inside a mysterious freighter on open seas. Strictly second-string city. It kept me spellbound and wondering what was going to happen next. A luxury liner collides with a mysterious ship and sinks, leaving nine survivors, including the captain (George Kennedy). © 2021 METACRITIC, A RED VENTURES COMPANY. I'll try to find a copy of it at Hollywood Video and see if the . Sure it's a low budget horror b-movie but what it lacks in budget and script it makes up for in very uncanny and eerie atmosphere. Under appreciated classic horror film was one of the last to put mood before blood. Death Ship. Released by Avco Embassy in early March stateside, critics hated it and audiences failed to come aboard; it only brought in about a third of its $4.5 million dollar budget. When I was a little kid, driving by this local videostore on my bike, I always stopped to take a quick peek at this amazingly cool video-cover displayed in front of the store window (just look up the poster art here on IMDb). But a Ten Little Indians plot soon takes over which is as rusty as the evil vessel. Gales accepts the job, although he realizes the vessel is a death ship: overinsured, flagless, near-derelict, and staffed by men like himself, who are without documentation. The teeth were terrifying, but watch it for the shower scene ! But what this film does better than those other films, is that I manages to maintain atmospheric. N.B. The castaways enter into the rare German ship and after encounter themselves trapped and they figure out that things are not as they should. Some of the scenes in this film were absolutely frightening! Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game - Complete Edition, Death Ship unfortunately turned out to be about as frightening as "The Love Boat." Like at least one other reviewer here the lurid cover art of Death Ship drew me in as young, impressionable boy standing in the local dodgy video store in the early eighties shortly before many of the horror and exploitation films therein were whipped from our shelves by the fledgling BBFC and consigned to that cinematic void that lurks somewhere between obscurity and cult-fame. As a nightowl, I keep watching it. With George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes. When a series of bizarre occurrences happen and the crew becomes caught in a web of ghastly deeds ,they soon learn is inhabited by haunting previous crew. Death Ship (1980) Cast: George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes, Kate Reid, Victoria Burgoyne, Jennifer McKinney, Danny Higham. Metacritic Reviews. In fact, I'd file it quite high up in my "Lost Gems" folder - quite why this one has been resigned to the Dustbin of History and the Golden Turkey awards is beyond me. Professionally wanting as this may be, film-makers have re-worked the concept twice now. This film, "Death Ship", while it was a made for TV movie, is actually pretty scary. However, these few good elements are not enough to counteract the film's overwhelming sense of boredom. A group of three space explorers face a dilemma, when they explore a crashed ship, that looks very similar to their own. For reasons never clearly explained the ship has become "haunted" or possessed by the Nazis who manned it [who's demise is also never explained] and continues roaming the seven seas looking for souls to torment by ramming pleasure yachts and lurking around until the survivors scrabble on board for refuge. I'm not familiar with the synopsis policy early 80s, while reading this one does not really spoil the adventure, but still you get the gist of where this is going. His second series, featuring DI Peter Shaw, has been more of a slow burner. Just a burning need for blood. The horror of who the Nazis were and what they did, adds a whole other dimension of terror to this movie. I saw this movie at a drive as a double feature with Scanners, I thought both films were great, but then I saw this film on video about ten years later,and I understood it a lot better. An abandon, rusty, Nazi torture ship, roaming the seas, looking for victims. I was greatly impressed! The ship collision near the start of the movie, that sank the cruise liner carrying the survivors, was caused by the Death Ship in its ghostly mission to search for more victims. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. It's certainly not the only horror film on the IMDB list for co-writer Jack Hill, who wrote and directed Spider Baby, as well as Switchblade Sisters, Foxy Brown, Sorceress and so many more. However as time has passed, the screenings have been reduced to odd ball commercial TV screenings, if its screened at all. [9 June 1980, p.B1], The movie degenerates from the merely farcical to the appallingly tasteless...As the end draws mercifully near, one character proclaims: "This ship Nazi death ship driving people insane, a shower full of BLOOD, and George Kennedy going full … Atrocious acting,nonsensical script,very low production values:all these elements can be found in Alvin Rakoff's "Death Ship".So why am I not going to trash this little movie?It's simple,I really like this film for those very reasons.It is everything low-budget horror movie should be,yet still manages to tell its story and generate a considerable amount of unease and dread.A cruise ship is destroyed by another ship(the Death Ship),killing most of the crew.The few survivors of the crash,who include the captain(George Kennedy from "Creepshow 2" or "Just Before Dawn"),a family of four and some others,decide that it would be a good idea to board the same ship that crashed their cruise ship.The death ship then starts killing its new victims.Despite so many bad comments "Death Ship" is still watchable.It has some really creepy scenes and memorable moments.Yes,the film doesn't make very much sense,but that's not what director Alvin Rakoff intended.Instead he puts together nightmarish sequences surrounded by an eerie sounds.You have to be a real horror fan to fully appreciate "Death Ship".Check this one out,it's pretty good.Highly recommended. Nevertheless, I think it's an effective film because the basic idea is strong and there are some good creepy moments. The name George Kennedy both on the cover and on the credits linked the two facts together. Richard Crenna was also good in his role. Death Ship unfortunately turned out to be about as frightening as "The Love Boat." Death Came Through a Phantom Ship, as you may have already guessed from the band’s nationality, is a concept album based on the famous Dutch legend of the Flying Dutchman. Matter of fact the entire FILM has been ripped off with only subtle alterations....less Nazis, more ghosts! VIRUS in 1999 (rogue ship seemingly abandoned, which when boarded proves to be an unpleasant experience) and this year's GHOST SHIP, an even closer related caper, which has even ripped-off the original POSTER with only subtle alterations. A crewless Nazi torture-ship malevolently hunts down and sinks Caribbean pleasure cruisers. A frightening vessel lost from the 40s at a remote region nowadays is floating drift.The mysterious Nazi vessel is lost at sea for more than 50 years.But one time aboard the cavernous, eerie ship, the group encounter that the decaying Oceaner freighter is anything but deserted. Sadly, these days B.Traven and his many novels have been assigned to relative obscurity in the world of literature and politics. needs blood to survive." The actores are great, and the fact that I have seen George Kennidy in other kooky horror films that are much worse then this one, makes this one of his best works in this kind of film (see "Just Before Dawn"!). Check box if your review contains spoilers. Boarding the ship results to be a big mistake since the tragedy that overtook the lives of crew and captain lingers and starts to affect the present passengers. The cast did a pretty good job. The off-kilter, but downright fixed premise is cut and dry (as the original idea, before the story/script was chopped and changed around was originally penned by cult exploitation filmmaker Jack Hill) with it projecting a Gothic haunted house atmosphere aboard an ominous looking rust-bucket ship endlessly travelling the high seas with an sinisterly deranged twist behind it. The former Nazi crew influence, tempt, and manipulate the survivors in chillingly macabre ways to … The whole haunted Nazi ship thing was really creepy (especially with the spooky ship used to make the flick). "Death Ship" is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone, based on a 1953 short story with the same title by Richard Matheson. The mysterious roving Nazi "death ship" that picks up the survivors of the rammed vessel(including George Kennedy and Richard Crenna) is perfectly creepy--all rust on the outside and dust covered rooms within. DI Shaw and DS Valentine find themselves with 60-year-old case on their hands following an explosion on Hunstanton beach. Alvin Rakoff is a Canadian television, stage, and film director who has spent most of his career working in England. One scene in particular, when Nick Mancuso falls into a water filled hold of the ship only to be scooped out in a net full of rotting corpses is the stuff of nightmares! No -- less. Ten people trapped on a ghostly... death ship, A movie where George Kennedy drinks sewage. It was also a perennial renter. Review of B. Traven's The Death Ship. But, after additional viewings and understanding that there is a creepiness to the film and some good ideas. A mysterious ghostly freighter rams and sinks a modern day cruise ship whose survivors climb aboard the freighter and discover that it is a World War II Nazi torture vessel. So glad this turned out to be waaaay better than I was expecting it to be. Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtwvuVTisFo Originally released on DVD in England in 2007, Death Ship had at the time had been transferred from a print that was not perfect and contained a few sporadic imperfections but was believed to be the best surviving source material. It still kept me guessing at certain parts. The undertones and references towards the Nazi reign are eerie and photographed in viciously black and white. Working at a video store in the late 80's I saw this film rent better than many "better" films. This is a cheesy movie, the effects aren't great, but dammit, if I'm flipping the stations and its on, I just can't stop watching it. Creepy! Death Ship. However, for the rest who aren't as picky, this is a great chilling movie. Yet it is not a good horror film in my mind and those good ideas become wasted due to what I find are scenes that are too drawn out, stupid characters and it does become tiring watching the characters bumble around an empty ship. The only thing that bothered me was the way that the initial ship collision was shown--no one bothered to explain how the 8 survivors got off their doomed ship or why a group spread out all over their ship would manage to get together on the lifeboat (and oddly they all seemed to know each other before the crash)! This is one of those movies I saw as a kid, was terrified by and have been trying to find ever since. Once again, the charm of movies like "Death Ship" passes by on many people. That disc had included a disclaimer citing the film lab that housed the original camera negative closed in the late 1980's and the aforementioned resources were "lost" as a result. It begins with a pseudo-creepy introduction track filled with minor-key keyboard melodies and a recording of a sailor sending a message to a mysterious ship he meets at sea. Don't expect logic, just a bunch of fun. It already has got the things it really needs: tension, a fair amount of effective horror and great music. And this co Canadian / UK produced low-rent, b-grade picture effectively delivered on its promised chills, despite its low-budget that shows from its creaky, murky and minimal execution. Anyways the movie itself was actually interesting. Ok, we've already stated the fact that I LOVE b-movies. | This movie is very dark, lots of shadows. Also, it has one of those great endings where you know that the evil Death Ship is out there looking for more BLOOD! Oh, and one of the coolest original movie posters ever designed! This movie has a lot of 80's slasher cheese to it--I will freely admit that--but overall I think it is a pretty good movie. The isolated setting is elaborated rather professional by director Alvin Rakoff. "Death Ship" is a 1980 horror film starring Richard Crenna (Rambo series) and George Kennedy (Naked Gun series). Maybe I shouldn't be so picky though. People have all but forgotten it. 156 reviews The Death Ship tells the story of an American sailor, stateless and penniless because he has lost his passport, who is harassed by police and hounded across Europe until he finds an 'illegal' job shoveling coal in the hold of a steamer bound for destruction. No crew. A review of the movie Death Ship. The story was inspired by the legend of the Flying Dutchman. We rented it and I have VERY vague recollections of it not being very good but I never got round to see it as an adult. Alvin Rakoff's direction makes the most of the location and the climax is well-managed. This low budget UK/Canadian collaboration was based on a story entitled Blood Star by one Jack Hill – yep, the exploitation king who made SWITCHBLADE SISTERS amongst other drive-in flicks in the 1970s. One of the lamest death scenes I've seen. George Kennedy was good as the Captain of the cruise ship. This is one of my favorite horror films. Prev: Hulk Next: Exploring The Guardian >> I love B movies, so I try to give these obscure flicks some attention in the hopes more people will check them out. I first began my relationship with "Death Ship" when I were a lad growing up in the Heart of England - we had a little video library in our village that had quite a nice selection of horrors and I was always fascinated by the garish, ghoulish box art... Oh, and there were few as ghoulish as the spooky cover of "Death Ship", which I vividly remember recreating with pencil sketches in my schoolbooks. The ship itself was very creepy and quite atmospheric. No oil or gas or whatever the hell normal ships run on. About the only gripe I have with the movie is the death scene of Victoria Burgoyne. Here a full review of the excellent Horror movie DEATH SHIP. I miss those. I've been on the look-out for this film ever since. A lot of them are cheesy, badly acted, and have horrible plots. The film is an ultimate guilty pleasure, and it's mindless fun, entertainment. One of the most notorious "bombs" of the 1980's, DEATH SHIP actually turned out to be one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a while for a couple of reasons. Scorpion was able to use the American interpositive for their 2012 DVD and Blu-ray as part of the Katarina's Nightmare Theater line. A spooky, trashy anomaly set adrift in an ocean of cinematic slasher films during the early '80s, Death Ship is the kind of movie people stumble upon late at night on TV and spend years trying to track down again. And surely this film has all those right elements for a b-movie. But that's what I love about them. Death Ship by Jim Kelly. Released on 13th July 2020 by Nucleus Films to commemorate it's 40 years milestone. Okay, that’s a little bit of a sizzle sell; Death Ship doesn’t have the scope of the former or the effects of the latter, but it does achieve a grimy buzz as it progresses. Not a masterpiece, but it sure left a lasting impression.. Far from the total turkey its reputation would suggest. The theam and the creepy ship were enough to scare me once again. The most striking aspect to the film for me was its ominous looking poster artwork (which would be reused by the similar in plot 2002 'Ghost Ship') of a skull transpiring from the front of ramshackle ship. And pity the poor actors -- George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes; it's the TV-jeebies. That is probably why late 70's and early 80's horror/splatter movies still stands today. Strictly second-string city. The film concerns about a passenger luxury liner is crashed by a strange freighter . I suspect that it has not held up well to time. I give it a 9. It's got a freaky plot (Nazi-ghosts floating around the oceans and torturing survivors of a horrible shipping disaster), and an amazingly chilling atmosphere. Even though, it was blatantly obvious and predictable. Or, more accurately, a wrecked cruise ship no longer carrying all our protagonists--they're adrift. DEATH SHIP turned out to be my Halloween 2004 movie without even intending to have it be the feature of the night. In essence, it's a traditional haunted ship story, but on watching the viewer realises they're exposed to a minor horror classic – a film that is a hundred times better than the Gabriel Byrne-starrer GHOST SHIP made twenty years later. Related to: cecil death ship good bad flicks horror movies and tv. Episode 4.6 “Death Ship” Original air date: February 7, 1963 Writer: Richard Matheson (adapted from his short story) Director: Don Medford Rating: 6/10. This is the lone horror film on a resume that including more than a hundred television works. Awards Released theatrically by Avco Embassy, DEATH SHIP languished on VHS from Embassy before Nucleus Films released a stacked DVD in 2003 utilizing a so-so quality master. George Kennedy stars as the captain of an excursion liner who is facing retirement with less than a dignified attitude, who's boat is rammed by an old Nazi freighter that apparently acted as a sort of floating death camp, complete with a medical atrocities ward. Death Stranding is dense, complex, and powerful, steadfast in its belief in the power of love and hope when faced with overwhelming adversity. But Death Ship … Oh yeah, George Kennedy actually gave an award winning, creepy performance as the captain who wanted to take over the Nazi Freighter. Do not watch this movie if you only like good movies and good acting. Good enough. In this episode, a spaceship crew discovers a wrecked replica of their ship with their own dead bodies inside. It is good enough to be added to any horror fans video library. Nothing ever touched her. Ok, so its not real believable, but the concept is scary as hell! George Kennedy and Richard Crenna definitely are decent actors, although they're not really showing it here. The atmosphere in the movies of that time era simply can't be reproduced today. But, when it made its limited run on cable, I watched it by myself in the middle of the night with no lights on. "This ship needs BLOOD!!" George Kennedy plays the retiring captain of the cruise vessel while Richard Crenna appears as the up-and-coming captain. Except for one grisly, chilling scene too horrible to describe, this one was an unintentionally funny stroll. To sum up, Death Ship is a voyage that most viewers will want to pass up. She gets in the shower and starts freaking out when the water turns to blood. When the video certification act came to pass in 1984, "Death Ship" (rated X) was removed from the shelves, never to be released again in the UK. As far as obscured horror titles are concerned, Death Ship is definitely one worth checking out. 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