Death Ship

Death Ship (1980)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Alvin Rakoff

Starring: George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes, Kate Reid

From: A few different UK and Canadian companies

Pro tip: Never eat peppermint candies that are around 40 years old, especially if you are on a Nazi ghost ship.

Believe it or not, this was a motion picture I had seen before-albeit back in the VHS days. As far as I can recall, its memorable poster act-used for the VHS cover-was what attracted me. My memories were that it was mediocre but as there were only a few things I even recalled, why not give it a whirl when the stream was for free?

After the titular ship causes a cruise vessel to sink-it was peculiar that both the movie and the surviving characters say not even one word concerning all the lives that were lost-the few that did not die end up on the death ship, not knowing it caused the wreck and it is a haunted vessel formerly used by Nazi A-holes. Those individuals are mostly a few crew members of the cruise ship and their significant others. Of course, you have to accept that these characters are too dumb to figure out right away that the ship is trying to kill them off... it's blatant at times but perhaps they're all delirious from floating on sea for who knows how long... also, one of the big name people in the cast turns evil-now, it's implied that the ship drove him crazy—yet to me it seemed like it only took a little push for this person to turn evil!

It's easy to criticize this nonsense-after all, a memorable moment was rather blatantly ripped off from Psycho. Yet the movie is not something I hated. Famous names such as George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso & Saul Rubinek are nice assets to have. Another bonus was that the Nazi vessel was successfully portrayed as being rather creepy-wherever they found that random boat, they selected the right one... the visuals/sounds attached to it also helped. The at times bizarre editing that includes such things as flash forwards: I have conflicting feelings. But, at least this had one character press-slamming another off the ship as if they were The Ultimate Warrior-to paraphrase another review-and for all its technical mistakes, this was at least not bad... more mediocre overall than anything else.