Death Ship (1980)

"Death Ship" follows a group of survivors (including a captain, a young couple, an older woman, and two children) who find themselves forced to board a ghostly abandoned ship after their luxury ocean liner sinks. Little do they know, the ship they've boarded was a Nazi torture ship, and the old captain is about to take charge of his newfound passengers.Clearly an influence on 2002's "Ghost Ship," "Death Ship" is a generally fun, kitschy, and at times unnerving horror film. The setup is standard, with the caveat of the victims being confined to the haunted site by thousands of miles of ocean. The film has quite a few tricks up its sleeve, largely with the ship itself, which takes on a life of its own, flipping switches, slamming doors, and steering of its own accord. This makes for a sort of trap-door funhouse effect in which the characters are under constant threat of the vessel itself more so than apparitions or ghosts—the ship itself is alive, and danger lurks. When the evil does strike, it's via a physical channel as well: Possessing the sea Captain Ashland (George Kennedy).For all the funhouse attractions the film has to offer, there is a strong sense of atmosphere to the film that is drawn out of ominous shots of darkened corridors, dusty cabins, and creaky set pieces. The interiors of the ship are well-dressed and genuinely eerie, and the production values really shine here. The performances are decent, with Nick Mancuso (the villain in "Black Christmas") and Sally Ann Howes having large supporting roles. The final act is a bit drawn out and peppered with melodramatic slow-motion shots, and the film closes on a fairly anticlimactic note, but these are actually minor qualms for a film that commits to take itself seriously. In the end, "Death Ship" is a fun and atmospheric film that takes its haunted house-style approach and quite literally rides the wave. It's not a remarkable film, but it's also not a bad one either. It offers enough atmosphere and too many effective scenes to dismiss. Hi-lights: The shipwrecked's arrival on-board the ghost ship, and a shower head that sprays blood on an unsuspecting victim. 7/10.

Richard Crenna and George Kennedy star in this violent, unpleasant, and dreary film about sunken cruise-ship survivors who board the "Death Ship" which turns out to be haunted by the Nazis who conducted experiments there, and now the ship has attained an evil life force of its own, and roams the seas in search of new victims.Plot has potential(could have been on a very dark episode of "Night Gallery") but it is squandered in a film devoid of style or impact, despite the good actors, who can do little with it. Confusing at times, with annoying use of slow-motion.This film's poster is the best thing about it!

Deathship, kind of like 2002's Ghostship, is a slightly bland horror, that starts off a little slow. A cruise ship is on a collision course, with another ship, obviously the Deathship. The hand full of survivors, includes a bearded Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, and horror icon, George Kennedy. Out in a dinghy, they come across an old ship, or this wicked, ugly and fascinating ship, comes across them. But this ship, harvests a murderous secret. The survivors that board the ship, one of them dies before doing so, start to be picked off, one of them falls into a fish net of human skulls. Another can't get out a shower, where the water becomes blood red, another watches a film she shouldn't have, and another eats something she shouldn't have. Kennedy, the quiet captain of the other ship, who doesn't like crowds, is the raving psycho behind ship's secret. Made in 1980, Deathship, is o.k. horror, one flick, the horror viewer has to be patient with. Some gore scenes are worth the wait, though the movie seems to missing a little of something. That awry eerie music score is fantastic in a film just above par.

I've just thrown 90 minutes of my life down the drain seeing this excuse for a movie and I'm still trying to think of some worse movie than this absurd and erratic waste of film but I'm just unable. It was so remarkably bad and talentless I just had to keep watching till the end. To be honest I didn't know "the kind of film" it was so I was expecting "something more" (anything,at least!!), and having George Kennedy and Richard Crenna leading the cast made me have some expectations.I'm not too keen on terror films and that's the perfect movie to reinforce me or anybody in that opinion. That's the kind of movie that keeps average terror cinema quality well below minimums.Well... maybe if you are one of those terror-film fans looking avidly for some cheap crap to worship as Cult Masterpiece no matter the ultra-low quality of every single aspect of the film this is the flick for you; if you are in the other 99.99% of the human race and are expecting for at least a minimum level of quality then you'll find this film is a real insult to Cinema and to the intelligence of the spectator.I'd like to comment the negative aspects of the film but as I said EVERYTHING is just appalling and done carelessly: From the minimal and unnatural dialogues, reactions and actions of the void characters to the Ed Wood-like sea scenes made against a still of the ship. The cruiser the characters are supposed to be on in the beginning is not seen in any moment from the outside!!, not even when it is sinking!!, except for a few distant lights in a night shot that could be anything. The whole part of the pleasure cruiser sinking is specially bad and confusing... the sinking is not seen AT ALL, just the ship collides (well, that's what we're told at least) and the next moment they are in a life raft in the middle of nowhere, apparently next morning because it's clear sunlight, and then the captain is found underwater - has he stayed there the whole night or what?? Then after being adrift for some hours... ta-dam! they're EXACTLY where the big still picture of the mysterious ship is in the background. (You can see pretty clear in the photo that it is moored - duh!).The plot or argument is so inexistent that in most parts of the film there isn't even any attempt to try to explain it - that why it seems fair to say it is an insult and done carelessly: The people just go from here to there without knowing why like lemmings, stone-faced and totally silent, with that sloooow-paced walk only terror-film directors love, and their only concern seems to be to get separated from all other people and into the isolated danger zones at any cost, with no reasons explained.It is amazing to see how the poor script (if any) and the apparently inexistent director can squeeze absolutely no juice at all out of good character actors like George Kennedy and Richard Crenna and make them look like the worse actors on Earth, and it is sad to see what some actors have to do to get a living.