Death Ship

It’s been a long time since Death Ship has been seen in the UK, but Nucleus Films Marc Morris and Jake West have pulled another blinder by producing a decent DVD with a scattering of special features and the crispest version of the movie money can buy.

 

Made in 1980 this incredibly low budget horror movie did reasonable business in the American box offices coming second place to the Oscar wining Kramer Vs Kramer. Despite doing good business Death Ship also managed to win out amongst the smaller “cult” theatrical cinemas like the grindhouse or drive in movie style.

 

On his final voyage Captain Ashland (George Kennedy) is showing rookie Trevor Marshall (Richard Crenna) the ropes, rather begrudgingly I should add. Over the course of the night tensions rise as the retiring captain grows increasingly impatient with events going on around him. This soon becomes the last thing on everyone’s mind after the ship is rammed by another vessel and begins to sink. A handful of survivors make it off the sinking ship only to find salvation on a passing deserted vessel, but it soon becomes evident that the deserted ship is the very one that sank their ship, and as time passes by it becomes apparent that the ship wants to kill its new passengers.

 

I cannot begin to pretend that Death Ship is a particularly good film, there is nothing wrong with either the cast or the special effects, simply the story feels after a promising build up to be a little hollow, amongst the hollow moments however are a few scattered moments that qualify to be classed as movie gems or at least gems in this movie. The biggest flaw I personally feel was that there was no opportunity to form any bonds with any of the characters, gigolo character Nick (Nick Mancuso) is practically nonexistent in respect of his story input, while Richard Crenna spends a portion of the movie with his head in his hands. George Kennedy turns in a dark performance, but again never at any point can you make a connection with the character.

 

The big fault I suspect is that the story was written by Blaxploitation director Jack Hill, then parts re-written by David P. Lewis in order to comply with requests from the producer, director and the budget requirements of the movie. It is quite often the case that too many cooks spoil the broth, and while Hill was at no point involved after the initial screenplay something was most definitely lost in translation.

 

Faults aside there are a couple of genuinely good points, one of the characters has a grisly end in a net full of sharp human remains, while another gets a little too close to the mechanics of the death ship. In with this is a hidden story about the holocaust and a Nazi controlled ship, that just so happens to be the “Death Ship” of the title.

 

Balancing the good with the bad Death Ship sits middle when it comes to rating the movie, I neither loved it or hated it, it’s just average. To be honest with you I have tried to watch the movie over several years and never quite have the patience to watch it to the end, its only real interest this time round was the fact that Marc Morris a master historian in the horror/cult genres does magnificent work when it comes to restoring movies for DVD.

 

While the movie is average the special features on this Nucleus release are far from average, there is an excellent documentary called Stormy Seas which is the best feature on the disc. Stormy Sea’s spends a lot of time talking with George Kennedy, Nick Mancuso, Jack Hill and director Alvin Rakoff. There are some great stories that are discussed, chiefly coming from the mouth of the incredibly interesting George Kennedy, while Mancuso’s comments are kind of cryptic, Kennedy elaborates and adds a great spin to stories. You really get to hear not just about the movie but about the way of life for the actors, both Mancuso and Kennedy talk about the water they are forced to swim in apparently said to carry Hepatitis B. While both talk about the joy of working with the late Richard Crenna (Best known as Trautman in the Rambo movies) and Kate Reid (Who played Aunt Lil Trotter in Dallas). This is not a short five or ten minute documentary as featured on most DVD’s but adecent length documentary nearly 50 minutes in length.

 

Other additions include deleted scenes thought not to even exist that were featured in a Canadian TV showing some years ago preserved from an old Betamax recording. A series of pages from Jack Hills original screenplay entitled Blood Star. There are also a series of trailers not just for Death Ship but for other Nucleus releases. Strange though it might see one of the most interesting special features is a simple page of writing that talks about the preservation of the movie, one thing you get the feeling about with this DVD is that the best stories all took place off screen.

 

Apparently there is also an audio commentary with Alvin Rakoff but to be honest with you my workload prevented me the time to investigate.

 

Death Ship is available to buy online from £12.99.