Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review. This week, we’ve got ourselves another movie that’s been sitting on the stack of movies I’ve been wanting to cover for a long while. Let me know if you’ve heard this before: Let me know if you’ve heard this before (see what I did there?), this week’s featured movie, 1980’s Death Ship, was something I saw for the first time on the long-defunct, yet always wonderful, Bizarre TV Roku app. I think I probably came into it about halfway through or toward the end of the movie and watched it to the end.

However, because I came into it late and then sought out what the movie was based on the Google keyword search “George Kennedy Richard Crenna on a boat horror movie”, it’s not a movie that I remember much of, so this review is now going to basically be a new first-time watch.

The movie was directed by Alvin Rakoff. Rakoff is a Canadian director who had a pretty long career. Most of his work over the course of, like, 45 years was for television. He didn’t make too many feature films made for movie theaters. In fact, Death Ship was one of the very last feature films he directed. With just a cursory scroll through his IMDb credits, Death Ship and The Saint (the television series which he directed an episode) are really the only two things that I recognize. However, a cursory scroll through his Wikipedia page did reveal something very interesting for me personally. Rakoff’s first wife was Jacqueline Hill. Hill played Barbara Wright, one of the trio of companions of the First Doctor when Doctor Who launched in 1963. Hill and Rakoff were married from 1958 until her death in 1993.

As mentioned previously when I talked about how I found out the title of the film, the stars of this movie are Richard Crenna and George Kennedy. Crenna, by the time this film was released, was already a 30-year veteran of film and TV. He was often recognized with Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his work on television for shows like The Real McCoys, Slattery’s People, and The Rape of Richard Beck. The last one, he won for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He had a single Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for The Flamingo Kid in 1984.

Let’s face it, though… Most people know Richard Crenna for his role as Colonel Samuel R. Trautman in 1982’s First Blood, 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II, and 1988’s Rambo III.

However, the bigger star was George Kennedy. Kennedy’s had an interesting career. At the time this movie was released, he hadn’t quite been around as long as Crenna, but in 1968, Kennedy became an Oscar winner for his supporting role in Cool Hand Luke. Kennedy’s roles ranged from Stanley Donan’s Charade, to the first film adaptation of McHale’s Navy, to Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way, to Airport. Airport led to Kennedy appearing in a lot of disaster films. Sure, most of those were sequels to Airport, but still. As the 80s came along, Kennedy’s star was a little smudged because he started to appear in a string of really not-so-good movies. He had a period of time in which he was appearing in a lot of low-budget horror films and quite a few bombs. Interestingly, though, in this period, he did have a sort of smaller role in The Delta Force as a hostage taken by Robert Forster. Kennedy also appeared on a whole bunch of popular TV shows, particularly westerns, in the 60s, but those appearances on the small screen started to fade out after his Academy Award win.

But, like Crenna, there was a period in which Kennedy became far better known for a role in a series – as Captain Ed Hocken in The Naked Gun films.

Our movie begins with what appears to be a freighter running through the open seas. We see the water. We see the boat. We see the boat’s engine. We are given PLENTY of reasons to buy that this boat is just doing its normal boat things. But then, it appears we see something of a cruise ship off in the distance. I know the second boat is, for sure a cruise ship. It is multi-leveled, has the lights and the shape of, like, a Carnival Cruiseline boat, okay? I don’t know about our eerie freighter-like boat that comes with spooky music and what have you. I think it looks like something that would be a cargo ship or something like that. I’m not a boat guy. I can’t even swim. Indiana is pretty damn landlocked, so I have no use for nautical knowledge, capisce?

What I do know thanks to being from Indiana and having taken the language in middle and high school, is that when the cruise ship is spotted, the “crew” of the freighter springs to life with alarms and alerts and a guy speaking German. Soon, the freighter goes full speed ahead to intercept the cruise ship. The freighter hauls off in the direction of the cruise ship. But get this… I think the freighter just kind of senses there will be a cruise ship. It’s edited in a way that makes it seem like the ship gets the feeling the cruise ship will be somewhere over there at some point later in the evening, and it needs to go over there to get it.

Oh, don’t look at me like that, George… You were the one who agreed to be in this movie.

So, yeah, the captain of the cruise ship is the curmudgeonly Captain Ashland, played by George Kennedy. He runs a tight, fuckin’ ship. He tells the helmsman that they’re two degrees off course. He tells the new captain who will be taking the ship over in a few days, Captain Trevor Marshall, played by Richard Crenna, that this crew is always needing to be watched or they’ll fuck around and, I dunno, blow up the fuckin’ boat or something. Additionally, he is not one for these damn passengers and their dinners and their parties and their shenanigans. He cares only about the ship.

Speaking of those passengers, it must be Halloween because they are having a bitchin’ costume party. There’s a lady dressed like a harem girl named Lori who really likes to flirt with a crewmember in a gorilla mask named Nick. Captain Marshall’s wife and two kids are at the party doing the family thing. They even brought their own Saul Rubinek to the party to be the entertainment.

Turns out, this is one of the very first roles for Rubinek in his film career. But as he hypes up the party during a break between songs, the titular Death Ship is closing fast on the cruise liner. This is a very curious film in the way it is cast. First of all, this is a co-production between Canada and the United Kingdom. There are lots of American actors, but it’s directed by a Canadian director. However, there are a lot of British actors in this movie in prominent roles. Trevor’s wife is played by a very posh-sounding British lady. That seems kind of weird for a cruise boat captain, ostensibly from America, to be married to a British lady. I’m sure it’s not completely unheard of. Either the American boat captain or the British lady could be in the other person’s country when they met. It’s the same for Lori and crewman Nick. They are mixed as well. Nick is played by Nick Mancuso who is Italian-Canadian. Lori is British actress Victoria Burgoyne.

Whatever. It’s just a peculiar mix of accents and dialects. That’s something that always trips a lot of weird things in my brain and ultimately distracts me from the rest of the movie.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s get back to the movie’s actual goings-on. The death ship is spotted on the radar by the cruise ship’s crew. They attempt to evade it, but they quickly learn that this massive freighter seems to be purposely trying to ram them. Aaaaand that’s exactly what it does. It blasts into the cruise ship creating all sorts of damage and begins to flood the engine room with water. The movie fades to black.

When we return to the movie the following morning, it appears the ship has sunk. All that’s left is Marshall, his wife, their children, Nick, Lori, Saul Rubinek, and one of the passengers named Mrs. Morgan who we saw only briefly just before the death ship rammed into the cruise boat. Considering we don’t see any other people on any other rafts or makeshift floatation devices, I’m assuming they are all dead as disco. That is not necessarily the case though… Marshall’s daughter is startled by a hand that reaches out from underwater and it turns out that Captain Ashland has survived too. They pull him aboard but he doesn’t seem to be in very good shape as he remains knocked out for quite some time.

There are more unexpected happenings that occur because, completely unknown to them, the death ship has arrived just in front of their boat when no one was looking. Marshall and Nick try to call for help from the crew of the ship, but no one responds. The ship seems to be completely unmanned. The inside of the ship is full of cobwebs and completely empty. There is one window that seems to open and close itself on the outside. Good news, though, is that someone, or something, has lowered the stairs for them to climb aboard.

Marshall sends Nick to take a look. After Nick takes a quick look around and determines no one is on board, he returns to the ladder and brings the rest of the people onto the ship. As Nick and Marshall try to bring Ashland aboard, the ship shudders and the stairs jostle, tossing the men off into the ocean and the whole structure collapses into the sea. Thinking quick, Lori lowers a ladder down to the three men who climb aboard after being sprayed with oil from the boat.

While I do applaud the movie for not spending any more time than necessary on the cruise ship before it is sunk by the evil ghost boat, this movie begins fumbling the bag pretty quickly. I don’t mind the cast going aboard the obviously very spooky and ominous derelict ship. After all, they are adrift in the ocean after their boat was sunk. There’s plenty of reason to get off the flimsy wooden raft you’ve concocted to save your own life. I don’t mind the seemingly peaceful boarding of the death ship until the boat itself jostles and tosses what it must believe to be the most capable people into the ocean. Outside the three ship crewmembers, there are three women of varying ages and skills ranging from quick-thinking to old, two kids, and a Saul Rubinek. The death ship is trying to get rid of the guys who know a thing or two about a thing or two.

All that is fine for this opening act of the movie. The problem is the oddly tension-less tension of the men slowly climbing up the ladder onto the death ship while the girls look on and the boat spews oil onto them. It’s not very death-defying or exciting. The boat really isn’t moving. It lurched, sure, but it’s not moving. We’re watching guys climb up a ladder… onto a boat that is not moving. Imagine if that boat is cooking at full speed. That would make this scene a little more hair-raising than it plays out. There is no amount of high anxiety score on the soundtrack that makes me believe these men are in any real danger. They just have to steady themselves and slowly ascend the ladder and they’re out of trouble. And yet, the movie cuts between the guys climbing up the ladder to the women watching them to the boat getting the bright idea to bukkake them with oil from the cargo hold. It’s… not exactly exciting, but I guess they need to do something to show this boat is the real bad guy of this whole movie.

So, shock of all shocks, Marshall, Nick, and Ashland get on board the death ship. While Nick looks for someone on the ship, the boat begins doing some typical boat things on its own. It ties a knot. It pulls a lever to lower a hook to a particular rope. Then, when Saul Rubinek is trying to ease the tension by being a comedian, the death ship uses the hook to pull that specific rope and it wraps around his ankle and hoists him up off the deck. Again, Lori is quick on her feet to try to help until Marshall gets to try to pull him down.

Neither Lori nor Marshall can reach him before the ship swings him over to the water and lowers him into the water. It seems like it’s going to hold him underwater but it pulls him back up. The ship raises its anchor and takes off. It’s at this point that the ship dumps Saul Rubinek into the ocean where he is ripped under in the undertow created by the ship’s movement.

I mean… I did say this was one of Rubinek’s earliest roles so I guess that means he hadn’t paid enough dues to not die first.

So we are now firmly in the portion of the movie in which everyone is trying to figure out what the hell is up with this boat. Nick finds the ship’s wheel on deck and he begins to wonder if it’s steering itself. Marshall and his family are exploring below deck. Mrs. Morgan believes the ship has a life of its own as lights turn on and off as they walk through the hallways. Ashland wakes up to the sound of a German voice. He goes back to sleep. When Nick continues exploring, he’s knocked out by a heavy hook that swings over and hits him in the back of the head. He falls into the hold below deck.

Lori figures out that the ship must be German. She sees a sign in the crew’s rec hall that she can read. Apparently, she also grew up in Indiana and/or took German in middle and high school. She hears a record playing in one of the rooms and she pulls the needle off the record. When she leaves the room, she hears the record begin to play again on its own.

I want to tell you why I like Lori in this movie. One, she’s always quick on her feet to help when something goes goofy. She’s not quite as simple as the “younger woman in the cast who is looking to get laid by Nick and gets a little too promiscuous at the cruise party”. Though, yes, I find Victoria Burgoyne quite fetching in this movie. She takes it upon herself to find clothes for everyone to wear. Everyone’s wet and dirty and, dammit, things have been rough over the past 24 hours. She knows the ship is German in origin. But there are two things she does that are spectacularly intelligent. When she hears that record play again, she DOES NOT GO BACK TO THE ROOM TO SEE HOW THAT HAPPENED. She just leaves. When she finds clothes for everyone, she hears a groaning sound that is a little unsettling to her. What does she do? Hurriedly grabs what she needs, and beats cheeks. She’s not gonna stand around and find out who is groaning at her.

Plus, that same year, Burgoyne would have appeared in the famously “lost” (but now reconstructed) Doctor Who serial “Shada” penned by Douglas Adams, so she gets bonus points for not just being fetching, being really smart in this first half of the movie, but also being part of a pretty famous part of Doctor Who history.

Everyone convenes in one of the crew quarters. They give a bed to Ashland who is still getting haunted by German voices. The phone in the room rings and Marshall answers it but no one is on the other side. They all just kind of shrug and assume that it must be Nick… Even though no one responded to Marshall.

Soon, there are lots of banging throughout the ship. The doors to the quarters close on their own and seemingly lock themselves. Then, Nick joins the gang and he can open the door from the outside. Nick and Marshall explore the ship to try to solve the mystery of what is going on with this boat. They get to the bridge where Nick says he thinks the ship is driving itself. They find navigational charts that appear to show the ship’s course to just be looping in circles in the Atlantic Ocean.

Soon music begins playing again so Lori, Marshall’s wife, Margaret, and Marshall’s son, Ben, go to check it out. They find the music coming from the ship’s theater and the movie that is threaded into the projector. However, things are going to continue to get spooky. Marshall and Nick realize the ship’s fuel is empty, so it really should not be able to power itself. That’s all it takes for Marshall to say they need to get the hell off the boat. Ashland is also starting to get a little more sinister as Mrs. Morgan looks after him. When Ben gets her to come see the movie, Ashland starts hatching his own plan…

Mrs. Morgan seems to be not terribly smart. On this boat that is seemingly completely powered and operated by cobwebs, she decides it’s a good idea to take a jar of peppermint candies and eat a couple. When the movie’s film breaks, she starts to ask what is happening to her. When Marshall’s daughter, Robin turns around and sees her, she screams and cheeses it right the fuck out of the room. Turns out those peppermints are melting Mrs. Morgan’s face.

She stumbles back to the crew quarters where Ashland is now sitting up and seemingly fully possessed by the evil Nazi boat captain. She begs him for help. He helps by strangling her. As he strangles her, he pictures a seaman from the boat.

I’m fairly positive that Lori would not have eaten the candies. Perhaps I’m biased. Perhaps I’m that taken by her crystal blue eyes and very nice long legs. Perhaps I’m just fucking right and, if you’d watch this movie too, you’d agree.

The survivors decide to give Mrs. Morgan a burial at sea. Originally, Marshall was presiding over the burial rites, but Ashland says he’s doing it wrong and wants to take over. He begins reading from a Bible. A Bible, I might add, that is actually in German but he’s perfectly translating it to English. Hey… Maybe Ashland is also from Indiana or took German in middle and high school like Lori and I did. Maybe he’s just a full-on Nazi bad guy now. I’m sure the movie will reveal all shortly.

Just after they dump Mrs. Morgan into the ocean, they notice the remaining lifeboat is swinging over to the side of the boat. Nick and Marshall try to catch it in time, but they are too late. The boat is lowered into the water and let loose. It was their last option to get off the boat. Later, Ashland, now wearing the ship’s original captain’s uniform, calls Marshall to the bridge to inspect everything. Ashland tells Marshall that this is now his ship and he’s going to be the Captain. He throws in a couple digs toward Marshall by basically telling him he’s a pretender. He offers Marshall a chance to steer the boat, but only Ashland can actually move the wheel. It won’t move for anyone else.

Perhaps Ashland is off his rocker. Perhaps he’s possessed by a Nazi boat captain. Actually, you know what? It’s that second one. However, I’m surprised how relatively calm Marshall is when he sees Ashland straight-up dressed like a Nazi with the hat and everything. He does tell Margaret that he thinks Ashland is totally bonkers. He’s trying to play it cool, but it’s a bit of a problem that Ashland is seemingly possessed by a Nazi boat captain on a ship that is 40 years old, should be out of fuel, yet is still chugging right along. Where does Ashland plan to take the ship? “To eternity,” he says. That’s… That’s not comforting.

We’re just about overdue for another death. We’ve got some candidates. Robin and Ben are roaming the halls looking for a toilet for him to piss, but I’m not too sure this movie has the balls to kill kids in favor of keeping Lori alive. Speaking of, Lori is in the shower. Nick was in bed but then goes to the door when she commented that the door seemed to be stuck. Soon, the water from the shower turns into blood.

I don’t like where this is going, my dear Enemaniacs. Nick tries to bash the shower door open, but to no avail. The shower is filling up with blood as Lori thrashes around. This gets kind of weird and kind of dumb. Lori is utterly freaking out in the shower. It’s not really filling up except for maybe up to her ankles. She’s spinning around and beating and kicking at the walls and door and really seemingly out of character. At least, I refuse to believe that my favorite character, on completely shallow grounds, is this easily shaken after everything else she handled so well, would be doing this. But then Nick leaves to, I dunno, get help? He gave up bashing the door in and told her he’ll be back and for her to be like Fonzie and be cool. Ben is goofing off in the engine room. Maybe he’s being lured by something there? Then Robin goes to the communications room and hears a bunch of German music playing.

All I’m saying is that a lot of stuff is happening and I see several other characters who could take one for the team instead of Lori.

The two kids eventually run into Captain Ashland who brings them to Marshall. Nick finally gets to Marshall to help him get Lori out of the shower, but when they return to his room, she’s gone. The water is no longer bloody. Ashland has taken her and they find him tossing her overboard.

Okay… Good death. I mean, yes, I have issues with her freaking out the way she did, but I do like that Ashland ultimately yeets her off the boat. That’s pretty metal the way it turned out. However… Was she dead? Did she die in the shower? Was he just getting rid of her body? Was she still alive and not dead until she smacked the ocean? She was not struggling, so I have to assume she died the lesser way of the shower and not the more awesome way of being tossed like a sack of potatoes… sexy, sexy potatoes… overboard.

Nick and Marshall chase after Ashland who is now going to find his next victims – Marshall’s family. They eventually find a room that is LOADED with Nazi shit. Flags, pictures, and paintings, of Hitler, and it’s all red. They seem to be somewhat surprised by this. They find the sickbay where Marshall discovers a whole bunch of treasures. There are watches, jewelry, and extracted gold teeth. Marshall comes to the conclusion that this must have been an interrogation ship. Sure enough, they find another room with a bunch of bodies of people who were tortured to death.

So, yeah… They ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie with the title of the movie being Death Ship. This is a literal death ship. That’s why it’s full of bad ju-ju. Ths ship is deciding to really mess with Nick and Marshall now by not just revealing the Nazi room, but the movie room playing Nazi propaganda films that they can’t turn off or stop. It’s driving the two men insane.

This part of the movie is kind of both interesting and over-acted, but it also makes me think about a couple things. First, I do like the concept of the psychological torture that Nick and Marshall are dealing with. They just discovered this ship was used in torturing people for information (or possibly simply torturing Jews because… Nazis). It’s a good three-hit combo of realizing how embedded into the ideology the ship was, what happened on the ship, and then having the characters then struggle to deal with that to the point that the sounds and imagery of the Hitler shit really messes them up. But then I kind of wish everyone these days had the same vomit-inducing repulsion to Nazis and their ideology and practices.

I dunno why I wanted to make sure I said that, but there you go.

Anyway, so Nick suddenly sees Ashland standing before him and he lunges for the possessed captain. This causes him to fall off the deck and into the cargo hold. This is full of more dead bodies. The bodies are in a net that is held underwater. Ashland traps Nick in the net and lowers it into the water killing him.

Marshall’s still not doing great. Ashland is telling him the ship needs blood to survive. It goes around and eats people and boats and stuff. Ashland says it wants the blood of Marshall, his wife, and his children. When he finally gets his senses about him, he realizes he’s sitting at a table in the captain’s quarters. He picks up a knife and stabs Ashland a few times. He goes to get his family so they can find something to use to get off the boat.

Marshall opens a door and discovers a freezer that has the original crew of the ship hanging. I’m guessing there was an attempted mutiny that the ship’s captain, who now possesses Ashland, put a stop to by killing the crew and stashing their bodies here. However, the room does have something they can use to escape – lifejackets and an inflatable raft.

Before they can get off the ship, a recovered Ashland starts shooting at them. They escape that, and get the raft inflated so the kids can get on it. Ashland knocks Marshall out and grabs Margaret and throws her into a chain locker room. The ship begins to disobey Ashland who wants it to go after Ben and Robin in the raft, but it has detected another cruise ship to attack. As Ashland tries to regain control, this gives Marshall and Margaret the chance to jump off the boat and swim for the raft. Ashland begins shooting the rifle at various pieces of the boat’s engine and controls. It shows him who’s really boss by knocking him onto a gear where his body is slowly ground up by the machinery. As the death ship goes to its next target, the Marshalls are saved by a Coast Guard helicopter searching for survivors from the original cruise ship.

The death ship, though… still sails and seeks blood.

This movie isn’t terrible, but it’s easy to see flaws in it. However, for a little chiller that’s only 90 minutes long and features ghost Nazis? Death Ship isn’t too bad. George Kennedy is not phoning this in at all and his already being kind of an ass at the beginning makes his ultimate descent into madness and pure evil very believable.

Now, I know I was all about the Lori character played by Victoria Burgoyne. Besides her Halloween costume, what caught my eye is how quick she was to always be helpful and trying to do the right thing to be of use to everyone on the ship. Frankly, she was more useful and competent than even Nick was. She was a featured character in this movie. There’s actually a reason for that…

This movie was written by Jack Hill. Hill was probably best known for directing Spider Baby with Sid Haig and Lon Chaney, Jr. However, he came up through the Roger Corman tree of directors and writers. While he certainly did mostly work on exploitation films, his claim to fame would be directing films with women in lead roles that would later get re-evaluated as fairly important feminist pieces of entertainment in the grindhouse era of indie film. He directed The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, Foxy Brown, The Swinging Cheerleaders, and Switchblade Sisters. These are all well-made films with strong female leads. All of them were made between 1971 and 1975.

Knowing that, it’s not surprising that he would write at least one strong female character. Mrs. Morgan was out of her depths. Margaret had to be a mother first and kind of a well-rounded character second. But through Lori, Hill wrote a character who unfortunately had to die but was extremely capable and kind of intelligent when other young women in horror films wouldn’t have been as logical. I don’t think it would have been too far out of bounds to put forth the conjecture that, if Hill had his druthers, he would have either made it so Lori survived or made a more heroic sacrifice for Marshall’s family.

Still, the character of Lori is a surprising bright spot in this movie.

That wraps things up. Next time, we need to get our dancing shoes, our cowboy hats, and set out to rob some gas stations with Burt Reynolds! Be here in one week for the review of the John G. Avildsen-directed, 1975 comedy W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings! Until then, this B-Movie Enema ship needs to set sail for more blood and souls. All aboard!