Death Ship (1980)

I remember when Death Ship (1980) was released to cinemas.  Despite being a low budget horror film, it had a considerable TV campaign behind it.  The film could also boast some 'name' actors, George Kennedy and Richard Crenna, for instance and even a 'name' director in Alvin Rakoff.  In truth, though, the latter, better known fr directing far 'worthier' projects on film and TV, seemed an odd choice for what amounts to a 'Nazisploitation' film.  Upon viewing the film, he seems an even odder choice - under his direction, the film never really gets into its stride, with the shocks too obvious and what should be suspenseful sequences undermined by a lack of pace and focus.  To be fair, a lot of the blame lies with the muddled script, which abandons any sense of logic or plot development in favour of a series of all too obvious would be shock sequences, which, at best, are only vaguely explained.

In fact, the film's whole scenario simply makes no sense.  The titular vessel is some kind of World War Two Nazi prison ship which has somehow been sailing the seven seas, crewless, since the end of the war, preying upon shipwreck victims, apparently using their blood, or maybe just their fear and terror, (the script isn't very clear on this), as fuel.  All of which begs the question, (well, several questions, but we'll deal with the obvious first), as to how its presence has never been detected - it isn't a literal ghost ship, it is clearly very solid as it goes around sinking other ships by ramming them, (although sustaining no damage itself).  Which brings us to another question: why does nobody apparently notice all those cruise liners (it seems to specialise in sinking these) going missing?  Then there's the question of what happened to the crew?  Is it their ghosts operating the ship, or does it have some kind of malignant life force of its own?  Moreover, just why was it being used as a traveling torture chamber in the first place?  While there were prison ships operated by the German Navy on World War Two - the 'Altmark' being the best known - they were just that, floating prisons, used to house survivors from merchant ships sunk by the Germans until they could be transported to neutral ports or back to Germany.  No torture was involved.  Indeed, what would have been the point?  That sort of thing was generally done on land in prisons and concentration camps, with Jews, spies and resistance fighters the victims.

Despite all of this, Death Ship is a reasonably diverting ninety minutes.  A lot of the acting performances - particularly Crenna and Kennedy - are, under the circumstances, actually quite effective.  For a low budget film the production values are pretty good.  The ship itself, at times, provides a brooding presence, but, in the end, never really exudes much real menace.  The shocks are too crude and obvious to really horrify, instead coming over as somewhat unpleasant.  The pity is that the central idea of a haunted ship has considerable promise, but is stymied by a plodding narrative that never properly develops the idea.  Still, it is better than 2002's Ghost Ship which uses a similar idea (not to mention a similar poster), but which quickly becomes mired in a confusing plot which eschews suspense for body count.  You never know, one day somebody might finally do the idea justice.