Death Ship (1980)

... aka: Blood Star
... aka: Deathship
... aka: Le bateau de la mort (The Boat of Death)

Directed by:
Alvin Rakoff

After spending 40 years at sea, luxury cruise ship Captain Ashland (George Kennedy) is on the verge of retirement... and just in the nick of time! He's burnt out, looks completely miserable and is grumpy as fuck and doesn't even want to attend the final "Over 50s" costume party on his own ship. But this is his last voyage, it's over in just a few days and he's about to hand over the reins to Co-Captain Trevor Marshall (Richard Crenna) after warning: "Maybe you'll get used to all this. I never did. Cruising around in endless circles..." Gee. Such a beacon of hope. But if it's excitement Ashland wants, it's excitement he will soon get. Retirement, though, not so much. For starters, a mysterious ship is bearing down and about to crash right into them. Said collision will knock a hole right in the control room, causing water to pour in and the ship to sink.

After brief introduction to the poorly-drawn and dull main characters and a lazily-done flurry of stolen shots from the disaster film The Last Voyage (1960) in lieu of shooting new footage, we meet up with a handful of survivors aboard a life raft the next morning. Trevor, his wife Margaret (Sally Ann Howes) and (ugh) their two young kids, Robin (Jennifer McKinney) and Ben (Danny Higham), are among them. There's also crewman Nick (Nick Mancuso) and his British lover Lori (Victoria Burgoyne), religious kook Sylvia Morgan (Kate Reid) and corny M.C. / ship entertainer Jackie (Saul Rubinek). As for Captain Ashland, he's not on the life raft at first but instead miraculously floats up from the depths of the water... and he's still alive. No one really raises an eyebrow about it either.

The life raft eventually runs into a large abandoned ship; the same ship that rammed into and sunk the cruise ship, which is strangely just anchored in the middle of the ocean. Although it's a rust bucket and there's no crew on board, it's certainly better than the alternative of bobbing up and down in the middle of the ocean on a cramped raft. Conveniently, there's even a lowered metal ladder on the side... almost as if the ship is inviting people to hop on board. Since this particular ship happens to be possessed by an evil spirit or twenty, and it thrives on victim's blood, that's exactly what's happening. And, since "Death Ship" apparently has the patience of a toddler, it wastes no time trying to waste the cast.

After almost everyone's on board, the ship tries to drown some of the guys by toppling the ladder and then attempts to kill them again by covering them with oil as they try to climb up a rope ladder. After it's unsuccessful there, it starts its own engine, raises the anchor, starts moving, wraps a wire around Jackie's ankle, lifts him up and then drops him in the water. He's then pulled under the ship and drowns. All this before the survivors even have a chance to look around! Even witnessing this clearly supernatural death, they're still in the middle of the ocean so it's either stay there and try to figure out what's going on or jump back into the ocean and die. Still, that's really no excuse for the cast to keep wandering off by themselves like morons.

It's determined that the ship is German in origin, it hasn't been occupied by humans since the 1940s and is a World War II ship that was used by the Nazis. Captain Ashland, who never quite regains his oomph after almost drowning, starts hearing German voices and then becomes possessed by the previous Captain ("No one can leave my ship!"). Other discoveries along the way include a screening room for old Hollywood musicals and propaganda films, a walk-in freezer full of Nazi corpses, a Nazi memorabilia room complete with a framed painting of Hitler, a dentist's office where gold teeth were extracted from prisoners and even a torture chamber full of dead bodies.

I've read both positive and negative reviews of Death Ship and I'm siding with the naysayers this time out. The direction, dialogue, acting, pacing and editing (including a bunch of useless split second flash forwards of what's to come wedged in here and there) are all uniformly terrible. The characters aren't the least bit interesting, the plot is underdeveloped and the director seems incapable of generating tension and suspense, leading to a film that comes off as dreary and unpleasant over creepy and scary. As far as the death set pieces are concerned, a few are fairly well done. There's a hand ground up (and ripped off) by gears, a mutation caused by poison peppermint candy (?!) and someone smashed in a fishing net trap full of skeletons. Perhaps most memorable is Burgoyne's death in a blood shower, though it's probably more memorable for the exploitative camera angles than the actual death itself. Laughably bad dialogue and some major overacting (including a hammy Kennedy) don't even help this rise to the level of guilty pleasure camp.

Worst of all is what a waste the whole thing is. The 3.5 million budget (which would be around 11.5 million these days after adjusting for inflation) afforded quite a bit in 1979 when this was filmed. It afforded effective sets / art direction and a great shooting location (both interiors and exterior) on an old ship, which makes this reasonably atmospheric almost in spite of itself. It afforded a cinematographer (René Verzier) who does what he can to give this some polish and was smart enough to spice up the countless foreboding ship shots with creative camera angles. It afforded some real actors. But, ultimately, the good that is present only makes one yearn for a better directed and written film.

Though John Robins receives screenplay credit, sources claim he didn't actually write this and was billed as such only for financial reasons through the Canadian government. Cult director Jack Hill and David P. Lewis, who are credited with the story, actually wrote the script under the title Blood Star. One of the five production companies who worked on this is called Bloodstar Productions. It was filmed in Quebec City, Gulf of Mexico and Dauphin Island, Alabama and grossed less than half of its budget in U.S. theaters.

An AVCO Embassy release, this has had numerous DVD and VHS releases over the years, starting with a video from Embassy. The DVD distributors include Scorpion Releasing (USA; they also released a Blu-ray this year though that's not what I watched), Umbrella Entertainment (Australia), Creative Films (Spain) and Nucleus Films (UK). In Stormy Seas, a 40-minute documentary feature available on the UK release, director Rakoff makes it clear that he dislikes horror films, which is pretty evident in the finished product, while Hill (rightfully) seems displeased with what they did with his script and claims he'd have taken a completely different approach. Too bad he didn't get to direct it himself.

★1/2

Woman Hunt, The (1972)

... aka: Escape
... aka: Highest Bidder, The
... aka: Women for Sale

Directed by:
Eddie Romero

An exploitation twist on Richard Connell's famous and oft-filmed short story "The Most Dangerous Game," this Filipino-lensed turkey misses the fun mark by a wide, wide margin. Working on behalf of wealthy sadist Spyros (Eddie Garcia), a trio of thugs are given the task of kidnapping five beautiful women for use in their shady employer's brothel. Lured onto a boat, naive blonde stewardess Lori (Laurie Rose) and her friend become the latest abductees... except one of the kidnappers gets a little too rough with the friend trying to silence her. Oops, make that four women. Lori is taken aboard another boat and thrown into a bamboo cage, where she joins the sexy, short-haired McGee (Pat Woodell), black Billie (Charlene Jones) and Filipino Rita (Liza Belmonte). The ladies are all taken to a remote island, where they're blindfolded, have their arms tied behind their back and then are thrown into a truck and driven out into the jungle. From there, they're transferred into a cage being pulled by a cow for the rest of the trip. After a botched (and extremely pathetic) escape attempt that night, they finally make it to their destination the following day.

Upon arrival, the women are each given their own room and some sexy evening wear for a "dinner party" they're to attend later that evening. Little do they realize, but Spyros has other plans in store for them other than sexual slavery: namely letting them loose in the jungle, hunting them down and then killing them. He even forces some of his reluctant millionaire clients to take part. Before any of that can happen, some of the thugs decide to try make a move on the ladies; or as one so eloquently puts it: "Sure is a lot of pussy going to waste over there." Some of the girls attempt to comply in hopes that they'll be spared, but when McGee gets her top off for the mean Karp (Ken Metcalfe), he just throws her on the ground, spits on her and calls her a pig, and when Billie gets drunk Silas (Sid Haig) into the sack, he just passes out on her. Looks like their destiny is pretty much set in stone... unless they can escape. Thankfully, the conscientious Tony (top-billed John Ashley; also one of the producers) is having no part in the "hunt" and helps the ladies get out of the house, but they still have miles of dangerous jungle to navigate as well as Spyros, his guests and his goons to evade, if they're going to reach safety.

Combining elements of numerous tried-and-true exploitation subgenres: jungle-action, women-in-prison, hunting humans, etc., probably sounded great on paper, but unfortunately the execution is extremely bland and the film pretty much flat lines right out of the gate. Part of the blame falls on the director for his inability to generate any excitement or fun at any point in the film. Perhaps even more of the blame falls on the writers (it was scripted by David Hoover based on a story he co-wrote with Jack Hill), for doing a poor job rehashing an already tired plot, for refusing to give any of the characters even the slightest glimmer of personality and for pussy-footing around with various boring nonsense before allowing the action to finally kick in. Hell, our heroines aren't even actually in the jungle until the final 20 minutes, and even then we're not given much in the way of action or violence. Certainly not enough to justify the first boring hour of this 72-minute film.

I also have a bone to pick with the cast. With the possible exception of Haig, the performances are uniformly terrible and lifeless and most of these people behave as though they'd rather be somewhere else doing something else. This isn't fun, spirited, over-the-top bad acting from an enthusiastic cast, it's just bland, bored bad acting. In low-budget exploitation films, a game cast goes a long, long way. Roger Corman (the uncredited executive producer) knows this himself because many of his own super-low-budget films were elevated tremendously by talented, memorable actors like Dick Miller and Beverly Garland. Sadly, this one lacks anyone with the charisma and talent of, say, Pam Grier or Roberta Collins; both mainstays of Corman productions from around this same time. Perhaps the worst offender of all is the painfully wooden Lisa Todd (later of Hee Haw fame), who's handed a camp movie dream role as Spyros' black-clad lesbian assistant and does absolutely nothing memorable with the part.

Best one can say for this one is that there's breasts (all of the female leads aside from Todd lose their top at least once) and a bit of blood toward the end (including a spike trap hitting a stomach, a head being blown off and a real cobra getting hacked up with a machete). Romero also made The Beast of the Yellow Night (1971), The Twilight People (1972) and Black Mama, White Mama (1973) for Corman's New World Pictures. IMDb claims this was released in 1973, but it actually first hit theaters November 1972.

★1/2