Death Ship (1980)

 

There will be some spoilers in this review.  I doubt it will hurt your enjoyment of the film at all, but still wanted to warn you in advance.

Captain Ashland is a sailor of the old school. Prickly and a tad officious, he deeply resents the schmoozing of passengers required by his job as master of a cruise liner.  So it's perhaps for the best that this is his last cruise before retirement, after which he will be replaced by his more personable first officer, Trevor Marshall.

Marshall, for his part, has invited his family along to see his elevation to the top job; perhaps not the most diplomatic of gestures to the older man.

But such questions will soon be relegated to very low priority: late one night they detect another ship on a collision course with their own vessel.  Not only does this other craft not respond to attempts to communicates, but every time they adjust course to avoid a collision, it adjusts its own to ensure they will crash. And indeed, despite everyone's best efforts, the two vessels collide, sinking the cruise ship and taking with it most of her crew and passengers.

The next day, a handful of survivors - Ashland, Marshall and his family, and a few others - are adrift on a large piece of wreckage when they come upon a black freighter.  They celebrate their apparent good luck and, eager to meet the crew of the vessel and secure assistance, climb aboard via a ladder that has been conveniently slung from the stern.

Their celebrations, of course, are premature.  There seems to be no-one aboard this mysterious craft, and it soon becomes apparent that not only did terrible things once happen here, but that their band of castaways may soon become merely another set of victims of this Death Ship ...

This film is part of the 'possessed machine' genre of horror, in which apparently normal machines become imbued with an malevolent intelligence that allows them to operate themselves and wage war against humanity.  Other examples of the form include Killdozer and Christine. Also at least three other films based on Stephen King short stories, come to think of it.  The man loved his killer machines in the early days of his career.

The big challenge of the concept is frequently "how do these machines actually operate?"  This often leads to absurd answers, such as the scenes in Trucks where vehicles adjust their wing mirrors to "watch" people, or ... well, trust me when I say that Trucks has some spectacularly silly ideas.

Death Ship also feels pretty silly at times, generally whenever it goes for its more contrived elements, such as the scene where the ship "makes a snare" for someone.  The film is much more effective when it keeps things simple: there's a scene of metal doors just slamming shut behind a character, for instance, works well.  I admit that this is technically no more realistic, but it doesn't as obviously jar as "impossible" because of course, in the real world, doors do sometimes suddenly slam shut, such as from a gust of wind.

The film's biggest problems, however, are the pacing and the characters.  The former, in particular is a real weakness.  Even at a mere 90 minute run time, the movie feels very drawn out.  It has extended and closing opening sequences that don't really add much to the main story, and that main story is itself very lethargically told.  The film is full of slow motion scenes, lots of footage of machinery in operation, and a number of events with no consequence other than to fill time, such as when one character is grabbed and locked up ... and then she just immediately gets free without any real effort.  What was the point of that?

And then there are the characters.  To be fair to then movie, it allows them to start to twig "this is a bad place to be" pretty fast, but it is transparently obvious which of them are going to survive, and it seems to actively sabotage any possible interest it may have built in the others.  For instance, early on, I was very pleased with how proactive and sensible the character Lori was.  It was a particularly nice surprise given her introduction suggested she was in the movie mainly to do the sexy stuff.  But having subverted expectations in a good way, the film simply backflips and says "nope, we did just hire her for her bosoms, and now you've seen them, she can be unceremoniously killed off"

And then we have the main "hero"; who at one point in the film jumps a guy twice his age from surprise, and still gets his butt kicked. An action hero, he most definitely is not!  He's so ineffectual, in fact, that his blatant plot immunity becomes particularly irksome.

Ultimately, the primary entertainment here is from unintended comedy. Which to be fair, is sometimes quite a lot of entertainment. Still, not recommended unless you've a real passion for such nonsense.