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★★★★
Directed by: Alvin Rakoff
Written by: John Robins, Jack Hill
Starring: George Kennedy, Sally Ann Howes, Nick Mancuso and Richard Crenna
Throwback Film Review by: Rachel Pullen
Death Ship (1980) Film Review
The ocean is annoying, it’s big and full of eels and secrets, of fish who must create their own light and sunken ships full of pirate ghosts. I’m not one for the ocean, not a water baby if you will, yet there seems to be a very rich subgenre of horror films which focuses on the sea which I seem to love.
Ghost Ship, The Shallows, Triangle, Jaws and so forth, all of these movies love the sea and the evil that lives in it, or on it, if you are taking the boat option, but what if that boat was haunted by the ghost of like…oh I do not know…Hitler!! What an exciting time that would be!
Death Ship (1980) is the tale of a group of people who survive their vessel sinking, and while floating around waiting to die a big ass boat bumps into their inflatable life raft, and they are all like “Cool, lets get help” but no one is on board, damm how will they get to shore? Who will drive the boat? Do not worry silly eggs, the boat is haunted by Nazi ghosts and can drive itself.
The people do not clock on just yet and so decide to take shelter from the sun (which is also dreadful in my mind) but it’s not long before the boat starts to kill off the folks on board and the ones who last longer are tortured mentally by the spirits of the Nazis who once lived aboard. There are ghosts, films of Hitler playing on loop, blood in the shower, blood on the dancefloor, it's all going on in this death ship, and even though that seems a bit silly, this film has a certain style to it that I quite enjoyed.
Now, apparently, it was intentionally a made for tv movie but ended up sailing its way to the big screen, and maybe because of that it has this low budget charm, all the effects are man-made, but still realistic, the characters are developed well, and each has their own storyline within the boat, the director has fun with angles and camera use, and the acting is hammy and still believable all at the same time, in essence, I love that vibe so much.
Death Ship is a classic but overlooked 80’s horror, drowned out by the heavy-hitting slashers of the time such as Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers, which is a shame, for it brings to the table a fun and unique storyline, I mean a ghost ship is one thing, but the Nazi element was the icing on the cake.
This week we have learned…
Boats suck.
Oceans are liars.
And Nazi ghosts are everywhere.
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