Death Ship (1980)

This introduction is going to be very similar to that of Dogs, in that I'd never heard of this flick until I stumbled across it, thought both the title and the premise, not to mention the two leads, sounded very promising, and took a chance on a recent Scorpion Blu-Ray release of it. The differences are that, one, unlike with Dogs, I happened upon Death Ship on Amazon rather than in some store, and two, while I'm not a big fan of this movie overall, I find it much more tolerable than yesterday's item. Truth be told, re-watching it for this marked only the second time I'd ever viewed it, and the first time was so long ago now that I didn't remember much about it, aside from my finding it very disappointing and not as entertaining as I'd hoped. Upon this second watch, I remembered how I felt that George Kennedy and Richard Crenna weren't given that much to work with, especially the latter, and also realized just how overdone and melodramatic the movie tends to be. From the manner in which the paranormal activity onboard the ship is depicted, to the often overwrought direction and editing, it feels like it's trying way too hard to get its point across, yet never quite reaches the "so bad, it's good" plateau. It's a shame too, because the concept definitely has potential, and there are some grisly moments and images here, for sure, but for me, it's wasted by how hackneyed it is in general. In addition, I wish they hadn't gone with the subplot of Kennedy's character being possessed and driven mad by the ship's influence, as I didn't like that at all, and the third act feels like it partially becomes a mind-screw just for the sake of it. And yes, before anyone asks, I would say that I do prefer Ghost Ship, which I reviewed during the first Schlocktober. As flawed and imperfect as that movie certainly is, it does more for me personally.

It's the final voyage for Captain Ashland, a tough old veteran of the sea, one whose overly critical and abrasive personality has turned his own crew against him. During his final stint as the captain of a luxury cruise liner, he's joined by Trevor Marshall, his intended replacement, as well as Marshall's wife, Margaret, and their two young children, Robin and Ben. While Ashland reluctantly attends a party down in the ballroom, his crew detects a mysterious freighter that's on a collision course with them. Try as they might to avoid it, it seems intent on crashing into them. Ashland is notified and tries his best to dodge it, but the ships suffer a devastating collision that sinks the cruise liner and kills nearly all of the crew and passengers. The next day, the sole survivors, which include Marshall and his family, an officer named Nick, his girlfriend Lori, Jackie, the ship's comic lounge entertainer, and Mrs. Morgan, a passenger, find themselves adrift on a chunk of wreckage. They also eventually find the badly injured and shell-shocked Ashland, and bring him aboard with them. After drifting for some time, a freighter suddenly appears and they board it, unaware that it's the very ship that slammed into them. And while it's seemingly devoid of any crew or passengers, there's clearly some force at work onboard, one which attempts to kill several of the men when they're trying to get aboard and which kills Jackie almost immediately. Once they're all on the ship, Ashland begins hearing a voice speaking to him in German, while the others explore and learn some of its secrets. Things begin to turn macabre and frightening when Mrs. Morgan, after eating some hard candy she finds in one of the cupboards, suddenly becomes hideously disfigured and diseased. Unbeknownst to the others, she's murdered by Ashland, who claims she died of a seizure. After she's given a burial at sea, Ashland, now wearing a uniform of the Nazi German Navy, declares himself the ship's captain, and becomes just as much of a threat to the remaining survivors as the malevolent forces inhabiting the ship itself, which plan on making them the latest in a long line of victims.

Like a lot of the movies we've looked at this month, Death Ship, despite its dubious quality, did have some talented people involved with it, and not just in front of the camera. One of the people credited with writing the initial story is actually Jack Hill, the director of Spider Baby and Switchblade Sisters. Meanwhile, its director, Canadian-born Alvin Rakoff, was a veteran of stage, television, and film, having worked with numerous big-name actors, most notably on many productions for the BBC. He also gave some actors their first major roles, like Sean Connery in 1957's Requiem for a Heavyweight (Michael Caine also has an early role there), and Alan Rickman in a 1978 BBC production of Romeo & Juliet. He didn't do nearly as many feature films as he did television, but he still directed some featuring noteworthy actors, like Rod Steiger in 1961's World in My Pocket, Roger Moore in 1969's Crossplot, Peter Sellers in 1970's Hoffman, and Henry Fonda, Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters, and Leslie Nielsen in 1979's City on Fire. Death Ship was not only Rakoff's one and only foray into the horror genre, but it was also his penultimate feature film as director. After 1981's Dirty Tricks, he concentrated on his ongoing television career. He died in October of 2024, at the age of 97.

While I still feel that he doesn't get that much interesting to do, between him and Richard Crenna, George Kennedy definitely has the more memorable role as Captain Ashland. Describing him as a prickly hardass would be an underestimate, as Ashland is so critical and thinks so lowly of his crew that, at the beginning of the movie, they're all glad he's leaving in just a few days. While he's cordial enough towards his intended replacement, Trevor Marshall, you don't have to look too far to see the resentment he has towards him over being replaced. In fact, Ashland has contempt for just about everyone, including his passengers, whom he reluctantly joins during the party in the ballroom, only to tell Marshall how much he disdains having to interact and mingle with them just so they can go home and say, "They ate with the captain." As for Jackie, the ship's comedian and entertainer; when he playfully busts his chops onstage, Ashland, after taking a bow, grumbles, "Forty years at sea, and here I am being a straight-man to a smartass comedian." You later learn that his attitude was the very reason why he was being replaced, as he was deemed unable to successfully work with others. Still, when he's informed of the ship that's come out of nowhere and is heading right for them, Ashland takes action and does everything he can to avoid the collision. However, he's unable to stop his ship from being sunk, and most of his crew and passengers dying. Initially, it seems as though he might've died with them, but as the survivors drift along on their makeshift raft, he suddenly surfaces near them and is brought onboard (how he managed to make it as far as they got in his condition, without drowning, is anybody's guess). When they first come upon the freighter, Ashland is mostly dead-weight, as he's in such shock and unable to move from his injuries that the others have to literally pick him up and carry him aboard. This task is made even harder when the ladder they're climbing on breaks and oil pours out of the freighter's side when they're going up a rope-ladder. Once he's on the ship, however, Ashland hears a disembodied voice speaking to him in German, and images later start flashing through his head. At one point, he tries to get up and get to the bridge, but it's not until Mrs. Morgan undergoes her hideous transformation that the ship fully takes hold of Ashland. He strangles her, seeing her as a disobedient crew-member, and later claims she died of a seizure. He has her body dumped into the ocean and says a prayer, though the Bible he clutches is in German.

Once everyone is thoroughly marooned after the lifeboats are dropped into the sea by themselves, Ashland puts on a Kriegsmarine uniform and declares himself captain of the ship. While he and Marshall are in the wheelhouse, he lets Marshall attempt to steer the ship, contemptuously noting, "All of my previous passengers liked to do that. They liked to pretend to be a captain, like you." But when Marshall can't get the wheel to turn, Ashland growls, "You took my last ship from me. You won't get this one." After then

showing that he can move the wheel no problem, he orders the engine room, "Full ahead!" Seeing how deranged he's becoming, Marshall tries to take command himself but Ashland will have none of it. And when asked, "Where do you plan to sail her?", he quietly answers, "Eternity, Marshall. Eternity." From then on, Ashland becomes a serious threat to the others: menacing the children when they're wandering around on the lower decks, throwing Lori's body overboard after a harrowing experience she has in a

shower, drowning Nick personally, and, during the climax, locking up Margaret, declaring that no one is going to leave his ship. More than just a madman, he's clearly fully possessed, as he's able to suddenly appear and disappear, and becomes part of the ship's messing with Marshall and Nick's minds. There's also something of a tie between himself and the ship, as the engines momentarily stop when Marshall stabs him at one point, only for him to resurrect with them shortly afterward and attempt to kill the Marshall

family as they're escaping. And speaking of the ship, he's fully aware of the its motivation, which is to scour the ocean, searching for victims to feed on, something he's more than willing to help it with, declaring himself tainted with blood just like the ship. However, when it refuses to obey him and run down the Marshalls and their escape raft, instead opting to go after another ship nearby, Ashland becomes enraged and does everything he can to regain control. That includes shooting up the wheelhouse, then running down into the engine room and shooting at the machinery. This proves to be his undoing, as he's blown down into the gears and is crushed to death, while the ship itself continues searching for prey.

This is less on the movie itself than it is a byproduct of seeing as many horror movies as I have, but when I realized we were going the possession/negative influence route with Ashland, I rolled my eyes. It's something I've seen numerous times, be it really famous examples like The Shining and Christine, or lesser known films like Burnt Offerings and Event Horizon, and it also doesn't help that I've seen it done better in those examples, as well as others that I'm probably not thinking of. While the exact nature of

the influence on the character's personality is often complex and nuanced, with Ashland, there's not much to it: he prefers being a ship's sole commander rather than actually dealing with people, and the Death Ship gives him that opportunity, despite the atrocities committed onboard the ship and the horrific things it's continuing to do. It also gives him an opportunity to get back at Marshall for "taking" his first ship from him, and he uses it as an excuse to try to kill him and his family during the climax. Being the old pro that he was, George Kennedy does everything he can with the role, but in the end, I found it to be really cliched and wish they'd instead taken Ashland through a redemption arc, with him helping the others upon realizing the ship's evil nature.

Richard Crenna is the lead who really gets the short end of the stick in his role of Trevor Marshall. Initially, he does have an opportunity to project some of the charisma he was known for, like when Captain Ashland says, "I'm told that you're an excellent conversationalist," and Marshall replies, "That depends on whom I'm talking to, sir." And while attending the party with his wife, Margaret, they have some banter about what jokes Jackie will make about Marshall when he takes over as captain, with Margaret saying, "Nobody ever makes jokes about you." Marshall playfully replies, "Oh. Am I as stuffy as that?", and she answers, "I wouldn't know. I hardly ever see you out of your uniform." He then promises that she will that night. Of course, neither they nor anyone else are able to get it on that night, as the ship is hit by the freighter and sinks. And from then on out, Crenna has little to do other than be something of a bland leading man, acting as the group of survivors' de facto leader when they first board the Death Ship. Like the others, he spends most of the second act wandering around it, gradually discovering its more sinister secrets, and then later sees firsthand in the wheelhouse that Ashland is becoming dangerously unhinged and obsessed with captaining it. He warns Margaret of this, and soon, he, his family, and everyone else are threatened by both the ship and Ashland, even after Marshall seemingly fatally stabs him. In the end, Marshall and his family are the only ones who manage to escape the ship, making use of life-raft that Marshall finds, and they're later rescued.

Margaret Marshall (Sally Ann Howes) doesn't have much significant to do aside from look after her two children, explore the ship with them, and worry about what's going on. During the climax, Ashland, after knocking Marshall unconscious, abducts Margaret and locks her up in a chain locker. You expect this to lead to her husband having to come to the rescue but, randomly, she manages to escape offscreen and reunites with him on deck, before they manage to get off the ship and join their kids on the lift-raft.

Speaking of their kids, Robin (Jennifer McKinney) and Ben (Danny Higham), they're a little more memorable in that they spend most of their screentime bickering, and there's a running gag with Ben constantly having to use the restroom at the most inconvenient time. He rushes to go as soon as he gets onboard the Death Ship, opting to pee on the deck rather than wait until he actually finds a restroom, and later, he gets up in the middle of the night to go, which leads to their being menaced by both the haunting and Ashland. However, both of these kids are really bad actors, giving badly wooden performances, and it seems like most of, if not all, their dialogue was redone in post, at that.

Nick (Nick Mancuso), the only member of Ashland's crew to survive the sinking, and his girlfriend, Lori (Victoria Burgoyne), just manage to begin having sex when the collision happens (still, they apparently had enough time to get some clothes on before the ship sank). When they first board the Death Ship, Lori explores the ship's interior with Marshall's family and Mrs. Morgan, while Nick is knocked unconscious up on deck when a chain suddenly hits him from behind. Amazingly, he doesn't break his back when this

happens, as he falls quite far, and when he comes to, he's able to help the others when they're temporarily trapped inside a room. He and Marshall begin exploring more of the ship, while Lori stays with the others. The latter find a room with a film projector and switch it on, only for them to then experience the horrific fate that befalls Mrs. Morgan. That night, after they've dumped her body into the ocean, Nick and Lori lock themselves in a cabin. However, when Lori goes to take a shower, she finds herself trapped inside, and blood begins spraying out of the faucet. Unable to get the door open or break through it, Nick runs to get help, but by the time he and Marshall make it back to the cabin, Ashland has dragged Lori out of the shower and tosses her blood-covered body overboard. After witnessing this, Marshall and Nick chase after him, only for them to end up in a number of rooms revealing the ship's darkest secrets. Chief among them is one full of decaying corpses, and they're both driven close to madness by the horrific sights, the sudden projection of film footage of Hitler and marching Nazis, and the deafening sounds that come with it. During this virtual fever dream, Nick tries to attack a vision of Ashland, but he falls into the ship's hold, into a net filled with skeletons. and Ashland promptly drowns him.

While Mrs. Morgan (Kate Reid) doesn't stand out for the most part, she is still memorable for several reasons. An older American woman, she spends most of her time onboard the ship looking after Ashland while he's nearly comatose in the bunk room. When the kids are roaming around the room, finding some old magazines, Ben asks who Hitler was and Mrs. Morgan answers, "Rather unpleasant man. He started World War II." When Margaret, Lori, and the kids are exploring one section of the ship, while Marshall and Nick are in another, Mrs. Morgan is left alone in the room with Ashland. She finds a jar of hard candy in a cabinet and, regardless of what ill effects it may have, eats some. She's then led out of there and down to the projector room by an excited Ben, but later, when the film stops, it's revealed that she's suddenly become hideously diseased and decayed. While the others are so aghast at this that they either run from or avoid her, Mrs. Morgan stumbles back to the bunk room, begging Ashland for help. But, now that he's under the ship's influence, he strangles her to death, and later has her body dumped into the sea.

Jackie (Saul Rubinek), the cruise ship's comedian, whose jokes about him Ashland doesn't appreciate at all, may survive the sinking but he's the first one to die aboard the Death Ship. Once they're all onboard, he tries to make light of the situation, saying, "It's not so bad. We're out of the water, it's a nice day. Huh? We could clear this mess up, play a little shuffleboard, get a tan. We'll have a nice trip. What do you say?" Apparently, the ship's evil spirits don't care for his sense of humor either, as a hanging hook snags the bottom of one of his pants legs, hoists him up, swings him out over the water, and lowers him into it until his head is submerged. His life is seemingly spared when he's raised back up out of the water, only for the chain to lift him up to the very top of the crane, then drop him back down into the water. While Jackie survives the fall, he futilely tries to climb back up the side of the now moving ship, but is ultimately swept away and drowns.

Whether it's because he'd never made a horror movie before or he simply didn't think much of the script he had to work with, Alvin Rakoff's direction and overall construction of Death Ship is about as subtle as a brick to the face. Right from the very beginning, you're bombarded with rapid editing depicting the Death Ship sensing the cruise liner nearby and going after it, as well as fast-moving pans throughout its interior (you see the cameraman's shadow on a wall almost immediately), the sound of the captain's disembodied voice over the intercom as the engines

begin running of their own accord, and loud, overbearing music as the ship begins making its way towards its intended prey. This continues throughout the opening, as the film cuts back and forth from what's going on aboard the cruise ship to the Death Ship closing in, often focusing on its bow as it cuts through the water, as well as the grinding gears and pistons in the engine room. And during the lead-up to the collision, it cuts from brief shots of what everyone is doing and the Death Ship closing in, with a final push-in on both Ashland's face and the ship's bow. It

all feels very overdone and heavy-handed, and this approach continues throughout the movie, in moments like when Mrs. Morgan's body is tossed into the sea, and Marshall and Nick chase Ashland through the ship's interiors, which are depicted very melodramatically (the latter, for instance, is done in major slow-mo). As for the haunting activity aboard the ship, it consists of no actual onscreen ghosts but, still, you have levers, controls, and other machines that turn on and off by themselves, doors opening and

closing by themselves, Captain Ashland hearing the German voice that ultimately takes control of his mind, complete with flashes of what he's about to become and the acts he's going to commit, Mrs. Morgan suddenly becoming diseased after eating that hard candy, and Marshall and Nick experiencing a full-on mind-screw during the third act. While I do think movies about ghosts, haunted houses, and the like work best when they're done subtly, I also don't mind it when they're not subtle in the least, like

Poltergeist, for instance. However, this is so unsubtle and often feels so forced that it makes Ghost Ship, which opens with a bunch of people getting sliced in half, look as restrained as something like The Haunting or The Changeling. What's more, it comes off as downright amateurish, especially the very first scare, with Ashland floating under the water near the survivors and, twice, popping up, when he should've drowned by that point. If it weren't for the characters being either bland, forgettable, or not living up to expectations, the film could've possibly landed into the "so bad, it's good" category.

The funny thing is, even though it was a British-Canadian co-production, Death Ship, to me, has the vibe of a European horror film, specifically Italian or Spanish, from that period. Not only does it have that look about it (if you've seen a number of those films, you know what I mean), but the sound design, a fair amount of which sounds like ADR in the dialogue, especially with the kids, and overt Foley work with the characters' footsteps and such, has that kind of feel. Also, while it never gets as sleazy or nasty as those movies tended to, you still have the scenes

where Lori is stuck in a shower that's spraying blood, during which you see just about everything there is to see with her, and there are some fairly gruesome images during the second half. The rather blatant, in-your-face direction that I described up above is also akin to those Euro-horror films. And most significantly, like a lot of them, it gets to the point where logic goes out the window and you're simply being bombarded by insane sights and sounds. This is especially true during the third act, when Marshall and Nick chase Captain Ashland through the bowels

of the ship, only to blunder into various rooms, seemingly going straight from the doorway of one to another with no rhyme or reason (I'm not sure if that was meant intentionally as part of the mind-screw or if it's just really bad continuity), and, after they're mentally tortured, suddenly find themselves either up on deck or in the captain's cabin. But, as much as I do enjoy a lot of those movies and can turn my brain off in to just enjoy the visual ride, particularly when it comes to various works by Mario Bava, Dario

Argento, and Lucio Fulci, Death Ship fits in much more with the less successful type of Euro-horror for me: the type where the movie isn't nearly entertaining enough to overcome its genuine flaws, like poor acting, uninteresting characters, dull pacing, or just plain bad filmmaking. Also, that mind-screw section, as freakish as it does get, comes out of nowhere and feels incongruent with the nature of the haunting that we'd seen before.

While the, admittedly, impressive exteriors of the Death Ship itself would seem to indicate that the film had a fairly substantial budget, it was cheap enough to where they had to make use of stock footage from other films. When the Death Ship hits the cruise liner, they made extensive use of footage from a 1960 movie called The Last Voyage, with shots of the engine room flooding, a random explosion, and a grand piano tumbling down through a large hole in the floor (that doesn't even make sense in context of what you see of the ballroom). It's plain as day that

this is from another film, though, not just because the picture quality goes downhill significantly but also because the actors playing the sailors rushing into and then from the engine room are dressed like they're from the late 50's, early 60's. Moreover, when they first detect the Death Ship on their radar, the shot, which is used several times, is taken from the 1976 version of King Kong; the supposed image of the ship is actually that of the island in that movie!

Still, that's not to say there's absolutely nothing to compliment the film on. For one, it is often shot well, nicely establishing the isolation of the characters when they're drifting in the ocean and when they're stuck on the Death Ship, with seemingly no way to escape or anywhere to escape to. Speaking of the ship itself, it's often filmed in a manner to make it look ominous and imposing, like when it's a dark silhouette cruising across the ocean at night or when it's looming over the characters when they first come across it. There are also a number of shots on the

ship's exterior deck that, as I said, give a real sense of scale that belies the small budget they likely had. And when he's not going crazy in his depicting of the haunting activity, Rakoff does manage to create some atmosphere with the silent, still shots of the ship's seemingly abandoned deck and dark interiors, or when the characters go to investigate when they hear music or a film playing. And there are some effectively freakish images to be found during the movie's latter half, which I'll get into later. Going back to his direction, Rakoff does manage to come up

with some noteworthy instances of cinematography and editing. When the survivors are first drifting along, there's a montage of close-ups of the individuals, superimposed over a wide shot of them on the piece of wreckage. Also, the camera is often bobbing along, simulating the choppy water, and there are shots of the sun bearing down on them. And when they first find the ship and Nick goes aboard, the camera angles create a feeling that there's

something watching them. Shortly afterward, when Jackie is strung up by the hook, there are some shots from his POV as the others try to jump up and pull him back down. The most memorable bit of camerawork, however, is an upside down tracking shot across the ship's deck, which you see when Ashland first begins to fall prey to its evil influence.

The film's greatest technical accomplishment is its production design and art direction. We start out on the luxurious interiors of Ashland's cruise liner, and while all we really see of it are the main ballroom, the bridge, some corridors, and the interior of a couple of cabins, it makes for a definite contrast to the old, dirty, cobweb-infested Death Ship. I'm sure that at least the exterior shots and the scenes set on its main deck were done on an actual ship, but it's also possible that the same goes for the interiors. Regardless, when the characters are first exploring it,

they find some old cabins, a washroom, and a bunk room, where they initially stay and bring Ashland in to rest. This latter room is also where they realize that the ship was German, given the reading material and signs they find. Afterward, Margaret and the kids find an old, dusty galley, still full of pots, pans, bottles, and even running water, though it's clearly not water you'd want to drink (not that it stops Ben), while Lori comes upon a room where a gramophone is playing by itself. While the women and the kids later find the very small projection room, Marshall and Nick find

the chart room, where one chart shows that the ship travels around the Atlantic in big circles, as well as the old, faulty radio room and engine room, wherein the machines are running by themselves. During the second half, they discover the ship's darker secrets, such as a blood-red room full of Nazi memorabilia; an infirmary that was also used for torture and interrogation, which houses a tray of gold teeth and items from past victims; a nearby room filled with

skeletons and corpses that are still decaying, with some still strapped to the devices that tortured them to death; and during the climax, Marshall goes into the meat locker, which he finds filled with bodies hanging from hooks, along with the life-raft that he and his family eventually use to escape.

Despite my complaints about how over-the-top much of the ghostly phenomena is, there are some more atmospheric examples early on, like when, as they're first exploring the interiors, Lori hears the sound of a gramophone playing in the distance and goes to investigate. When she finds it, it's in a seemingly deserted room, and the record starts skipping as soon as she walks through the door. She pushes the needle away from it and walks out of the room, only for it to go right back into place and play the music again; this time, she opts not to go back into the room (it

would've been more effective had they not shown the needle moving back to the record), as the music echoes throughout the ship. A similar moment happens shortly afterward, when the projector in that one room starts running, the others hear the sound of the film playing, and go to investigate. Before that, Lori, again, is freaked out when a door slowly opens behind her in one instance, accompanied by what sounds like moaning... but it turns out to be Ashland, as the others carry him down to the bunk room.

Like various haunted house stories, where the house itself is an evil entity, the same goes for the Death Ship. It's revealed that, tainted with evil due to the atrocities that were committed aboard it, and having managed to escape its intended sinking following the end of the war, the ship now roams the Atlantic like a predator, preying on other boats, sinking them, and then luring the survivors onboard, where it feeds on their blood (possibly what its unholy engines are fueled by). It actually seems to have a taste mostly for women and children, as once Margaret, Lori, Mrs.

Morgan, and the kids are onboard (along with Jackie), Marshall, Nick, and Ashland are dumped off the ladder and into the water. And when this attempt to drown them fails, the ship spews oil on them when they're climbing up a rope-ladder that Lori tosses down to them. Either way, when they're all onboard, the ship later ensures that there's no escape by getting rid of the lifeboats. And while Ashland grows to consider himself, "The instrument of this ship," and it does view him as important enough to resurrect after

Marshall stabs him, he is not, as he declares himself, "Its master." Case in point, the ending, where he tries to make the ship chase after Marshall and his family when they escape on the life-raft, only for it to disobey him and change course, having sensed another ship to prey on nearby. This leads Ashland to go down to the engine room and shoot at the equipment in order to regain control, only to get blown into the gears and get crushed to death. More than likely, he wasn't the first would-be captain the ship used to its own ends, and it's also doubtful that he would be the last.

There's no doubt that the moment where the ladder suddenly dumps the men into the sea and Jackie's death via that crane and hook have definite Omen and pre-Final Destination vibes to them, but once everyone else is onboard the ship, the deaths and imagery become much more visceral and psychological. For instance, when Mrs. Morgan suddenly becomes hideously decayed and diseased, Ashland sees visions of disturbing corpses before she staggers into the bunk room, begging him for help. He proceeds to strangle her to death, and we see some

brief visions of a pair of hands, possibly that of the Nazi captain whose voice influences Ashland, violently strangling a seaman. Then, that night, Lori becomes trapped in the shower in her and Nick's cabin, and the water turns to blood, much to her horror. As she panics inside (I've read that Victoria Burgoyne was told that it was real blood, which is why she's so frantic), begging Nick to let her out, he tries to smash through the glass but can't. He goes to get Marshall's help, while, elsewhere, Robin and Ben

get lost in the ship's dark corridors. Robin finds herself in the radio room, where the equipment is suddenly working, and the Nazi anthem, Horst-Wessel-Lied, starts playing over the intercom, while Ben finds his way down into the engine room, and is then spooked when he runs down a corridor as a series of doors close behind him. By the time Nick finds Marshall, he's just taken back his kids after they were menaced by Ashland while they were roaming around the ship's interiors. But by the time the two men get back there, the shower is open and Lori's gone. It turns out that Ashland dragged her body out of it and up on deck, where Marshall and Nick arrive in time to see him toss her into the sea.

From there, the movie becomes a total mind-screw for a stretch, as Marshall and Nick chase Ashland through the lower decks, only for him to lead them into that red room full of Nazi memorabilia. After searching around it, they duck back out and find themselves in the infirmary, where Marshall discovers all the golden teeth and Nick the personal items from past victims. They then leave that room and wind up in the one filled with the victims' cobweb-covered corpses, where they're horrified not just by the grisly sights and the torture devices, but also by the tortured

screams that still echo throughout the chamber. Nick gets so freaked out that he stumbles and falls into some chairs, as he and Marshall now find themselves in the projection room. The projector starts playing old film reels of Hitler and marching Nazis, and Marshall tries to stop it by tearing the machine apart, while Nick tries to rip away the screen. But no matter what they do, they can't make the film go away, as Nick just finds another screen behind each one that he rips up, and the footage continues even when Marshall flings the projector to the floor in a broken

heap. The latter collapses to the ground, recoiling from a piercing sound that begins filling the room, compounded by the loud volume of the footage, while Nick finds himself blinded by the projection light no matter where he tries to crawl away. He gets up and leans back against the screen, when he starts to see visions of Ashland up on the deck. Unable to take it anymore, he lunges at Ashland, only to fall down into the hold and into a half-submerged net. Ashland raises the net up enough so Nick can see that there are

skeletons in it with him, causing him to flail around in a panic. After watching him for a bit, Ashland lowers the net back into the water, drowning him. The film cuts back to Marshall, who's still suffering from the painful auditory onslaught, only for the sound to slowly die off, as Ashland tells him that the ship needs blood, specifically the blood of him and his family. Suddenly, he finds himself sitting across from Ashland in the captain's quarters, and learns of the

ship's grisly history and its monstrous nature. He then takes a knife and stabs Ashland three times, an act that also stops the engines from running. Once the captain has collapsed onto the floor, seemingly dead, Marshall runs to collect his family and get them off the ship.

After retrieving some life-jackets and a life-raft from the meat locker, Marshall and his family get up on deck, drop the anchor, and prepare to escape. However, the ship has resurrected Ashland, who grabs a rifle and starts shooting at them. Dodging and taking cover from his bullets, Marshall gets first the kids and then Margaret to safety. The latter manage to get the life-raft over the side, while Marshall ambushes and tries to fight Ashland, only to get beaten and knocked unconscious. While the kids are able to jump off the side and swim to the raft,

Ashland grabs Margaret from behind and hauls her inside, forcing her into a chain locker. As the ship detects another craft to attack nearby, and proceeds to raise the anchor and change direction, Marshall awakens back on the deck. He runs to the spot where Margaret and the kids were, and learns from the latter that his wife is still onboard. At that moment, Margaret, having escaped the locker (seriously, what was the point of that if she was just going to get out of it herself offscreen?), reunites with her husband.

By the time Ashland makes it up into the wheelhouse, Marshall and Margaret have jumped off and are swimming to the raft to join their children. That's when he tries to get the ship to go after them, only to find it has its own plans, much to his frustration. After shooting up the wheelhouse, he makes the mistake of going down to the engine room and doing the same, only to get blown off the catwalk by an explosion to his left and fall down into the gears. He's slowly crushed to death, with his right arm getting ripped off

(it's not nearly as gory as you may think), and his agonized screams echoing throughout the ship. Meanwhile, the Marshall family manage to escape on the raft and are finally rescued after drifting for a while afterward; however, the movie ends with the Death Ship still active and continuing to prowl the Atlantic for victims.

Like the movie itself, the music score by Ivor Slaney is often not subtle in the least. The opening credits start out with a fairly low-key, kind of eerie piece, punctuated by the Death Ship's loud horn, but when the ship senses the cruise liner and goes after it, the music transitions into this loud, driving theme that's reiterated throughout the opening whenever it cuts back to the ship closing in, culminating in the collision (you also hear a version of it when you first see Ashland in the Kriegsmarine uniform. The same goes for this really harsh bit of music that plays when the survivors first come upon the Death Ship, and the very blatant music for the initial attacks they suffer when they're onboard, as well as during the horror scenes later on. In fact, the music often has a rather old-fashioned feel to it, especially what plays during the climax when Ashland is trying to kill the Marshall family. Sometimes, though, the score is just plain weird, with bizarre reverberating sounds echoing throughout the ship when they climb aboard, this one that increases in pitch in the build-up to when Nick gets knocked unconscious early on, a rapid, pulsing sound, combined with a heartbeat, that you hear when Ashland murders Mrs. Morgan, and what sounds like a bizarre, electronic organ when Marshall and Nick chase after him later. And there are moments where you hear old German songs playing, sometimes to torment the characters, like Lori when she's trapped in the bloody shower or Marshall and Nick when they're in the projection room. The one song from Everything Is Rhythm, the old movie that plays in that room, is also likely to get stuck in your head.

This has likely come off as a confusing review, as I've likely made Death Ship sound like a fairly entertaining flick that I should like, for all intents and purposes. As I've said, there are things to compliment it for, like some of the cinematography and editing, the art direction of the Death Ship itself, some instances of spookiness, as well as some hideous imagery and concepts, and interesting music score. But the reason why I can't get into this movie is because I don't care about any of the characters, and feel that George Kennedy and Richard Crenna are rather wasted, and feel that a lot of the direction, editing, and the depiction of the paranormal activity onboard the ship is not only really "in your face" most of the time, but there are instances where it feels really amateurish, like it was made by someone who didn't know the meaning of the word "subtlety." Maybe you can look past all that and enjoy it for how nuts it gets, like I can for a lot of the Euro-horror movies that I compared it to, but this is not a film I plan to ever revisit.