[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Here's my review from 2016.

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

Death Ship (1980)

Films about haunted or possessed boats must be incredibly difficult to make as there isn't one that's totally successful. Val Lewton's The Ghost Ship (1943) goes down the mad captain route, whereas Venon Sewell's 1952 effort Ghost Ship features an actual haunted boat. The 2002 effort of the same name is a largely pointless time waster with one great prologue sequence.

Alvin Rakoff's Death Ship wisely uses the best of both worlds - a haunted vessel and possessed captain to come up with the best of the bunch. The basic plot is straightforward but ambitious. A mysterious black freighter hits an ocean liner causing it to sink. A small band of survivors including captain George Kennedy, Richard Crenna and Saul Rubinek, manage to board the deserted vessel . Once aboard they discover the ship seemingly abandoned has been sailing the seas ever since the Second World War with it's long dead German crew always on the look out for Allied boats to sink.

Death Ship is quite a lot of fun. It features some rather nifty set pieces. Saul Rubinek's early death is beautifully suspenseful and Victoria Burgoyne's shower sequence the film's stand out memorable moment. Captain George Kennedy's descent into madness and possession is also well done. The revelation that the ship was a Kriegsmarine prison ship, and the ghosts of its inmates and crew are still aboard adds a welcome air of absurd creepiness to it all.

What doesn't work so well are the endless shots of the boats engines and order telegraphs which often only serve to break tension, yet also add a certain something to the whole thing, a calmness, a hypnotic suggestion that only dares to break out of films of this ilk.

Whilst Death Ship isn't the best horror film of the 80's it does stand out thanks to it's ambition, filming on an actual old ship out at sea definitely gives this film an atmosphere which i doubt could be created in 2016.