Friday, October 21, 2011

"Well it's hardly scientific but it's really quite terrific"

At last a worthy competitor for Pierce Brosnan's Deaths on a Train! Ghost Ship from 2002, not to be confused with Death Ship from 1980, or with the Goonies rip-off Ghost Ship from 1992.


A rough and ready salvage crew discover an abandoned and rusting cruise liner. They investigate and discover crates of gold bars. The most obviously fake gold bars I've seen in a film for a while but no matter they are hooked and the mayhem begins.

This was great! No cliche is left unturned. The crew are all instantly recognisable stereotypes, they say things like "Stick together" before immediately wandering off alone, and they break nearly all the rules of survival for horror movies. The only unpredictable aspect is guessing who will be picked off first and how. Gabriel Byrne plays the salvage crew's captain and must have wondered what film he had wandered into. Meanwhile Julianna Margulies from E.R. does her best as the tough action woman and inevitably becomes a genre final girl. And the villain of the piece turns out to be the person we suspected all along, the clue is in the character name.

This is a truly terrible film that deserves a Joe Bob star rating of 4 out of 5 stars. one beast, two breasts, heads roll, arms roll, in fact every major body part rolls. This goes into joint first place with Death Train. The secret to a good bad film title would appear to be first word something spooky, second word a mode of transportation. I look forward to a film called Terror Tram or Scary Scooter.

Incidentally the film poster above is very similar to a 2000AD cover used for the Leviathan series that I have annotated elsewhere. It is of course based on a famous art deco poster for an actual ocean liner.

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