The Last Voyage (B or 3/4 stars)
In 'The Last Voyage' (directed by Andrew L. Stone), Robert Stack & Dorothy Malone star as Cliff & Laurie Henderson, a happily married couple on a vacation to Japan with their red-haired daughter (annoyingly portrayed by Tammy Marihugh), taking their 1st sea voyage aboard the old luxury ocean liner, S.S. Claridon. All seems well for them early on, but NOT so for the ship below decks, where a huge fire has broken out. The engine room crew, led by Chief Engineer Steven Pringle (Jack Kruschen, so good in The Apartment), 2nd Engineer Walsh (wonderful Edmond O'Brien), & able crew member Hank Lawson (Woody Strode), put-out the blaze, but the Captain Robert Adams (distinguished, if stoic George Sanders) refuses their dire request to shut down the boilers to check for further damage.
Utter disaster ensues as the boilers explode, killing Pringle, & blasting an enormous hole through to the upper decks + an opening to the ocean that allows too much water for the ship's pumps to handle. Still, aggravatingly so, the Captain refuses to order the passengers to the lifeboats ... he hopes that his stellar engine room crew can magically hold the bulkhead & keep his old ship from foundering. All the while, Cliff has to rescue his terrified daughter from their wrecked stateroom, & must do what he can to help his wife, Laurie, who is severely injured; trapped beneath a huge piece of steel beam, while the ship slowly descends into the sea.
Some viewers might find the chain of frazzled phone calls, men barking orders, and/or crewmen running up & down flights of stairs to be monotonous but, with the actors involved, I was more than engaged. Given the multiple explosions, fires, & notion of a sinking ship ... I was terrified for every character involved. The reason I like this film so much is because it came far before it's time (think of Irwin Allen's disaster flicks of the '70s or the volcano flicks of the '80s/90s, or even Titanic). Other positives of the film? I admire the color cinematography. I love that a real ocean liner (due for a one-way ticket to the shipyard) was used for this film' giving the proceedings a great sense of verisimilitude. Throughout the film, there's also a growing unease & a palpable sense of doom; probably because there is a lack of musical score used to amplify matters. With music & melodrama cut short, I felt like I was watching something happening for real, and not in a movie.
Now, I didn't love everything about the film. As mentioned, the child actress playing the daughter is spectacularly irritating; but I actually found that kinda funny. Even Robert Stack seemed irked by her, and he's supposed to convey the loving father doing everything he can to save her, haha. Another negative that I also find humorous: Dorothy Malone's lack of fight. Meaning, she basically wants to give up on life early on. So it's a testament to Malone's likeability that I still sympathized with her and wanted her to pull through; despite her "leave me here to die!" attitude {haha}.
Other problems: I didn't particularly care for the pretentious, gravely-voiced narration that pervades the story, at times. And yet ... the notion of narration occurring during this movie gave me a chuckle, anyway. And lastly, while the ship is obviously impressive from a production design standpoint, the actual 'sinking' of the ship is not filmed as excitingly as it could have (and a bizarre smokestack toppling didn't help matters). Having said that alllllll of that, I still was thoroughly intrigued & engrossed by 'The Last Voyage'. And I still say that it skillfully set the stage for the eventual disaster flicks of the future.
Utter disaster ensues as the boilers explode, killing Pringle, & blasting an enormous hole through to the upper decks + an opening to the ocean that allows too much water for the ship's pumps to handle. Still, aggravatingly so, the Captain refuses to order the passengers to the lifeboats ... he hopes that his stellar engine room crew can magically hold the bulkhead & keep his old ship from foundering. All the while, Cliff has to rescue his terrified daughter from their wrecked stateroom, & must do what he can to help his wife, Laurie, who is severely injured; trapped beneath a huge piece of steel beam, while the ship slowly descends into the sea.
Some viewers might find the chain of frazzled phone calls, men barking orders, and/or crewmen running up & down flights of stairs to be monotonous but, with the actors involved, I was more than engaged. Given the multiple explosions, fires, & notion of a sinking ship ... I was terrified for every character involved. The reason I like this film so much is because it came far before it's time (think of Irwin Allen's disaster flicks of the '70s or the volcano flicks of the '80s/90s, or even Titanic). Other positives of the film? I admire the color cinematography. I love that a real ocean liner (due for a one-way ticket to the shipyard) was used for this film' giving the proceedings a great sense of verisimilitude. Throughout the film, there's also a growing unease & a palpable sense of doom; probably because there is a lack of musical score used to amplify matters. With music & melodrama cut short, I felt like I was watching something happening for real, and not in a movie.
Now, I didn't love everything about the film. As mentioned, the child actress playing the daughter is spectacularly irritating; but I actually found that kinda funny. Even Robert Stack seemed irked by her, and he's supposed to convey the loving father doing everything he can to save her, haha. Another negative that I also find humorous: Dorothy Malone's lack of fight. Meaning, she basically wants to give up on life early on. So it's a testament to Malone's likeability that I still sympathized with her and wanted her to pull through; despite her "leave me here to die!" attitude {haha}.
Other problems: I didn't particularly care for the pretentious, gravely-voiced narration that pervades the story, at times. And yet ... the notion of narration occurring during this movie gave me a chuckle, anyway. And lastly, while the ship is obviously impressive from a production design standpoint, the actual 'sinking' of the ship is not filmed as excitingly as it could have (and a bizarre smokestack toppling didn't help matters). Having said that alllllll of that, I still was thoroughly intrigued & engrossed by 'The Last Voyage'. And I still say that it skillfully set the stage for the eventual disaster flicks of the future.