Death Cruise

Every time this movie used to re-air on late night TV in the late 70s and early 80s I would always make time to sit in front of the TV and watch it. To see the lovely Kate Jackson, handsome Richard Long, the "great" Polly Bergen whom I've never seen anywhere else except for this TV movie, the endearing Tom Bosley, and another "great" whom I've never seen outside this movie, Celeste Holme. This is truly the love boat on a cruise to murder and mayhem and boy was it ever good!! And every time I would watch it I would always forget who the real murderer was.

As expected, someone here is already criticizing the movie as if that really is a big help to anyone. This is a great TV movie and worth watching each and every time. I can't say that about half the movies I've seen this month.

If you ever get a chance to watch it on TV someday, which isn't likely, watch it. In light of "The Girl Most Likely To" finally coming out this year on DVD, maybe there's hope for a DVD release of "Death Cruise."

DEATH CRUISE concerns a group of passengers on the oceanic voyage of the title. With an all-star cast, including 1970's TV luminaries Kate Jackson and Tom Bosley, it seems like a typical episode of LOVE BOAT. That is, until the murders begin!

Have no fear, this is an Aaron Spilling production. So, each pair of celebrity passengers has their own set of soap opera-type issues going on. This gives us some semblance of "character development" before tragedy strikes.

As they're bumped off one by one, someone X-es the victim's face out of a group photo.

An enjoyable, though somewhat soggy yarn. Don't expect TITANIC meets PSYCHO. No, this is more tame than either of those...

"Death Cruise" (1974) is one of those nice little mysteries that follows the tradition of "Ten Little Indians" and Agatha Christie. The story follows three couples (one old, one middle age, and one young) who have seemly won a free cruise from the same contest that none of them can remember entering (never an encouraging sign in this type of movie). And sure enough, faster than you can say Sherlock Holmes, they quickly discover that it was all a ruse to get them on board as one by one, they all begin to meet their ends at the hands of a murderer. The one hope that might save them comes in the form of the ship's good doctor, Dr. Burke (Michael Constantine) who takes on the role of the amateur detective very competently. All of the actors play their parts very well, with Tom Bosley and Cheleste Holm as the older couple who are struggling to find their way now that their children are all grown up, Richard Long as a philandering husband and Polly Bergen as his poor wife, along with Edward Albert and Kate Jackson as a young couple just starting out, and Cesare Danova as the ship's captain. All of this, plus an enormous twist ending that Alfred Hitchcock himself might have appreciated, make this a nice pleasant movie to watch, especially if you like to dream of a simpler time, like the 70s. Catch it on you tube sometime. 8 out of 10.

Not exactly sure what compelled me to want to check out Death Cruise, but despite some reservations I did indeed go there, and am actually glad that I did. So the premise of this movie has already been stated and three couples and a new ships doctor are involved. Two of the couples stories are kind of interesting - Bosley and Holmes story is the best of the three with Long and Bergen coming in second and Alberts and Jackson a distant third, but Jackson herself makes up the gap. Constantine turns in a nice performance as the doctor/amateur sleuth. It really shouldn't work as well as it did but I was engaged throughout and found in moderately entertaining. Not great but I think worth checking out.

This is a pretty decent movie of the week from the Spelling-Goldberg production house. This movie is pretty much like Murder, She Wrote, which came out ten years later. Michael Constantine does a pretty decent job as the ship's doctor, who also happens to be an amateur detective and the cast, which is made up of many of the top stars of the small screen at the time did a pretty credible job playing the victims. Also, this happens to be one of the final appearances of Richard Long, who would die a few months later.