Wuchak
"The Last Voyage" is an American disaster film written and directed by Andrew L. Stone and released in 1960. Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone star as a couple traveling on the SS Claridon en route to Japan with their Shirley Temple-like daughter. A fire starts in the boiler room and the damage leads to an explosion, which threatens to sink the ship. George Sanders plays the in-denial captain who thinks his ship is unsinkable and Woody Strode a crewmember who assists the couple. There are similarities in the story to the sinking of the SS Andria Doria, which sank four years earlier.The trailer advertised the film as "91 minutes of the most intense suspense in motion picture history" and it's actually not far from the truth (up to that time) as this is a very suspenseful film from beginning to end. Another plus is that they didn't use conventional sets and special effects; the movie's shot on a real ship, the French luxury liner SS Ile de France, which was scheduled to be scrapped before Stone rented it for $1.5 million. The vessel was partially sunk in shallow waters and the crashing of the towering funnel into the deckhouse is for real.Despite these impressive elements the film lost half a million at the box office and fails to break the threshold of greatness like 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" and 1997's "Titanic." It's more consistently suspenseful from beginning to end, but this reveals its weakness: The film lacks the establishment of characters of those other films, which isn't to say there aren't parts of mounting anticipation. Nevertheless, instead of a great build-up to disaster it's more of an even-keel of suspense.Moreover, "The Last Voyage" lacks the deeper subtext of those more popular sinking-ship films. Whereas "The Poseidon Adventure" potently addresses the universal question "Why does a righteous God allow tragedy and death?" and "Titanic" explores the corruption of wealth and the unbiased idealism of youth, "The Last Voyage" is simply a movie about a sinking ship and the people trying to survive. Of course, it doesn't HAVE to be anything more than this and it's very good in its old fashioned way, but this one-dimensional approach also hinders it from greatness. However, the inclusion of likable Woody Strode in a prominent role well before the Civil Rights movement is indeed praiseworthy.The film runs 91 minutes and was shot in Sea of Japan off the coast of Osaka, although the final lifeboat scene was filmed in Santa Monica, California due to the poisonous jellyfish in the Japanese waters.GRADE: B
blanche-2
"The Last Voyage" is a 1960 film starring Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien and Willy Strode. It's a film of firsts.The ship used as the Claridon was the Isle de France, and that includes the interiors, which the producers partially sunk. After that, the ship, which had been in service for 33 years, was scraped. The Isle de France was part of the rescue of passengers from the Andrea Doria, the first ship on the scene.The story concerns, like the Isle de France, an old ship, the SS Claridon, on his final voyage before retirement after 33 years of service. Unfortunately for the ship, the crew, and the passengers, the ship is ill-equipped to handle a boiler room problem and the ship starts to take on more water than it can handle. The Captain (George Sanders) refuses to listen to reason, believing that his ship is invincible.When fires break out and ceilings start falling, one family is especially affected, the Hendersons (Stack, Malone, and Tammy Manhugh - more on her later). Laura Henderson (Malone) is trapped under debris and can't move, and Jill is trapped on one side of a huge, cavernous hole, and her father is on the other. Henderson desperately tries to find someone on the sinking ship who can assist him in freeing his wife.This is a very exciting and suspenseful film, with great effects and overall good acting, particularly from Sanders, Strode, O'Brien, and Malone. Woody Strode is oiled up, muscular, and has no shirt on - definite eye candy. He plays a compassionate, hard-working man determined to help. Interestingly, Stack, Malone, Sanders, and O'Brien were all best-supporting actor nominees, and all except Stack won.I had a couple of problems with this movie, which is loosely based on the happenings on the Andrea Doria. First of all, when Henderson tries to save Jill, he gets a board and stretches it across the cavernous space. When he tries to crawl on it, it weakens and cracks. Why didn't he just have her crawl to him (which he ultimately does) instead of trying to get to her? And were they then going to cross on that board together? I don't think so.The other problem I had is that Malone, after being in intolerable pain and her legs probably broken and pinned under this steel debris was able to run like hell once she was carried off the boat (which certainly seemed unnecessary in light of later activity) and tread water to the lifeboat.This film was made before all the huge disaster films and does a good job of focusing on the plight of one family that needs aide in the midst of total panic. Also, in 1960, traveling by ocean liner was much more common than it is today, and it was just about to end and be taken over by the jet. So "The Last Voyage" represents a form of travel today used for vacationing, provided the passengers don't get food poisoning and the captain doesn't abandon the ship as it's heading for the rocks.On to the rather annoying daughter, played by Tammy Manhugh. Manhugh was a prolific child actress who retired from show business and became an exotic dancer. She ultimately married a bodybuilder named Rodney Lawson, who was ten years her junior. He was an abusive husband, and in 1996, she shot him in the back. She was sentenced to probation.Totally worth seeing.
evening1
This early disaster movie is dated and hackneyed but it manages to build to a suspenseful conclusion.What would you do in a similar situation -- drown with your spouse or jump aboard a lifeboat so your only child wouldn't become an orphan? This movie was striking for the moral dilemmas that it raised; I watched it with my 8-year-old son and it was interesting for us to weigh these questions together.Yet "The Last Voyage" is full of clichés and weirdness. How preternaturally happy the central couple seemed together before the crisis hit -- I didn't believe that a married couple would act this mutually bewitched. Their daughter struck me as a mini-adult in a child's body -- her screeches were so uncharacteristic of a young girl that I wished she would slip as she blubberingly crossed a plank over an abyss. And how anachronistically odd to see the only black person on board appearing bare-chested throughout, as if he were a modern incarnation of Melville's Queequeg.The film's conclusion was suspenseful and somewhat moving despite my conviction throughout that this movie would end happily. Various illogicalities jarred along the way -- how 'bout that wife appearing glamorous throughout her ordeal? And how the hell can she stand on her own just moments after being cut from the debris? Despite such quibbles, this movie kept my interest.
zugbugfshr
I am a retired U.S. Navy Captain, an Engineering Duty Officer who ran shipyards for many years and was Chief Engineer of an aircraft carrier. Ships and what make them tick were my thing for 30 years. I trained for the disaster depicted in "The Last Voyage" for many years and fortunately never encountered it.I can tell you with some expertise that this is the most realistic film of this genre ever made. I was astounded watching it. They actually got most of the terminology and sequence of events correct. Edmund O'Brien made a convincing Engineer. It could almost be a training film for: > attempting to manually trip a boiler safety valve > shoring up a bulkhead in an adjacent flooded space etc.If you want to see what something like this might be like, watch this film. I also found the ending pretty suspenseful - I wasn't quite sure who was going to live, and who was going to die.
