Under the Sea: Goliath Awaits (1981, directed by Kevin Connor)

Posted on October 17, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

1939. War is breaking out across Europe. The British luxury liner Goliath is torpedoed by a German U-boat. Presumed to be lost with the ship are a swashbuckling film star, Ronald Bentley (John Carradine), and U.S. Senator Oliver Barthowlemew (John McIntire), who may have been carrying a forged letter from Hitler to Roosevelt when the boat went down.

1981. Oceanographer Peter Cabot (Mark Harmon, with a mustache) comes across the sunken wreck of the Goliath. When he dives to check out his discovery, he is shocked to hear big band music coming from inside the ship. He also thinks that he can hear someone tapping out an S.O.S. signal. When he looks into a porthole, he is stunned to discover a beautiful young woman (Emma Samms) staring back at him.

Under the command of Admiral Sloan (Eddie Albert), who wants to retrieve the forged letter before it does any damage to the NATO alliance, Cabot and Command Jeff Selkirk (Robert Forster) are assigned to head an expedition to explore Goliath. What they discover is that, for 40 years, the passengers and crew have survived within an air bubble. Under the leadership of Captain John McKenzie (Christopher Lee), they have created a new, apparently perfect society within the sunken ship. Cabot discovers that the woman that he saw was McKenzie’s daughter, Lea.

McKenzie is friendly to Cabot and his crew, explaining to them the scientific developments that have allowed the passengers and crew to not only survive but thrive underwater. The only problems are a group of outcasts — the Bow People — who refuse to follow McKenzie’s orders and Palmer’s Disease, an infection that only seems to infect people who are no longer strong enough to perform the daily tasks necessary to keep McKenzie’s utopia functioning. Even when people on the boat die, they continue to play their part by being cremated in Goliath’s engine room and helping to power the ship.

Everything seems perfect until Cabot announces that he has come to rescue the survivors of the Goliath. Even though Goliath is starting to decay and will soon no longer be safe, McKenzie is not ready to give up the perfect society that he’s created. McKenzie sets out to prevent anyone from escaping the Goliath.

Goliath Awaits is a massive, 3-hour production that was made for television and originally aired over two nights. (The entire 200-minute production has been uploaded to YouTube. Avoid the heavily edited, 91-minute version that was released on VHS in the 90s.) It’s surprisingly good for a made-for-TV movie. Because a large portion of the film was shot on the RMS Queen Mary, a retired cruise ship that was moored in Long Beach, California, Goliath looks luxurious enough that you understand why some of the passengers might want to stay there instead of returning to the surface. Beyond that, Goliath Awaits takes the time to fully explore the society that McKenzie has created and what it’s like to live on the ship. McKenzie may not be as benevolent as he first appears to be but neither is he a one-dimensional villain.

Mark Harmon is a dull lead but Robert Forster is just as cool as always and Christopher Lee is perfect for the role of misguided Capt. McKenzie. The movie is really stolen by Frank Gorshin, who is coldly sinister as Dan Wesker, the Goliath’s head of security. McKenzie may by Goliath’s leader but Wesker is the one who does the dirty work necessary to keep the society running.

Goliath Awaits also features several character actors in small roles, with John Carradine, Duncan Regehr, Jean Marsh, John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, Alex Cord, Emma Samms, and John Ratzenberger all getting to make a good impression. (Ignore, if you can, a very young Kirk Cameron as one of the children born on the Goliath.)

Goliath Awaits is far better than your average made-for-TV movie from the 80s. With any luck, it will someday get the home video release that it deserves.

Lisa Cleans Out Her DVR: Illusions (dir by Victor Kulle)

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is currently cleaning out her DVR. It’s taking forever and she’s loving every minute of it. This is almost as fun as a Degrassi marathon. Lisa recorded the 1992 psychological thriller, Illusions, off of Indieplex on March 1st.)

Illusions gets off to a pretty good start. In a blue-tinted room, a man and a woman make out, with the whispered dialogue suggesting that they’re doing something that they’ve specifically been told not to do. The woman is worried when an older woman opens the door but the man assures her that the older woman can’t see. Soon, the film is switching back and forth, from the forbidden lovers to the old woman chopping up a huge chunk of meat. The opening reminded me of the classic Italian horror film, Beyond The Darkness.

It’s an enjoyably surreal scene, one of many to be found in Illusions. When we first meet Jan Sanderson (Heather Locklear), she’s waking up from a nightmare. She’s in a hospital, recovering from some sort of earlier breakdown. Her doctor (Susannah York) doesn’t think that Jan is ready to leave the hospital but Jan disagrees. Jan can’t wait to rejoin her husband.

Her husband is Greg Sanderson (Robert Carradine), an archeologist who is currently working at a dig and who doesn’t appear to have much in common with Indiana Jones. When Jan leaves the hospital, she moves into a house near the dig, one that Greg is renting. As soon as Jan moves into the house, strange things start to happen.

For instance, she meets the caretaker, George (Ned Beatty). George is an alcoholic, one who has recently been abandoned by his wife and his children. According to Greg, George has a skill for telling scary stories. For instance, there’s the one that he tells Jan about a murder that occurred in the house years ago. Maybe George isn’t exactly the guy you want to have talking to someone who is recovering from a nervous breakdown?

However, before Jan can spend too much time getting freaked out about George, something else happens. Greg’s sister arrives. From the minute that Laura (Emma Samms) arrives, it’s obvious that she and Jan don’t like each other. That Jan is nervous around her sister-in-law is understandable. I love my future sister-in-law and I still spend hours worrying about whether or not she thinks I’m as cool as I think I am. What’s strange is that Laura seems to view Jan as almost being a romantic rival. From the minute that Laura arrives, she and Greg are whispering to each other and sharing flirtatious jokes.

(The fact that Greg and Laura were the couple in the film’s opening scene certainly doesn’t do anything to make them any less creepy.)

Jan finds herself suspecting that Laura may be conspiring against her. When she orders Greg to tell his sister to go home, Greg says that he will. When Jan wakes up the next morning, Laura’s gone. Greg says that he kicked her out. But Jan is haunted by a nightmare in which she murdered her sister-in-law and Greg helped to cover it up…

WHAT’S GOING ON!?

Well, you probably already know. You’ve seen Gaslight, right? You’ve seen Diabolique. Maybe you’ve even seen a few Lifetime films. You know how this stuff works. Illusions is not exactly a surprising film and the movie itself occasionally feels disjointed. The use of body doubles during the nude scenes is jarringly obvious and Jan’s narration was supplied by an actress who clearly wasn’t Heather Locklear. Locklear, Beatty, and Samms all gave good performances but Robert Carradine was oddly cast. His presence in the film made me think of Illusions as being Sam McGuire: The Early Years.

And yet, I still kinda liked Illusions. It’s got just enough weird dream sequences for me to enjoy it. You know me. There’s nothing I love more than a weird dream sequence. Many a mediocre film has been saved by blue mood lighting.

Horror on TV: Tales From the Crypt 7.2 “Last Respects” (dir by Freddie Francis)

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s excursion into televised horror is the 2nd episode of the 7th season of HBO’s Tales From The Crypt! In Last Respects, three bickering sisters inherit not only a struggling store but also a monkey’s paw that grants wishes. Of course, as with all wish-granting monkey paws, there’s a catch!

This episode was directed by veteran British cinematographer and horror director, Freddie Francis!

It originally aired on April 26th, 1996.

Enjoy!