With life slowly returning to normal (whatever that is), the prospect of getting some sea air seems irresistible. Cinema Paradiso invites you to take it easy and either luxuriate on the deck of a cruise liner. But beware! A life on the ocean wave doesn't always mean everything is ship shape.
In the first part of Cinema Paradiso's survey of cinema afloat, we looked at sailing ships and everything from fishing trawlers to paddle steamers. We also became acquainted with some timber-shivering pirates, smugglers, mutineers and hijackers.
As we've already examined the war at sea in WWII Films: Beaches, Oceans and Camps, the focus here will be on cruise liners, with a little disaster at sea and horror thrown in for good measure. So, strap on your life jackets!
Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be Aboard a Liner
In the days before long-distance flight, the only way to reach the world's furthest flung places was by sea. Various vessels plied these routes, but none were more romantic than the luxury liners that competed to reach places like New York, Cherbourg, Southampton and Sydney in record times. Indeed, it's rather surprising that nobody has made a major movie about the race for the coveted Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing.
As aeroplanes began to take the bulk of their passengers, the liners had to reinvent themselves as cruise ships for the tourist trade. Eventually, these became super-size, with the 18-deck 'Symphony of the Seas' currently being the world's largest. Imagine how it would dwarf the eponymous war-bound craft that Buster Keaton mistakes for the cruiser taking him to Honolulu for his honeymoon in The Navigator (1924), which The Great Stone Face co-directed with Donald Crisp.
Few could create more mayhem afloat than the Marx Brothers and stowaways Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo hide in barrels in between bouts of zaniness aboard an ocean-going liner in Norman Z. McLeod's Monkey Business (1931). Harpo and Chico secrete themselves in Groucho's trunk for a voyage from Italy to the United States in Sam Wood's A Night at the Opera (1935), which contains the famous 'Stateroom scene', in which numerous people cram themselves into Groucho's tiny cabin.
The lodgings were more spacious in Alfred Hitchcock's Rich and Strange (1931), which is just as well as Henry Kendall is stricken with seasickness before gaining his sea legs on the voyage to Singapore he is taking with wife Joan Barry after splurging an advance on an inheritance. Having met in Hong Kong, William Powell and Kay Francis board a liner knowing their romance is doomed for legal and health reasons in Tay Garnett's One Way Passage (1932), which set a trend for tearjerking shipboard liaisons.
Shanghai is the starting point for William A. Seiter's Stowaway (1936), as orphan Shirley Temple hides in a car that has been driven on to a Stateside liner by Robert Young, who agrees to marry fellow passenger Alice Faye in order to give Temple a home. Things don't go quite as smoothly on dry land, however, and the same is true for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, as the rapport that develops during a crossing from France dissipates the moment they reach NewYork in Mark Sandrich's Shall We Dance (1937).
There's something about disembarking in the Big Apple that takes the gloss off a transatlantic dalliance. French artist Charles Boyer and American singer Irene Dunne were blissfully happy aboard 'The Napoli' returning from Italy in Leo McCarey's Love Affair (1939). But will they get to keep their arranged rendezvous atop the Empire State Building? Fans of McCarey's colour remake, An Affair to Remember (1957), which begins with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant meeting aboard SS Constitution, will know the answer even before they read Cinema Paradiso's article on 10 Films to Watch If You Liked Sleepless in Seattle.
San Francisco is the destination of the vessel carrying the Queen of Sheba's crown and a Japanese sleuth in Norman Foster's Mr Moto Takes a Vacation (1939), which marked Peter Lorre's seventh and last yellowface outing in the 20th Century-Fox series adapted from the crime novels of John P. Marquand. Speaking of detectives, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson disrupt their holiday plans to accompany a Rovenian prince on a voyage to North Africa in Roy William Neill's Pursuit to Algiers (1945), the twelfth of the fourteen cases tackled by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as 221B Baker Street's finest.
So practiced a con team are Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn that even Mr Holmes would be hard pressed to expose them. Certainly snake-loving ale heir Henry Fonda is too much of a rube to resist their allure on a voyage back from the Amazon in Preston Sturges's screwball masterclass, The Lady Eve (1941). Brazil also has a part to play in Irving Rapper's take on Olive Higgins Prouty's bestseller, Now, Voyager (1942), after repressed spinster Bette Davis and unhappily married father Paul Henreid meet during a sea crossing.
Doris Day set sail for Rio de Janeiro in her screen debut, Michael Curtiz's Romance on the High Seas (1948), which isn't currently available on disc. There were no shipboard sagas in the same year's multi-directored British release, Quartet. But the subsequent anthologies based on the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham more than made amends, as Nigel Patrick has an opinion on everything in Ken Annakin's 'Mr Know-All' segment in Trio (1950), while Kay Walsh proves equally garrulous en route to Jamaica in the Anthony Pelissier episode, 'Winter Cruise', in Encore (1951).
While taking the hit show in which she stars with brother Fred Astaire from Broadway to the West End, Jane Powell falls for English lord Peter Lawford in Stanley Donen's Royal Wedding (1951). Showgirls Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell also find a couple of the male passengers to their liking while crossing to France for the former's wedding in Howard Hawks's musical adaptation of Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), in which Monroe performs her much-imitated rendition of 'Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend'.
Marilyn wasn't the only blonde bombshell making headlines in the mid-1950s and Brigitte Bardot makes quite an impression as chanteuse Hélène Colbert in Ralph Thomas's Doctor At Sea (1955), the second of the seven comedies adapted from the novels of Richard Gordon, which sees newly qualified Simon Sparrow (Dirk Bogarde) become the medical officer aboard the SS Lotus. Maurice Denham plays the rascally steward, but the role was much more suited to everyone's favourite chancer, Ronald Shiner, who joins forces with doltish workmate Brian Rix to recover the dowager's necklace that has been pilfered on a Mediterranean cruise in Maclean Rogers's Not Wanted on Voyage (1957).
Despite hailing from a proud naval family, mal de mer means that the closest Alec Guinness wants to get to the sea is a Victorian pier in Charles Frend's Barnacle Bill (1957), which marked the actor's final appearance in an Ealing comedy. Maurice Denham crops up here again and in Jack Lee's The Captain's Table (1958), a reworking of another Richard Gordon novel in which bluff sailor John Gregson frets about his rough-and-ready social skills when he becomes the Australia-bound skipper of the SS Queen Adelaide.
Kenneth More appears equally out of his depth, as he tries to interest tycoon Roland Culver in a game-changing business proposition during a voyage across the Atlantic. However, he has an unlikely ally in a clever clock in Next to No Time (1958), Henry Cornelius's version of the Paul Gallico short story, 'The Enchanted Hour'. Sidney James is some way down the cast list as an unnamed cabin steward. But his bestrides the bridge of the SS Happy Wanderer in order to run the rule over new crew members Kenneth Williams, Kenneth Connor, Lance Perceval and Jimmy Thompson in Gerald Thomas's Carry on Cruising (1962).
Shipboard frolics were commonplace in the works of P.G. Wodehouse and Henry Kaplan dusted down a 1922 tome for The Girl on the Boat (1962), which provided Norman Wisdom with a chance to shed his 'Pitkin' character and play a toff who falls for Millicent Martin, who just happens to be secretly engaged to his cousin, Richard Briers. Naturally, the action is entirely chaste, although this isn't true of King Donovan's Promises! Promises! (1963), a tale of cruising trysts and paternity tests that saw Jayne Mansfield become the first major Hollywood star to appear topless on screen.
It's perhaps surprising how few films have been set on ferry boats, especially when they have such splendid names as 'The Fa Tsan', which is nicknamed 'The Fat Annie' in Lewis Gilbert's Ferry to Hong Kong (1958). This sees skipper Orson Welles compete for the approval of schoolteacher Sylvia Syms with unwanted passenger, Curd Jurgens. But, sadly, it's not currently possible to detour to join Gerry and The Pacemakers and Cilla Black on Jerry Summers's Ferry Cross the Mersey (1965). But we can return to the South China Sea for Charles Chaplin's A Countess From Hong Kong (1967) to watch diplomat Marlon Brando fall for exiled Russian princess Sophia Loren on a voyage between Saudi Arabia and the US of A. This proved to be Chaplin's final film and children Sydney and Geraldine appeared alongside their father, as he cameos uncredited as an ageing steward.
Writers have been employing the 'Narrenschiff' form of satirical allegory since ancient times. Stanley Kramer translates the term for his 1965 drama, Ship of Fools, an adaptation of a novel by Katherine Anne Porter that was nominated for eight Academy Awards. It won for its cinematography and art direction, but the performances of Simone Signoret, Oskar Werner, Michael Dunn and Vivien Leigh are uniformly excellent, as four of the passengers aboard a liner returning from Vera Cruz in Mexico to the German port of Bremerhaven. Werner also impressed in another picture centred on the plight of European Jews in the 1930s, Stuart Rosenberg's Voyage of the Damned (1976), which is set aboard the Motorschiff St Louis, which was detailed to take refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939.
Cruise ships featured in a number of Italian films around this time, with the most memorable image being that of the giant liner looming out of the mist as the residents of the coastal village of Borgo San Giuliano row out to view the SS Rex in Federico Fellini's unreliably autobiographical charmer, Amarcord (1973). The director would also send the friends of an operatic diva to the Adriatic to scatter her ashes in And the Ship Sails On (1984), which really should be available on disc. But Cinema Paradiso users can discover the fantastical story of a boy who was abandoned aboard the SS Virginian and became a key member of the ship's orchestra in Giuseppe Tornatore's The Legend of 1900 (1998). And mention is also made of the sinking of 'The Costa Concordia' at the end of Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (2013), which bears post-millennial echoes of Fellini's masterpiece, La dolce vita (1960).
Given that it was made in Communist-controlled Poland, the satire had to be somewhat more nuanced in Marek Piwowki's The Cruise (1970), as stowaway Stanislaw Tym is mistaken for an important Party official during a river cruise and soon has the passengers and crew dancing to his increasingly absurd tune. Acting on the orders of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray), eccentric henchmen Wint (Bruce Glover) and Kint (Putter Smith) disguise themselves as stewards in order to threaten James Bond (Sean Connery) and Tiffany Case (Jill St John) aboard the cruise ship featured in the finale of Guy Hamilton's 007 adventure, Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Cruise Crews Cruise Ship
Being an alert lot, Cinema Paradiso users will have heard about Tom Cruise spending $500,000 to hire 'The Hurtigruten' so that filming of the seventh Mission: Impossible picture could continue during the coronavirus pandemic. Perhaps someone should ask if he would be willing to rent out his $44 million mega-yacht, 'The Triple Seven' as the setting for a revival of an old small-screen favourite?
Skippered by Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod), the luxury cruise ship MS Pacific Princess became a favourite haunt for TV audiences during the nine-year run of The Love Boat (1977-86). Season One is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso, as is John Guillermin's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1978). However, those hoping to compare Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot with Peter Ustinov's will have to wait until next year for Branagh's remake follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express (2017).
Having delighted audiences in Robert Stevenson's The Love Bug (1968) and Herbie Rides Again (1974) and Vincent McEveety's Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977), Disney's impish VW Beetle takes a ride on 'The Sun Princess' in order to compete in Rio's Grande Premio in McEveety's Herbie Goes Bananas (1980). The studio would attempt to relaunch the franchise with Angela Robinson's Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005), but it had more luck with Nancy Meyers's The Parent Trap (1998), which revisited the 1961 David Swift original that had been based on Erich Kästner's novel, Lottie and Lisa. The nautical connection? The remake begins and ends aboard one of the grand old liners, 'Queen Elizabeth II'.
Speaking of sequels, the cruise ships 'Apollon XI' and MTS Oceanos feature heavily in Mark Griffiths's Hardbodies 2 (1986), an adult comedy that follows some American students to Greece for a film-making course. The sexual tension could also be cut with a knife (on the water, naturally) in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), as Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas's Mediterranean cruise goes off course when they encounter Emmanuelle Seigner and her kinky husband, Peter Coyote.
Walter Matthau tricks brother-in-law Jack Lemmon into becoming a cruise ship dance host in Martha Coolidge's Out to Sea (1997). However, their chances of finding late-life love with Gloria DeHaven and Dyan Cannon are jeopardised by martinet cruise director, Brent Spiner. Ben Stiller also has a life-changing moment at sea in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), when he realises during a post-breakdown cruise that he is in love with his adopted sister, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Following one of the least romantic marriage proposals in screen history, Cuba Gooding, Jr. swaps a hot air balloon for a liner in Mort Nathan's Boat Trip (2002). Unfortunately, travel agent Will Ferrell has booked him and best mate Horatio Sanz on a gay cruise. The humour sails close to the wind and leaves one wondering why this dubious comedy is on disc and an overlooked gem like A Talking Picture (2003) - Portuguese veteran Manoel De Oliveira's account of a passage to India - is not
Cracksman Pierce Brosnan and accomplice Salma Hayek scout a cruise ship docked at Paradise Island in The Bahamas before making a bid to steal one of the three priceless Napoleon diamonds in Brett Ratner's action comedy, After the Sunset (2004). The cruise ship that moors on the South Pacific island where 11 year-old Abigail Breslin lives with her marine biologist father, Gerard Butler, is given a decidedly hostile welcome in Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin's Nim's Island (2008), as 'The Buccaneer's shares a name with the craft that had caused Breslin's mother to be eaten by a blue whale.
Adam Sandler had made his feature bow as cruise ship comic Shecky Moskowitz in Valerie Breiman's Going Overboard (1989) and he returned to the ocean wave in the dual title roles of Denis Dugan's Jack and Jill (2011). However, a family holiday aboard 'The Allure of the Seas' couldn't prevent the picture from making Golden Raspberry history, as it swept the board in converting 10 of its 12 nominations and eclipsing two previous record holders, Roger Christian's Battlefield Earth (2000) and Chris Silvertson's I Know Who Killed Me (2007).
Looking on the lighter side, a cruise trip to the International Music Awards prompts both The Chipmunks and The Chipettes to be on their worst behaviour in Mike Mitchell's Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011). However, it's the captain of the cruise ship 'Legacy' who should be heading for the naughty step in Genndy Tartakovsky's Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018), as Ericka Van Helsing (Kathryn Hahn) is the great-granddaughter of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, the mortal enemy of one of her holidaying passengers, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler).
For Those in Peril on the Sea
A disaster at sea inspired one of the great works of American literature, as Ron Howard reveals in In the Heart of the Sea (2015), which sees Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) go to Nantucket to meet the last survivor of the 1820 sinking of the whaler, 'Essex'. The vessel's skipper, George Pollard, Jr. (Benjamin Walker), would become the inspiration for Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, which was filmed by John Huston in 1956, Trey Stokes in 2010 and Mike Barker in 2011. The ship at the heart of Rémi Chayé's animated yarn, Long Way North (2015), is a 19th-century Russian icebreaker, 'The Norge', on which a young girl from St Petersburg travels to the Arctic in search of her explorer grandfather's missing boat, 'The Davaï'.
The mere mention of icebergs, however, brings to mind the most filmed nautical disaster of them all, the sinking of the RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic on 15 April 1912. Within 29 days of the tragedy, Étienne Arnaud had made Saved From the Titanic, which starred Dorothy Gibson, who had been taken off the stricken liner in the first lifeboat. The same year also saw the release of Mime Misu's In Nacht und Eis, while another German director, E.A. Dupont, made Atlantic (1929) in German, French and English, as well as in a silent version for theatres that had yet to wire for sound.
During the Second World War, the Nazi regime used Herbert Selpin's Titanic (1943) to attack the greed of British and American capitalists. However, Selpin was removed from the film and replaced by the uncredited Werner Klingler for criticising the drunken behaviour of the military personnel working as extras. Screenwriter Walter Zerlett-Olfenius reported the remarks to propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Selpin was found hanged in his cell the day after his arrest.
The focus in Jean Negulesco's Titanic (1953) falls on fictional married couple Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck, whose bickering ceases after Captain Edward J. Smith (Brian Aherne) gives the order to abandon ship. Second Officer Charles Lightoller is played in this 20th Century-Fox melodrama by Edmund Purdom, but the role will forever be associated with Kenneth More after his outstanding performance in Roy Ward Baker's A Night to Remember (1958). Fourth Officer Joseph Boxall (who was played by Jack Watling) served as an adviser on the film, which was produced by William MacQuitty, who had watched Titanic being built in Belfast as a small boy.
Tucker McGuire played American passenger Margaret Brown, although she is much more front and centre in the form of Debbie Reynolds in Charles Walters's The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), which was adapted from a hit Broadway musical by Meredith Willson. Cloris Leachman takes the role in William Hale's S.O.S. Titanic (1979), which follows the fortunes of American millionaires John Jacob Astor IV (David Janssen) and Benjamin Guggenheim (John Moffat).
Lady Marjorie Bellamy (Rachel Gurney) was also among the casualties in Series Three of ITV's classic class study, Upstairs Downstairs (1971-75). However, the sinking ship proves only one of several unexpected places that young Craig Warnock pops up during his time-travelling adventures in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981). And the same proves true for the younger Griffin males and their dog in the 'Stewie, Chris & Brian's Excellent Adventure' episode of Family Guy (1999-).
Such were the waves made by James Cameron's Titanic (1997) that it's often forgotten that Robert Lieberman's miniseries, The Titanic (1996), had hit television screens first. Despite winning an Emmy for its sound design, this CBS odyssey was lambasted for the standard of the acting and was quickly forgotten. as Cameron's box-office behemoth landed a record-equalling 11 Oscar nominations. As the centenary of the calamity approached, a number of documentaries and dramas were released, including Shane Van Dyke's Titanic 2 (2010), Ciaran Donnelly's Titanic: Blood and Steel, and Maurice Sweeney's Saving The Titanic (both 2012). But the most notable of the various spin-offs is Jerry Jameson's take on Clive Cussler's bestseller, Raise The Titanic (1980), which made back only $7m on its $40m outlay and prompted producer Lew Grade to opine that 'it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic'.
Ironically, it had been the commercial success of Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure (1972) that had prompted Grade to invest in a blockbuster of his own. Adapted from a novel by Paul Gallico, the story of how the Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) leads several fellow passengers (including the Oscar-nominated Shelley Winters) to safety after SS Poseidon's voyage from New York to Athens is halted by a tsunami would spawn a sequel, Irwin Allen'sBeyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), and two remakes: John Putch's The Poseidon Adventure (2005) and Wolfgang Petersen's Poseidon (2006).
It would also get a mention in the 'Speed 3' episode of Father Ted (1995-98), as Ted (Dermot Morgan) tries to work out how to save Father Dougal (Ardal O'Hanlon) from a sabotaged milk float. This, of course, was inspired by Dennis Hopper's chicanery in Jan De Bont's Speed (1994), which made a star of Sandra Bullock, as plucky passenger Annie Porter. However, De Bont's Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) failed to emulate its predecessor's sleeper success, as Annie and boyfriend Alex Shaw (Jason Patric) discover that their Caribbean cruise aboard 'Seabourn Legend' has been ruined by embittered former employee, John Geiger (Willem Dafoe).
There had been incidents in the shipping lanes before, of course, including Henry Hathaway's Souls At Sea (1937), which sees anti-slavery campaigner Michael 'Nuggin' Taylor (Gary Cooper) being charged with murder in 1808 when he takes radical action after a fire breaks out aboard 'The William Brown', which only has one lifeboat. Stan and Ollie aficionados will know that the title was lampooned in Gordon Douglas's Saps At Sea (1940), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Laurel & Hardy, Volume 11,
Two vessels - 'Eiko-maru' and 'Bingo-maru' - go missing in mysterious circumstances off Odo Island in Ishiro Honda's Godzilla (1954). However, this would be far from the only time that the fabled Kaiju takes exception to shipping. Indeed, he's still at it in Adam Wingard's Godzilla vs Kong (2021). The monster is also no stranger to bombs, but Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Anthony Hopkins are less phlegmatic when an Irish terrorist claims that several barrel bombs have been hidden aboard the liner, SS Britannic. Orginally released as Juggernaut (1974), but available from Cinema Paradiso as Terror on the Britannic, Richard Lester's gripping thriller was inspired by real events aboard the QE2 in 1972.
A Chuck Pfarrer comic-book provides the basis for John Bruno's Virus (1999), which sees Donald Sutherland and Jamie Lee Curtis - the skipper and navigator of the tugboat, 'Sea Star' - attempt to salvage the Russian research vessel 'Vladislav Volkov', only to discover that it's been hijacked by an alien entity intent on turning humankind into cyborg vassals. However, it's the freak weather conditions that put skipper George Clooney and his crew in danger in Wolfgang Petersen's The Perfect Storm (2000), when their swordfishing craft, 'The Andrea Gail', puts out to sea from Gloucester, Massachusetts in October 1991. The climactic extremes are even more serious in Roland Emmerich's 2012 (2009), however, as a jammed boarding gate risks casting Ark 4 and the refugees it's carrying against Mount Everest.
A Fright on the Ocean Wave
This effect-laden blockbuster is billed as science fiction, but it could just as easily be viewed as a horror film. So, at a pinch, could Charles Rogers's The Live Ghost (1934), even though Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are in more danger from skipper Walter Long than they are from whitewashed rummy shipmate, Arthur Housman. Much more the ticket is Denison Clift's Phantom Ship (1935), which stars Bela Lugosi in a scary supposition about the fate of 'The Marie Celeste'.
The potential of maritime horror wasn't spotted until the end of the last century, with sci-fi jostling with chills as Liquid People take over The Ryujin-maru II' following a nuclear experiment in Ishiro Honda's The H-Man (1958). The meeting of two more vessels leads to no good in Alvin Rakoff's Death Ship (1980), a cult classic in which a cruiser is rammed by a mysterious black freighter, whose German crew seem to be existing in the 1930s.
In remaking J. Lee Thompson's 1962 monochrome original, Martin Scorsese ramps up the action aboard the Bowden houseboat in Cape Fear (1991), as Max Cady (Robert De Niro replacing Robert Mitchum) menaces the family of lawyer Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte succeeding Gregory Peck) for failing to keep him out of jail. The craft bounces round on the swell like a piece of balsa wood, unlike the Amazon riverboat used by documentary film-maker Jennifer Lopez and her crew in Luis Llosa's Anaconda (1997), which seems to spend the entire movie getting snagged or breaking down.
Underwater bases linked to the surface by mini-submarine provide the setting for Sean S. Cunningham's Deep Star Six (1989), Barry Levinson's Sphere (1998) and William Eubank's Underwater (2020). In each case, the crews of the DeepStar Six, The Habitat and Kepler 822 are targeted by an extraterrestrial lifeforce that is lurking on the ocean bed. But, knowing how vicious Jason Vorhees can get, maybe you'd rather take your chances with an aggressive alien than book a berth on SS Lazarus along with a party of Lakeview High Schoolers after a houseboat mishap on Crystal Lake re-animates the hockey mask-wearing serial killer in Rob Hedden's Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).
A boat gets dashed on the rocks near the Spanish fishing village of Imboca in Stuart Gordon's Dagon (2001), which draws on H.P. Lovecraft's novella, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, for its terrifying tale of razor-toothed merfolk. The salvage crew aboard 'The Arctic Warrior' venture into the Bering Sea and stumble across the wreck of the Italian cruise ship, MS Antonia Graza, which went missing in 1962 in Steve Beck's Ghost Ship (2002). By contrast, Robert Young's Ghost Ship (aka Curse of The Phoenix, 2014) centres on a tour guide on an 18th-century sailing ship who awakens the spirit of a young woman pining for her lost love.
A cargo tanker named 'Arcadia' seems to offer Alice (Milla Jovovich) a place of sanctuary in Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010). But nothing's ever that simple in this fiendish franchise and reporter Manuela Velsasco quickly realises that waking on a boat doesn't mean she is safe from the virus that has been following her across Barcelona in Jaume Balagueró's ghoulish series finale, [Rec] 4: Apocalypse (2014).
You have to wonder about the chosen prefix for SS Lane Victory, a reactivated Second World War battleship that proves to be a death trap when it's sent on a black ops mission to the Persian Gulf in Roel René's Nazi Dawn (2008). Boarding a derelict liner named 'Aeolus' seems like a good idea when your pleasure craft had overturned in a storm. But Melissa George and her fellow survivors quickly come to have second thoughts in Christopher Smith's Triangle (2009).
A prequel to David Slade's 30 Days of Night (2007), Ben Ketai's 30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2010) sees a band of vampire hunters board a ship full of bloodsuckers heading to Alaska for a feeding frenzy. But there's no prize for guessing the identity of the ravenous flesh-eaters in Alexandre Aja's Piranha (2010), a 3-D remake of Joe Dante's 1978 classic of the same name, which sees the couple stranded on Lake Victoria in a canoe mistake an invitation to join a pornographer on his boat for a good idea.
The USS John Paul Jones and USS Sampson come under attack from five alien spacecraft in Peter Berg's Battleship (2012). But it proves trickier to identify the source of the parasitic infection threatening the crew of the Irish fishing trawler, 'Niamh Cinn Óir' in Neasa Hardiman's Sea Fever (2019), which has all the makings of a future cult classic.
