Voyage of the Damned (1976)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The cast was a magnet, imagine, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Malcolm McDowell, James Mason, Oskar Werner, Max Von Sydow, Wendy Hiller, Lee Grant, Maria Schell, Katherine Ross and I could go on. The splendor of the cast can't manage to disguise the poverty of the script. A huge subject tackled in Stanley Kramer's Ship Of Fool and that film also had an extraordinary cast: Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer and even Oskar Werner who, strangely, was in both films. However, Stanley Kramer had a great script by Abby Mann (Judgment At Nuremberg) and some of the scenes are spectacular. Here in this Voyage nothing is piercing or memorable just a succession of cardboard TV style scenes. But, if you're into star gazing this voyage could give you enough stasfictions to feel you haven't wasted a full afternoon.

In 1974 the movie " Voyage of the Damned " a book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Witts became the inspiration for the film directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Within it's dramatic pages, lies the true story of the MS St. Louis and it's infamous cargo of nearly 1000 Jewish Passengers. The all star cast which includes Max Von Sydow as Capt. Schroeder, Malcolm McDowell, James Mason, Nehemiah Persoff, Orson Wells, Jose Ferrer, Fernando Rey and Ben Gazzara make this film a must see movie. For the Germans of World War II, this incident was a Propaganda event designed to illustrate to the world, that not even the United States did not want to Jews. Instead, the moving film touches the heart of any viewer sufficiently up on their history of the murderous reign of the Nazis. The end result of the all-star-cast and its touching script is the creation of a Cinematic Classic. Hailed as such, one cannot feel the desperation and longing of the passengers to find peace in a world so full of men anxious to ignore the plea of their fellow humans. Easilly recommended. ****

Usually, it seems like whenever a movie has a giant cast, then that's the movie's only strength. "Voyage of the Damned" did have more to it than simply its cast. Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Orson Welles, Max Von Sydow, Jonathan Pryce, Malcolm McDowell, Lee Grant, James Mason, and a bunch of other big names star in this true story of a ship that left Nazi Germany bound for Cuba. The passengers were German Jews who believed that they were on their way to freedom in Cuba, but realized when they arrived that there was never any plan to set them free.Maybe the cast does overshadow the plot, but it's still worth seeing. The movie is out of print, so you might have trouble finding it. Portland's Movie Madness has a copy, in case you ever come to Portland.

This has all the feeling of a 1980s disaster movie with its big name all star cast . Alas British audiences will be distracted by the opening sequence where a cruel Nazi is played by the legendary Leonard Rossiter . These type of casting choices can sometimes ruin a movie and iut's not helped by having cameos by megastars like Orson Welles and James Mason in blink and you'll miss them roles . That said the cast do seem more interested in giving good performances rather than enjoying themselves which isn't always the case with movies with a large cast of big names . Special mention should go to Paul Koslo was very prolific in 1970s B movies and who appeared in some utterly pathetic movies in the 80s and 90s , while the always excellent Johnathan Pryce shows us what he can do in an early role . Max Von Sydow as Captain Schroeder gives the best performance in the movieAll the cast do their best but it's really the script that is at fault . I did mention Von Sydow's acting performance as Schroeder , but you often feel his character is written as a litery point illustrating party member = bad , non party member = good , this point feels too forced and unsubtle . Remember it's when people become indifferent that bad things happen , not when they join a political party . I don't want to mention this but Erwin Rommel was a member of the Nazi party and he was the most respected German general by the allies because of his code of chilvary while many Wermacht non party members committed war crimes every bit as brutal as their SS counterparts so don't be fooled that everything is as black and white as seen here , as the caption at the end shows Schroeder himself was questioned about crimes against humanity after the war There's a couple of other flaws with the script . Aaron Pozner is shown being beaten to a pulp by some SA brownshirts in 1939 which is strange considering the SA were liquidated by Hitler in 1934 and lets be blunt in saying that the movie is at least half an hour too long . This is often a problem with a great number of movies featuring anti semitism 1933-45 in that by showing us mans inhumanity to man they often feel the need to labour the point home of the cruelty of the regime and the victims fear when in fact less would been more . It could also be that this is always not a very good subject to base a movie around especially when there's documentaries like THE WORLD AT WAR that shows the very real horrors of what the Nazis did to their victims