El crucero del terror

And all star cast helps a lot. Love these disaster type of movies.

May Brian Dennehy rest in peace, but one migt wonder if he or anyone else in the acting crew ever came to peace with this film. I must admit that his death made me watch it, and I'm sad to say and sorry to see that this must be the low point of his amazing career. This is simply incredibly poor, and it's written, directed and edited on the level of a medieocre high school project. Everyone is over acting or just come out bad now matter if they try very hard not to. How did they get actors like Dennehy, Martin Sheen and Lindsay Wagner into this parody of a film? Naturally this was a another had to be made Hollywood project in a string of the public fear exploiting productions after several Ebola outbreaks in Africa from 1989 and through the early 1990s, peaking with Outbreak in '95, which is another overrated film on the topic. Is there anything similar about Malaria - like Mosquitos of Horror?

Cruise ship gets some deadly disease and scientists work to find a cure before everyone on board dies. Meanwhile, the boat is not allowed to dock and the passengers are getting scared and restless.

It has a low score, but it is not too bad for a TV movie. Entertaining for a Saturday afternoon, but nothing special. The acting is not too bad. The script is fast enough so that its predictable moments are not too bad. The special effects are pretty rubbish, though: all the external shots of the boat and surroundings are computer-generated and look like Toy Story rejects.

If you ignore them, though you can pass the time away happily enough.

It was a bit contrived but still not bad for a TV movie. These types of "canned script" movies usually drive me nuts -- too many characters making amazingly stupid decisions, at least one totally heartless idiot, at least two heart-wrenching side stories, one person you really know "must die", and of course technology failing just when it is most needed. And this movie definitely has it's fair share of all the above, but there was just barely enough "reality" to make it nominally believable. It's certainly entertaining enough to be a Saturday-popcorn-movie but I'm glad I didn't pay money to see it.

This movie is worth watching for no other reason than to see Martin Sheen playing a right-wing conservative wacko. And a mean-hearted, evil one to boot. Lindsay Wagner actually did pretty good portraying an infectious disease research doctor caught in the middle of a public crisis. And just like pretty much all TV movies, it has a satisfying ending -- the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

This movie is not great, basically a TV movie version of the movie, "Outbreak". But what was fun about it, was spotting the "X-Files" actors that star in it. I stopped counting at six, but I think there was more. Hey, it'd make a fun drinking game...