Navire en détresse

The disaster movie was a staple of the 1970s. Hotels, airplanes, cruise ships, anywhere well-heeled people gathered in large groups was a setting for fire, flood or the dreaded disease of the week. Killer on Board is one of those formulaic disaster movies with fairly standard, stock characters. What elevates it is the cast. Pros all, they know what to do and do it well.

Patty Duke is an Oscar winning actress. She plays a widow with a young son, travelling with her sister (Susan Howard), a wayward young woman with a taste for married men (George Hamilton).

Frank Converse and Claude Akins, recent co-stars in the NBC series Movin' On, reunite with Frank playing the reluctantly heroic doctor and Claude the equally reluctant ship's captain who comes around to help save the day.

Beatrice Straight plays a woman living her last days to the fullest, pursued by smarmy Len Birman as a cruise ship entertainer on the make.

Bonnie Bartlett and real-life husband Willilam Daniels play a couple whose marriage is in trouble. And the beautiful and talented Jane Seymour plays the object of both Mr. Birman and Mr. Converse's attention, as a tour guide trapped on the floating deathtrap.

With chaos ensuing, a scientific team is brought on board to figure out what they are dealing with and develop an antidote. The stowaways who brought the virus on board remain hidden.

There is only one thing to do. Pop some popcorn. Get yourself a soft drink and settle back for an old school disaster movie. It may not win an Emmy, but these pros know how to make it fun.

KILLER ON BOARD features an "all-star cast" on a luxury cruise, unaware that they're about to get far more than they paid for!

Stowaways have come aboard, infected with a lethal virus!

Imagine an episode of TV's LOVE BOAT, complete with soap opera situations, where the passengers are suddenly stricken with a fast-spreading disease. That's pretty much what we have here.

The cast is impressive, with Patty Duke, Jayne Seymour, Susan Howard, Claude Akins, and George Hamilton on hand to be tormented.

One big plus is how quickly the disease spreads, causing death and panic. Within minutes, the victims start piling up!

Ms. Duke and Ms. Howard's characters bicker, while George Hamilton shows off his impossible tan. William Daniels plays the same sort of terse, cranky role he usually plays, and Murray Hamilton, as the ship's doctor, reprises his wimpy Mayor role from JAWS. All, while Ms. Seymour radiates beauty as the tour director.

Pure fun, escapist fare...

Perhaps hoping to merge The Poseiden Adventure (1972) and The Cassandra Crossing (1976), NBC gave TV audiences the virus-is-loose-on-a-ship thriller Killer on Board (1977). Departing from the Philippines and heading for Hawaii, a cruise liner gets into troubled waters (booooo!) when two stowaways bring a virus onboard. Naturally, the dumb ship's doctor (Murray Hamilton, forever cast as a impassive bureaucratic cog after Jaws) says it is the flu when crew members start getting sick, while another doctor (Frank Converse) feels they have a panic on their hands. There is a stellar cast here including Patty Duke-Astin (as a widow with her son), Susan Howard (as Duke's lovelorn sister), Jane Seymour (as a tour guide), William Daniels (as a rich snob who thinks he can buy his way out of a pandemic), Beatrice Straight (a woman dying of cancer), Len Birman (as a casanova lounge singer), John Roper (as a hysterical "junkie musician"), Michael Lerner and Thalmus Rasulala (as CDC docs helicoptered onto the boat), and Claude Akins and George Hamilton as the boat's captain and second-in-command, respectively (damn, those are some fine heads of hair piloting this ship). Unfortunately, they aren't given much to do except talk about their relationships and stuff. The most suspense we get on the boat is when Roper sneaks around to try to recover his drugs from a quarantined area; the end also has a brief chase of an infected person who swims to San Francisco. The best thing about the version I watched on Youtube is the person uploaded the entire broadcast, including the commercial breaks. What a different time, Jimmy Carter was looking to unveil his universal health care plan and you could put $99 dollars down for a car. Nowadays that wouldn't get you into a theme park.

It was an average quality VCR TV rip copy with commercials included. The parallels to Covid 19 on cruise ships is prescient. Lots of good B-level actors from the 1970s have small parts in it.