The Decks Ran Red

Back in the day, films often featured actors playing races other than their own. Charlie Chan was played by a Swedish-American and Boris Karloff played the Chinese detective Mr. Wong. All of these are pretty silly when you see them today due to the casting (though they both still made some terrific series films). Such is how I felt as I watched "The Decks Ran Red", where two Maoris from New Zealand were played by Black Americans! Black people and Maoris simply don't look like each other...and I especially laughed because Dorothy Dandridge of all people played one of them. I've been to New Zealand a couple times...and never saw ANYONE who looked like her! It's a shame, as it's not a bad story...it's just incredibly poorly cast.

Along a similar vein, I read up on the ill-fated S. S. Berwind. The mutineers in the actual 1905 incident were black men...though everyone in the film is white (aside from the two 'Maoris'). A lot of other changes were made in the original story...such as placing it in the 1950s as well as in the South Pacific. I'm not sure why these changes were made....but so many were made it's best to regard the film as fiction.

When the story begins, the captain of a merchant ship has died and Edwin Rummill (James Mason) has been hired to command the ship. However, when he arrives in New Zealand to take command, he can easily see that its crew are disgruntled and perhaps mutinous. Instead of refusing the assignment or getting a new crew, Rummill makes the disastrous choice to go ahead anyway, as the ship is already three days late.

Aboard the ship, you soon learn that Henry Scott and Leroy Martin (Broderick Crawford and Stuart Whitman) have hatched a truly evil plan. They have been fomenting dissent...and their ultimate goal is to get everyone but themselves on the ship to either kill each other OR they'll do it to them. Then, when the ship is derelict, they' plan to claim the boat as salvage and get rich. Does their plan work? Well, as I watched I had no idea since the film diverged so much from the 1905 incident...and I know how the 1905 incident went down.

The story is quite taut and certainly is never dull. The acting was good, though Dandridge's character wasn't needed in the film and she was just added as eye candy (after all, a merchant ship would NOT bring a woman along...especially back in 1905). Worth seeing...just don't think it has much to do with the REAL Berwind incident...which, incidentally, ended MUCH differently as well! Well worth seeing, but seeing the ACTUAL story probably would have been more exciting.

A new captain takes command of his first ship only to find himself confronted with numerous problems. First there is hostility from his Chief Mate, who feels that he has been passed over for command, and from some of the crew who agree. Then there is the inflammatory presence of a woman steward, signed on at the last moment to replace a crew member who jumped ship. Worst of all is a somewhat ludicrous mutiny plot perpetrated by a couple of the engine room crew to murder the entire crew and take over the ship.

Although the plot is supposedly based on a true story the tension fails to the level that it might have done, which is probably attributable to the director rather than the cast. However, give the film full marks for it's shipboard atmosphere, which is certainly highly authentic, thanks to the fact that it was filmed aboard a couple of real merchant ships. The scenes on the bridge of Matson Line's old SS Mariposa are played pretty much as they would have been in real life, as are the subsequent scenes shot on board the freighter, which is almost certainly a Liberty Ship, of which many were still around at the time this film was made. Perhaps the only detail of the freighter that doesn't ring true is the fact that she is riding much higher in the water than she normally would have been because, since the ship was being used as a movie prop, she was obviously carrying no cargo or ballast, and very little fuel.

Despite Oscar winner Broderick Crawford and nominees James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, Stuart Whitman, and Jack Kruschen, this 84 minute amateurish production is excruciatingly long and dull and badly acted. This may be based on a real story but this production is among the worst films I've ever seen---and I've seen thousands of films. And all the acting is dreadful. It seems like they're making is up as they go along. Stupid dialog, ridiculous situations, and dumb characters make this a total waste of time. Laughable from the very opening, this turkey goes on and on and on until the foolish ending. I cannot believe such good actors as Mason and Crawford got stuck in this bilge. Dandridge comes off like a cartoon and Whitman is witless. David Cross, Hank Patterson, Barney Phillips, and Katherine Bard also appear to no advantage. This project should have been scuttled before the cameras started.

These two merchant sailors -- Broderick Crawford and Stewart Whitman -- get a crazy idea aboard a freighter. They're going to kill every officer and man aboard, waterlog the ship, radio for help, claim there was a mutiny and everyone left the ship but them, and claim the ship, worth a million bucks, for salvage.

Granted, the idea is slightly askew, but these guys are snipes, working down in the engine room and the temperature there runs around 116 degrees and sounds like the deepest pits of hell. That environment will drive anyone nuts. Besides, it's like the old joke. "How's your wife?" "Compared to WHAT?" If you put Crawford and Whitman next to the Manson Family or al Qaeda they look like paragons of rationality. So, okay, let's leave them some leeway, so to speak.

I'll skip the plot, I guess, because it doesn't require much in the way of explanation. The dialog lacks verve and credibility. "Anything can happen!" "Whoever destroyed the radios must have had a PURPOSE." And when the officers find three corpses in the engine room, someone says to Mason, "Do you realize the ENORMITY of this?" The acting doesn't require much comment either. Everybody involved delivers about what you'd expect. Mason is smooth, Crawford plays a junk man, Whitman is a little ratty, and none of the others stand out -- except Dorothy Dandridge. She can't act very well, but -- wow! What a dish. I don't know about "a million bucks" but Dorothy Dandridge could start a genuine mutiny alright.

I vaguely remember seeing this when it was released and, it may be hard for a contemporary viewer to understand but, like "The Sniper," which was released about the same time, it was shocking in its brutality. The theater suddenly went kind of quiet when Crawford deliberately picked off one of the crew members from a few feet away with a high-powered rifle. The sexy Dandridge was memorable too, although I don't recall that she quieted down the audience.

The Perrys, who produced, had a habit of using real locations for their shoots. "Cry Terror," another suspenser with James Mason, made good use of New York locations. And they actually sunk a liner for one of their movies, something like, "The Last Voyage." I'm glad they never made a movie about the end of the world.

The story isn't really a grabber and the acting is no more than routine but this is worth seeing, if only because it gives you a chance to feel what it's really like to be on a ship, not a mockup of the kind that John Wayne sails through with such ease. The ship, by the way, is pretty ship shape and not at all a rust bucket. She's also high in the water because she's carrying no cargo.

The Decks Ran Red flaps as the title under which sets sail a tense and focused movie that takes place aboard a freighter. The Berwind sails into port in New Zealand because its captain has mysteriously died. Awarded his first command, James Mason flies in to take over as skipper of the troubled ship. He finds a slovenly and insubordinate crew, and his officers tell him that mutiny may be in the wind.

Since some of the hands have jumped ship, Mason has some holes to fill. The only cook available will sign on only if he can bring his wife, Dorothy Dandridge (as a Maori whose command of the English language encompasses even the future-perfect tense). This sultry native, the only woman on board, doesn't cool down the smouldering unrest, but the arsonist is Broderick Crawford, who fuels the fires in order to advance his own half-baked scheme: To murder all the crew but a few henchmen, making it look like desertion and mutiny, then scuttle the ship and sell it and its cargo as salvage for $1-million.

It's basically an old dark house story taken to the high seas, with murders aplenty and the briny deep to swallow up the corpses. And, despite Mason, Crawford and Dandridge, its production values are not those of The Titanic. Still, it sails brisky along (slackening a bit toward the stretched-out ending) under Andrew Stone's competent if lackluster direction.

Stone and his wife Virginia were Hollywood's answer to the mama-papa candy store: He wrote and directed, she produced and edited. Their long career resulted in many forgettable films and some embarrassments as well (Song of Norway, for one). But there were a few modest successes, too: Highway 301, The Night Holds Terror, Blueprint for Murder. The Decks Ran Red can join them as a decidedly not luxurious but still seaworthy vessel.