La vengeance des mutins

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.

Forget the advertising tagline (although Dorothy Dandridge is beautiful to look at)! This is a crisp little thriller, apparently fact-based, about a couple of malcontent seamen (Crawford and Whitman) who try to foment a mutiny against new captain Mason as a cover for a scheme to kill the entire crew and bring in the ship as salvage. Except for a rather abrupt ending, nicely done by the Stones.

I agree with the previous comments 100%, but I just wanted to add something about the magnificently evil Broderick Crawford and Stuart Whitman (!!). When Stuart gets his hands on Dorothy the second time, the suspense was so strong that I involuntarily started screaming homicidal epithets at the small screen. Be sure to watch this one alone so you can let it all hang out without being embarrassed.

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.

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.