Les Survivants du Goliath

I spent a good few hours the other day trying to remember this movie from my childhood. As far as I could remember, I watched it on TV around 1981 or so. I would have been 11 or 12 at the time. The movie at that time and it's concept intrigued me to no end. I was captivated by it.

The most I could remember about it was that there were some people that had been trapped inside a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean for years. They had developed into a rather "cultist" society and even after being discovered by rescuers did not want anything to do with the real world on the surface. I remembered they shot one of the rescuers that surfaced inside the ship to explore it and then pretty much trapped any other rescuers there with them that entered their so called "world of utopia". Overall the movie was great back then. Subplots aside, I really enjoyed it so much, I am currently looking for a copy on VHS or DVD I can buy and own for myself and relive a little of my childhood memories thorough it.

Hi, Everyone,

I worked on this movie at The Queen Mary (ship) in Long Beach in May of 1981. The crew and cast were fun to be with. I was an extra who was supposed to be a passenger on the Goliath down at the bottom of the ocean. We were all still alive years after the ship sank.

A group of us were taught the dances of the 1920s (Lambeth Walk, Charleston). We worked in the cargo hold of the Queen Mary for some of our scenes. There were good guys and bad guys. Frank Gorshin and Christopher Lee were the villains. Christopher Lee was the Captain who kept the people alive and wanted to stay underwater when the rescuers arrived.

John Carradine was a very pleasant man to work with in his scenes. He had arthritis but he managed to negotiate the stairway that led down into the hold of the ship. Mark Harmon was the hero who arrives to rescue the passengers.

This movie was originally shown over a two night period on TV. It later was packaged as a VHS movie with some scenes edited out, but the short version seems the better and more fast paced of the two.

There is one scene where the music does not match the dancing in the background. Watch for dancers moving at the wrong tempo. The scene was rehearsed at one speed (No music actually is played. The dancers are given a tempo and they dance without music while the dialog is being recorded. The music is inserted later.)and different music was put in for some reason.

I liked the movie but it was not great. It was an interesting idea that will hold your attention for a couple of hours. If you like ship movies, try "Sea Chase" with John Wayne and Lana Turner or "Assault on a Queen" with Frank Sinatra.

Tom Willett

1981's "Goliath Awaits" was a huge ratings winner for Operation Prime Time, enabling independent UHF stations the chance to compete with the 'Big Three' - ABC, CBS, NBC - but at lower advertising rates that benefited everyone but the networks, in those early days before cable really took off. A highly improbable scenario is made believable by a strong cast of familiar faces, but nominal lead Mark Harmon is often too shrill to be effective. The ocean liner Goliath is sunk by German torpedoes in 1939, yet the 337 people found alive more than 40 years later survived due to the ingenuity of first officer John McKenzie (Christopher Lee), rightfully revered as their leader and captain ever since. A rescue team of four (Mark Harmon, Robert Forster, Alex Cord, John Ratzenberger) venture inside to offer their solution to the inevitable collapse of this insulated existence, only one month left before the fuel supply runs out for good. We have a number of fine character vignettes, in particular John Carradine (veteran of OPT's 1979 miniseries THE SEEKERS) as Ronald Bentley, famed swashbuckling movie hero, in perhaps a nod to one of his dearest friends, the late Errol Flynn. As one of the original survivors from the long ago sinking, he has spent the time educating the young about his life experiences, enjoying the one movie of his that has survived the years, wanting to be remembered as the virile young actor he once was, great with action, less so with dialogue. Still, it is Christopher Lee who stands out as the ambiguous McKenzie, who resists any attempt at rescue, knowing that his days as absolute ruler were bound to end sooner or later, his mysterious associate Dan Wesker (Frank Gorshin) a self appointed 'Angel of Death,' dispensing with people unable to work or feed themselves. Originally broadcast in two parts at over 3 hours-plus, it's never boring and makes good use of stock footage, thanks to the editing skills of director Kevin Connor, who had previously worked with Lee and Ratzenberger on the 1979 "Arabian Adventure." Not all our questions are answered, and the climax is unfortunately drawn out too long to sustain the tension, but overall a commendable effort that stayed with viewers over the decades since, much like the occupants below the sea.

I am reaching way back into my memory for this one, for I saw it on T.V. in 1981 and haven't heard anything about it since, except in 1992 when a co-worker and I got on the subject of shipwrecks and somehow we both remembered this movie from our pasts. We were so vague on the details we had both thought it might have been a dream until we corroborated each other's memory!

Brilliant how an "offshoot" society--a microcosm of our own, with all the various social strata--was represented. There was even a sub-sub-society, the "Bow People," who terrorized those in the main part of the ship.

Also, chilling how the ship's brass were "relieved" to find out that Hitler had been defeated--not even realizing that they had established their own police state far below the surface of the ocean!

When I saw this mini-series in 1981 I was very young and it made a real impact on me. The idea of a ship that sunk 42 years ago (1981-1939) and still had survivors is a great idea for a movie, or mini-series in this case.

As a viewer you have to buy a lot of unbelievable stuff to still enjoy it. First the enormous pressure at a depth of 300 meters to which the ship sank in matter of minutes. Somehow this pressure was no issue for all the people aboard but for the divers in 1981 it was because they have to compress and decompress for days! Then somehow the ship didn't leak at all at this depth and didn't so after 42 years in saltwater! Air, drink water, food and electricity made possible by the genius leader of the survivors. If you buy in to that, you are set to go. Oh, and there are the bow people who can survive by stealing from the others for years despite being hunted down with guns. How difficult would it be to just bar the entrances to the bow? Then, nobody - NOBODY- is happy to see the divers after 42 years. The leaders OK, they have their little empire to lose, but the hundreds of people who are treated as slaves? No cheers, laughs, clapping or happiness at all? And the first two questions what comes to mind, -who won the war and how is this rescue mission going to be organized- are addressed only after a day or so.

BUT, as a film lover you must have a flexible mind and then a very interesting en nice story will unfold. If some producer would remake this movie, it surely must address the plausibility I wrote above. The story of people stranded together making a new society with all the good and bad human qualities is worth any storytelling. Therefore it is after 35 still a good story to tell and to watch with good actors like a young Mark Harmon and Christopher Lee.