Long unavailable, Death Ship has garnered a considerable cult reputation since its release in 1980. Like Duel, The Car and Christine, it’s the story of a machine possessed – in this case a ship used by the Nazis for gruesome experiments and which now roams the seas in search of blood, ramming liners and devouring their passengers. Far-fetched? Yes, of course, but once the Poseidon Adventure-ish opening has been dispatched, we’re into an effectively creepy seaborne horror movie (shades of William Hope Hodgson), and one which compares very favourably with the recent Ghost Ship.

	A film of a Nazi rally runs on remorselessly even when the screen is pulled down and the projector and film are destroyed

A low-angle shot of the black-painted bow looming ominously over the survivors as they unsuspectingly approach the eponymous ship is promisingly threatening and, once on board, the camera makes the most of the dark corridors and dirty, clutter-filled cabins. The atmospherics are regularly punctuated by more visceral moments, such as the famous ‘blood shower’ and the entrapping of a character in a half-submerged net full of human remains. The revelation of the ship’s Nazi past proceeds by hints, and the final grisly unveiling climaxes in a particularly effective scene in which a film of a Nazi rally runs on remorselessly even when the screen is pulled down and the projector and film are destroyed. Quite apart from anything else, this now works as a particularly telling and resonant evocation of the seemingly unstoppable supply of Third Reich imagery on our own cinema and (especially) TV screens.

For a relatively low-budget film, Death Ship has an impressive cast, including George Kennedy, Richard Crenna and Sally Ann Howes (Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) who, given the script’s thin characterisation, manage to make their parts surprisingly convincing. There’s class (admittedly of quite different kinds) on the other side of the camera too, as the film was written by legendary exploitationer Jack Hill (Coffy, Foxy Brown, Big Doll House, Big Bird Cage) and helmed by British television drama stalwart Alvin Rakoff who, just prior to this, had directed Romeo and Juliet for the BBC. Since, as the DVD extras make clear, these two diametrically opposed talents were simply thrown together by the exigencies of Anglo-Canadian co-production, it’s amazing that the film works as well as it does. In the featurette, the urbane Rakoff is clearly taken aback at the film’s cult reputation (“it’s like being told your left shoe is now going to be framed, and you think, well, what about the Armani suit I’m wearing?”), whereas the somewhat twitchy Hill laments the changes that were made to his original screenplay. Indeed, so lukewarm is Rakoff about Death Ship (“a rather slight piece in my mind, and not my sort of work”) that one wonders what on Earth he’ll find to talk about in the commentary. However, thanks to tactful and well-informed moderation by Jonathan Rigby, this is actually very informative. Perhaps Rigby just didn’t have the heart to suggest that Rakoff will probably be remembered more for the aberrant Death Ship than for his worthy TV output.