Lost Voyage (2001)

NOVEMBER 1, 2008

GENRE: GHOST, HAUNTED HOUSE
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

At long last, October is over!* Back to one movie a day, and time to actually watch it without cutting into sleep. Kicking things off is Lost Voyage, which I own because Gamestop was having a ridiculously appealing “Buy 2 get 4 free” sale on used DVDs. I can’t even remember which two I bought because I actually wanted them, but I do know that it took me like an hour to find 4 movies I’d even want for free. And if this is any indication of their overall quality, I needn’t have bothered.

To be fair, it’s fairly competently made, and it’s probably the LEAST incoherent “haunted boat” movie I’ve ever seen. But otherwise, there isn’t a hell of a lot to recommend here. And you can tell right from the start, as Lance Henriksen’s name is spelled incorrectly (HenriCksen) in the credits. And for those keeping score, they get it right on the front of the DVD, but the back has it as “HenricksON”. It’s like they weren’t sure which was right, so they used every variation they could think of to ensure that they got it right at least once. Hey, beats asking the guy, or maybe checking it against one of his GOOD movies.

But Lance is probably the only guy in the movie who gives it any effort (as he always does). He’s the captain of the boat, and despite being listed as “And Lance Henri(whatever)”, he’s actually in it quite a bit, and is the last to die as well. His character wildly swings between being an uptight asshole to being cordial and generous with the reporter who is doing a story on the allegedly lost boat, but hey, any Lance is fine by me.

Especially when our hero is Judd Nelson, who apparently couldn’t be less interested in trying. He is fucking awful here, and worse, his character doesn’t DO anything in the movie. His biggest moment as a hero is watching a guy get crushed to death by chains, waiting until blood is coming from the guy’s mouth before thinking to use the nearby ax to break the glass in order to get to him. The guy tells him to flick a switch (outside of the room, for some reason) which will stop the chain from falling, which Judd does, after the guy has already died. Nice work, Bender. His would-be rival is a guy who looks like Desmond Hume, who had a drinking problem until the “network paid for his rehab”. Yes, because a cameraman on a basic cable ghosthunter show is completely irreplaceable!

Another character problem is the character of Julie, played by uber-sexy Scarlett Chorvat. Her problem, besides never getting nude and improving this movie’s visual excitement (hope you like watching guys fiddle with meters! It makes up about half of the film), is that her character keeps disappearing from the movie. It’s almost like she was added in later, Eddie Murphy in Best Defense style. There will be scenes of the “group” discussing a plan or whatever, and she will be totally MIA. Christ, when they are all heading to the boat, I didn’t even know she was on the helicopter with them until the sequence was nearly over. “Let’s not get coverage of the hot girl. More shots of Jeff Kober please!”

As I was saying before, nothing much happens in the film either. There are only about 4-5 deaths, and most of them occur offscreen. As this was a TV movie, I’m not too surprised, but there is a scene of Lance and Kober screaming FUCK YOU! at each other, so if they could add that back in, why not a gory death or two to keep things slightly more interesting? Then again, since the DVD is as barebones as they come (and full frame to boot), I sort of doubt anyone was putting that much effort into it in order to entice fans of this masterpiece to buy the damn thing.

Also, how can you make a movie about the Bermuda Triangle (with allusions to the creepy Mary Celeste story as well) and make it so damn dull? Damn you, writer/director Christian McIntire (whose entire career is made up of movies with titles that sound created by a computer: Interceptor Force, Dragon Fighter, etc.). Plus, it’s almost like he forgot about half of the movie’s ideas; Judd’s character goes to the ship because his parents were on it when it initially disappeared, but he barely even mentions them once they are on board.

Well, it’s a Sci-Fi movie. I’m sure someone watched it on the air and decided to buy that one brand of soda or maybe went to a Toyota dealership the next day, so it served its purpose.

What say you?

*Oh wait, I have the Halloween convention this weekend. Looks like November 3rd will be the official end of the month. Fuck!