CRUISE INTO TERROR (1978)
TV-Movie
Article 3847 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-15-2012
Posting Date: 2-25-2012
Directed by Bruce Kessler
Featuring Dirk Benedict, Frank Converse, John Forsythe
Country: USA
What it is: Evil incarnate at work

A ship finds itself stranded in the Gulf of Mexico near an underwater tomb built by the Egyptians many years ago… and containing a sarcophagus of terrible evil.

Well, the premise is pretty far-fetched, but that hasn’t necessarily been a stumbling block for movies of this ilk before. However, the script suffers from an appalling lack of subtlety. It’s one of those scripts where you feel the author had some interesting ideas about the various character relationships, but had no idea how to express those relationships in other than the most ham-handed ways possible. Problems like this don’t seem fatal at first, but when it persists throughout a whole movie, it does make the affair very tiresome, and the movie wears out its welcome long before it’s over. In the end, the movie is stolen by Stella Stevens, if for no other reason than that she’s very easy on the eyes. Still, this is one movie that could have been better than it is.