O.K., so it might be a tad worse than some other Titanic films, and 'A Night to Remember' may be to 'S.O.S. Titanic' what '2001: A Space Odyssey' is to 'Star Wars: Attack of the Clones'. But remember how badly directed James Cameron's 1997 'Titanic' was, and bear in mind how badly 'Raise the Titanic' flopped at the box office in 1980. What I'm trying to say is, look at the better things attributed to 'S.O.S Titanic', like David Warner's awesome performance as schoolteacher Lawrence Beesley, who, in 1912, wrote the book 'The Loss of the S.S. Titanic', which stands as one of the most authentic and realistic eyewitness accounts ever written about any disaster. Or how about Howard Blake's wonderful soundtrack, or Cloris Leachman, or Ian Holm as White Star Line president J. Bruce Ismay. And even better, the fact that the original 1979 Television version is superior to the edited theatrical release that many of you have seen. It may not be the best, but 'S.O.S. Titanic' is second only to 'A Night to Remember' when it comes to retelling the story of history's most famous ship.

People complain about the lack of a decent plot and the cardboard characters ,but it was the rule of the disaster movies of the seventies ,a genre which was already on the wane when this MTV flick was made ;it was not the first and was not to be the last.Anyway, a wreckage is a plot in itself isn't it? People who enjoyed the unfairly despised Cameron 's movie should watch this: there are many elements ,apart from David Warner -who does not play a villain who handcuffs Leonardo but an educated professor who finds love :a very bland story anyway- which will reappear in Cameron's work: the black and white shots at the beginning ,the upper classes and the masses on the boat,the latter's rebellion's during the wreckage ;on the lifeboat the countess plays a role similar to that of Kathy Bates ;the Irish folk music and the ball;Cameron found more inspiration here than in Negulesco's "Titanic" or the German effort.The second MTV work (starring G. C.Scott and Eva-Marie Saint was not that much an improvement on the 1979 "SOS titanic" .

I have mixed feelings about S.O.S. Titanic. On the one hand, I remember seeing it when I was about nine years old and being stunned. On the other, I watch it now and wonder why they bothered to make the movie. First of all, I have the shortened version, which I understand is far less effective than the full three-hour version, so my comments might not apply to the full version. But it seems to me A Night to Remember is the definitive movie about the Titanic, and this one seems like a brief and half-hearted recap of that much better movie. We see only the most cursory glimpses of various characters and how they came to abandon ship. I think the entire sinking ends up taking half an hour of screen time, even less than the Barbara Stanwyk movie. The attention to detail is impressive, but it seems to me you'd have to already know a lot about the Titanic in order to pick up on it -- for example, Lightoller jumping into the wave as it overtakes the boat deck. I agree with whoever said that the characters were not well-researched, with the notable exceptions of Lawrence Beesley, Thomas Andrews, and J. Bruce Ismay (the casting of Ian Holm was a stroke of genius!), and I simply can't accept Harry Andrews as the soft-spoken Captain Smith, or Cloris Leachman as Molly Brown, or David Janssen in a compelling but inaccurate performance as J.J. Astor. Still, all told, I'd take this movie over James Cameron's bloated epic. The music, as someone else pointed out, is outstanding, really underscoring the magnitude of the tragedy and somehow making it feel like you're drowning as you listen to it. Philip Stone is almost as good as Anthony Bushell as Captain Rostron. The stories are real, for the most part, even if some of them are clumped together into composite stories. The characters really existed. The script treats the story with the appropriate reverence, as opposed to Cameron's action movie treatment and offensive ridiculing of some of the heroes of that night. But still, I don't see any real value in this movie, when you can get everything it offers, and much more, from A Night to Remember.

This movie was better than some and worse than others. It was interesting to see the second class point of view, but two major errors in the movie made it difficult for me to take the rest of it too seriously.At the start, when the Carpathia arrives, we see that Captain Rostron has made NO preparations until they've reached the scene. Dramatic license is not adequate reason to show Rostron as incompetent. A little later on, the big Sunday is shown as April 12 rather than April 14. I've made typos myself, but this was a bad one.