This movie has some spectacular scenes but too much about it makes no sense.Why should the captain be so obcessed about making a record trip in a ship headed for the scrap heap? And all the things in the boiler room that were defective, no matter how old the ship was or what was its intended fate, passenger ships were carefully inspected before each voyage, No inspector would have failed to make sure something as critical as a steam gage or safety valve was working. That kind of thing was constantly checked.Nor would an engineer in charge have to worry about begging a higher up for taking action immediately.He would have immediately cut off the fuel oil supply to all boilers to reduce pressure until he had checked everything out.Nobody in this thing uses the least common sense.And as far as the woman trapped, the sensible thing,AGAIN" would be to round up some strong male passengers to help.get a heavy beam or oron bar to use as a lever, with something to use as shims to prevent the wall from falling back down as pressure was released.FIRST clearing all the depris out of the room so you could see what you were doing,you could have leavered the wall clear in a fraction of the time,far more quickly than bothering with the cutting torch,which could never have cleared things in the few minutes shown.At the time people regarded the trashing of the fine old liner as desecration to make this thing,It is a great pity that no one thought of preserving it as a hotel like the Queen Mary.

Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, and George Sanders star in this fictional account of an ocean liner sinking. Almost right away there's a fire to be put out, but there's problems that caused it, which obviously lead to more. Bob and Dorothy are a married couple out on vacation with their daughter and George is the ship's captain who is in denial about the peril his ship, passengers and crew are all in. The film is a short 90 minutes so it wastes no time in setting up the stage of trouble and gets everyone in a panic. But it takes the majority of the movie to get George to alert the passengers about using life-jackets and getting them on the lifeboats. Due to an explosion, Dorothy is trapped under a heavy piece of wreckage that can not be moved by mere men. I forget now just what they called it, but Bob needs to get some sort of laser (yeah right) that would cut through the heavy metal. It takes some doing for that too. And, in the explosion, a hole opened up in their cabin and their daughter was almost sucked out of the room. All this sounds awful, doesn't it? Well, it does make a very taut and entertaining short film. If you like this kind of action and story with it not reflecting any true events, this movie, which costars Edmund O'Brien and Woody Strode, packs a wallop and delivers good performances. I would watch this again. That's something, considering it puts people in bad, possibly realistic situations that do not make for a good vacation. Kudos for a well written and mounted film.

Back in the days before "Titanic," 3D and CGI -- 1960 to be precise -- writer-director Andrew Stone decided there was only one way to make a disaster movie at sea. Obtain a real ocean liner and destroy it. The ship in question was the Ile De France which was headed for the scrap heap after three decades of trans-Atlantic service. And what a difference that legendary liner makes. The flooded engine room where chief engineer Edmond O'Brien tries to keep the ocean from crashing through a bulkhead is clearly the real thing. Probably hell to shoot in but full of authentic hardware that even the most gifted set designer would have been challenged to contrive. Same for the art deco dining salon where the ocean swamps the portholes. As the ship founders, several sub-plots play out, primarily Robert Stack's desperate attempt to rescue wife Dorothy Malone, trapped beneath twisted metal and ambitious Captain George Sanders' refusal to accept the reality of his vessel's fate. Deduct one star for the aspiring Shirley Temple who plays a hysterical tyke. But otherwise the acting, particularly Sanders, O'Brien, Malone and Woody Strode as a muscular Samaritan, is terrific. If you haven't seen "The Last Voyage," take a look and recall those glorious days when people traveled by steamship and special effects weren't computer-generated.

This is without a doubt the most suspenseful movie ever made. Yes, I said it. The most suspenseful film ever. One of the reasons it's so suspenseful is because it's so realistic and unyielding in its adherence to what would probably happen in real life. The husband's trying to rescue his trapped wife, and the crew is sympathetic but too busy and distracted to help. The water keeps rising. The suspense is almost unbearable. Not the best movie ever made, but it will make you jump around nervously and tie you up tighter than a Christmas bow. The site requires ten lines of review, so here I am writing more than needs to be said in order to jump over an absurd hurdle. (See the film.)