S.O.S. Titanic (1980)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

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.

S.O.S. Titanic (1979) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Decent telling of the April 14, 1912 tragedy with the main focus being on school teacher Lawrence Beesley (David Warner) and the fictional character Leigh Goodwin (Susan Saint James). Also included is David Janssen as John Jacob Astor, Cloris Leachman as Molly Brown, Ian Holm as J. Bruce Ismay, Helen Mirren as Mary Sloan and Harry Andrews as Captain Edward Smith. This film was originally shown over two nights on ABC with a running time of 150-minutes but the version I watched was the one released theatrically in Europe and running at 102-minutes. From what I've read the full version has never been released and all releases outside that original airing is the shorter cut. I have no idea if the longer version is better but I'm going to guess that the love story between Beesley and Goodwin was expanded. Their love story here is pretty hit and miss as it jumps all over the place and the conclusion also doesn't make too much sense. Those two characters get most of the screen time early on with the others getting bits and pieces here and there. The Molly Brown character is mainly used for comic relief but I found Leachman to be too over-the-top. I think Warner comes off the best here as he is very believable in the role and you just can't help but really like the guy. Holm is cold like a snake as Isley and Mirren does a pretty good job in her few scenes. I think the biggest problem is that none of the characters are written too well and many of them come off pretty one-dimensional. Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem in the longer version but none of them are overly entertaining here. I also wasn't too impressed with the direction, which seemed way too laid back for my blood. There's really no drama in any of the personal stories and even the sinking never reaches the type of drama that it should. With that said, the movie is still somewhat entertaining simply because of the subject matter. I really enjoyed the look of the picture and I found the sets to be extremely well done. I also found the sinking to be pretty good even though they do show the boat going down in one piece, which was thought to have been what happened at the time. The special effects are pretty good even though they never try to be too impressive and for the most part we see them from far shots. I've read mixed things about the extended version so perhaps it's a much better movie that fixes some of the problems I had with this version.

First of all, ANY Titanic film is going to be crushed by Cameron's version of this disaster! Not for its story line, but for its incredible attention to detail and its use of special effects. When this movie was made(1979)there was still so many mysteries about the sinking. Granted, the creativity is strained and the DVD version is hideously chopped and edited poorly, but the television version (I still have a tape of it from ABC when it aired again in 1981) is much clearer and the characters are not so 'rushed' through the plot. I do agree that Jansen did a sloppy job of playing Astor, though. Seemed like he always wanted to be somewhere else, however in the television version many of his scenes were redone and he sounds much better. This show marked my beginning with a fascination for the Titanic. I later met survivors in 1987 and for that, I love this movie. It's too bad the television version is not on DVD...it's much, much better.

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.