Ghostboat (2006)

Very well executed

Better Late Then Never

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I just finished watching this ITV production, and all I can say is that I liked what I saw, but will note that there was room for much improvement.How so? Well, for one, the main vessel around which the movie focuses was a World War 2 British diesel submarine. Big deal, you say, ah, but one of the major story points is that the sub seems to operate like a modern nuclear sub, or one of the modern Nordic or Germanic subs which are quieter than either the US, UK or Soviet subs. Simply put WW2 subs stayed on the surface, and only went underwater when needed, but you'd never know that by watching this movie.The other thing is that there's a little bit of creep factor in this film, but it's not accentuated enough. We understand what's happening to the crew, but the made for TV production values seem to limit both SFX and other production values to really ram home the message to the audience.I imagine the biggest mis step taken in this film is that even though the boat as a "life of its own" so to speak, a late 20th century crew, a crew that is not trained in diesel sub operations some how manages to bring this vessel out into open ocean, and operate her like a modern nuclear powered SSN.Huh.You know, if you can get by that, and the cinematography which is a little uninspired, then you can probably enjoy watching this film, but the story of a haunted ship and her affect on the crew takes precedence over operational details and plot points.It's not a great film, but it is a mild diversion for a couple of hours. Give it a shot.

The full two-hour production was broadcast on PBS, Watertown, N.Y. on 2007 March 25 without commercials.Intriguing plot. It took a while for me to realize that that the genre was supernatural, requiring some suspension of belief. Gradual subversion of most of the crew by the spirit of the submarine was well done. What was not made clearly enough in the movie is that the submarine went through a time-warp... twice; the first time, gradually back into the WW II period and the second time, rapidly, when the submarine encountered the peculiar electrical storm. Time-warp explains the attack by WW II vintage Me 109 aircraft mid-way through the movie and the sudden re-emergence of the sub back to 1981 for the final attack on the, by then, Soviet naval base. It also explains why the sub could sink enemy (German) vessels, including another submarine, without triggering WW III.I'm not sure about British subs but US subs certainly had radar later in WW II. Unfortunately, the movie sub lacked a radar antennae. A minor quibble.Yes, subs did sink other subs, usually when one of them was on the surface. However, the last German sub sunk by combat in WW II was by a British sub whilst both were under water. The British captain was a master at tactics and working out fire control coordinates. (The last German sub to be sunk in WW II was by HMCS New Glascow, a frigate, which was unaware of the sub and accidentally rammed it whilst the latter was partly submerged and trying to sneak to its home port.)Incongruities:As pointed out by others, chlorine gas is produced by sea water entering batteries, not by shorting them out. Shorting out the batteries would have caused failure of the electric propulsion and the sub could not have run under water. Okay, maybe only some of the batteries were shorted out.WW II torpedoes had safety devices to prevent them becoming armed or the torpedo engine starting whilst they were still in the torpedo tube.How was it that the captain and the professor could continue inside the sub without gas masks after the crew had been forced to abandon it because of chlorine gas?Worse, at one point, after all the crew except the captain has abandoned the sub, the professor re-enters the submarine via the conning tower, whilst the sub is submerging, in order to fire the scuttling charges (explosive charges intended to deliberately sink the submarine in order to avoid capture by the enemy). All he had to do to sink the sub was to leave the conning tower hatch open as the submarine submerged.With a little thought and expert advice the producers could have avoided or glossed over these incongruities. As it was, incongruities in the second half of the movie spoiled the mood that was well established in the first half of the movie.

A derivative but nonetheless intriguing set up; a ship (in this case a submarine) is found many years after it sank, with no sign of the crew, or what happened to them. This has been done many times, it is essentially the story of the Marie Celeste. Despite that the set up hooked me, I love these kind of vaguely supernatural / time travel plot lines, however familiar they are.To be honest I was disappointed by what was delivered. David Jason is a fine actor but his character in this came over as terse, sullen and not especially interesting. As he is the lead, and therefore your focal point throughout the story, this was a big failing. He just wasn't interesting or unusual enough, you learned almost nothing about his character despite him being on screen for most of the 180 minutes.The plot itself seemed to peter out rather than deliver a climax, for a thriller (or at least a war time drama) I felt there was too little tension. The actual operation of the submarine and the technical side all felt very authentic but this did not compensate for the lack of plot, or genuinely interesting characters. The officers were all a little stiff, the crew were similarly generic, all of them have been seen many times before.Towards the end I felt the plot simply ran out of ideas and some of what happened bordered on silly. The story seemed to flirt with the premise it had created, rather than really go into it. I never felt this story got going, I appreciate it was television but there was far too much chatter. It was slow in places where it needed pace, or another twist and this was, for me at least, the other major failing; ultimately the story lacked imagination. What Ghostboat delivered was almost exactly what you expected, no more. There was no moment when I thought 'now that is interesting, I never saw that coming'.Despite these misgivings I thought it was not bad for a TV two parter. It was ambitious and though it failed to hit the target it was at the very least something different.

Yet another brilliant bit of acting by Sir David Jason. As a lover of all this spooky and a fan of Jason I found myself glued to the screen.Ghostboat kept me riveted, the plot was good and the acting too. I particularly liked the way the crew were taking on the personalities of the crew which came before them. Commander Travis becoming "possessed" by the previous captain was good.However, i found the ending somewhat disappointing, a great build-up to an anti-climax.All told a great program, which should most definitely be shown again in a few years time.