The Last Voyage (1960)

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

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

THE LAST VOYAGE is a little-known but surprisingly excellent American disaster movie from 1960. It feels very much like the producers saw and loved A NIGHT TO REMEMBER and wanted a slice of the same action. This film's gimmick was that they sunk a real ship for greater authenticity, although some superimposed special effects are stil utilised. The film starts the disaster action from the get-go and never lets up until the final scene. It feels very much like a precursor to the disaster cycle of the 1970s and is easily on par with THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Robert Stack is the dogged hero trying to rescue his trapped wife and George Sanders the idiot captain who refuses to call for help. My favourite character is hulking crew man Woody Strode, stripped to the waste and helping out at every turn. The film's remarkable suspense scenes and incredibly realistic climax help to lift it into classic status and I look forward to revisiting it in future.

"The Last Voyage" is a 1960 film starring Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien and Willy Strode. It's a film of firsts.The ship used as the Claridon was the Isle de France, and that includes the interiors, which the producers partially sunk. After that, the ship, which had been in service for 33 years, was scraped. The Isle de France was part of the rescue of passengers from the Andrea Doria, the first ship on the scene.The story concerns, like the Isle de France, an old ship, the SS Claridon, on his final voyage before retirement after 33 years of service. Unfortunately for the ship, the crew, and the passengers, the ship is ill-equipped to handle a boiler room problem and the ship starts to take on more water than it can handle. The Captain (George Sanders) refuses to listen to reason, believing that his ship is invincible.When fires break out and ceilings start falling, one family is especially affected, the Hendersons (Stack, Malone, and Tammy Manhugh - more on her later). Laura Henderson (Malone) is trapped under debris and can't move, and Jill is trapped on one side of a huge, cavernous hole, and her father is on the other. Henderson desperately tries to find someone on the sinking ship who can assist him in freeing his wife.This is a very exciting and suspenseful film, with great effects and overall good acting, particularly from Sanders, Strode, O'Brien, and Malone. Woody Strode is oiled up, muscular, and has no shirt on - definite eye candy. He plays a compassionate, hard-working man determined to help. Interestingly, Stack, Malone, Sanders, and O'Brien were all best-supporting actor nominees, and all except Stack won.I had a couple of problems with this movie, which is loosely based on the happenings on the Andrea Doria. First of all, when Henderson tries to save Jill, he gets a board and stretches it across the cavernous space. When he tries to crawl on it, it weakens and cracks. Why didn't he just have her crawl to him (which he ultimately does) instead of trying to get to her? And were they then going to cross on that board together? I don't think so.The other problem I had is that Malone, after being in intolerable pain and her legs probably broken and pinned under this steel debris was able to run like hell once she was carried off the boat (which certainly seemed unnecessary in light of later activity) and tread water to the lifeboat.This film was made before all the huge disaster films and does a good job of focusing on the plight of one family that needs aide in the midst of total panic. Also, in 1960, traveling by ocean liner was much more common than it is today, and it was just about to end and be taken over by the jet. So "The Last Voyage" represents a form of travel today used for vacationing, provided the passengers don't get food poisoning and the captain doesn't abandon the ship as it's heading for the rocks.On to the rather annoying daughter, played by Tammy Manhugh. Manhugh was a prolific child actress who retired from show business and became an exotic dancer. She ultimately married a bodybuilder named Rodney Lawson, who was ten years her junior. He was an abusive husband, and in 1996, she shot him in the back. She was sentenced to probation.Totally worth seeing.

This is sort of an old type Hollywood movie only for 1960 it has a different theme and look. It is an old type because it it stuck having to have the mostly happy ending where the main characters have to survive the film. It is a different look because of the scenery and effects.Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone star in an aging ocean liner which has a fire and then proceeds to sink despite all efforts to save her. Meanwhile Stack's wife is trapped under a steel beam and he works at trying to save her. The couples daughter is on board too and both parents try to make sure she is safe.The film does precede later disaster films with scenes which the viewer about the perils the ship is in. The acting is predictably wooden as Stack and his trapped wife shows the most emotion of anyone.Unlike the fully matured disaster movies of the 1970's no one dies on screen, and the confusion of the scenes is so complete that the viewer has no idea who survives much less the crew of the ship.

Although it's tempting to bracket this as an early disaster movie, before the big boys (Poseiden, Airport, Inferno etc) kicked in the following decade, Last Voyage is so relatively on actual deaths that it does not really count as part of th genre.However it's well, well worth a watch as the main predicament laid out, a woman trapped under metal as the waters slowly but surely rise slowly but surely rises the tension.I love the fact that the producers used a real elderly ocean liner so it's very realistic, even for such an old film. A few bangs, but it's mostly a 'people' movie rather than a blasting us away with special effects type film.One warning though, the kid in the film, is very annoying!