When the first officer of an ocean liner (James Mason) finally gets a chance to captain his own ship it turns out to be the one on which crew members Broderick Crawford and Stuart Whitman are plotting to kill the ship's entire crew and somehow collect a million dollars in insurance. Entirely claustrophobic setting of the ship goes well with the plan to kill everyone. The overall sense of cold-blooded cruelty is a natural fit for Crawford, but Stuart Whitman's character turns out to possess a surprising degree of sliminess. How the great James Mason deals with this is but one of the great aspects of this under-appreciated masterpiece. Dorothy Dandridge, the cook's attractive wife, should have never been on the ship in the first place, but her presence is just another bit of the film's overall audacity and quality.
Review of The Decks Ran Red
