Dorothy Dandridge is magnificent, and she is the only lady of the drama, although James Mason has a wife ashore, who desperately urges him not to take the assignment of a captain for a doomed ship. Of course, he can have no idea it is a doomed ship, although he immediately gets his misgivings, as he is to take over the job of a dead captain, who no one knows what he died of. It is unusual to see Stuart Whitman for once in a villain's role, while Broderick Crawford as usual is the perfect villain - he must have enjoyed acting overbearing bully villains like this, since he did it soo often, even once for Fellini as a fake cardinal cheating poor people of their money. The drama is a nail-biter - you can never guess what will happen next, as everyone sneaks on each other, expecting to get a dagger in the back or getting shot from the dark at any moment. Of course, the scheme is absurd - the villains were crazy enough to believe they could carry it through by a massacre of the entire crew, and of course they reached no further than to a bloody beginning, starting with hurling an innocent coerced partner over board. It's a horribly cruel film and story, but James Mason makes the best of it, and he is always worth watching - I never saw him making a bad job, as his mere name usually warrants a great film. Andrew L. Stone made quite a number of outstanding films, including several musicals, like "Stormy Weather" and "Song of Norway", while he also was an expert on making great films on realistic gruesome true stories.