Dead Calm (1995, VHS)

well, everything ! I mean, I WON'T wait to see it. I couldn't bare (pun intended) to sit through the film again just for a glimpse of Nicole Kidman in the buff.

And if I'm not going to sit through it to see her, there is no other reason to see this film, so I guess it goes in the trash pile.

This story, originally a novel Charles Williams, was good enough to get the attention of Orson Wells who filmed it but never completed it. His version has never been shown.

It involves a couple who are on a long sailing trip, presumably they have chosen this trip as a method of getting over the tragic death of their son. While out in the middle of nowhere, they happen across a sinking ship. They take in the only survivor who turns out to be a homicidal maniac who has recently killed everyone of the wreck.

The director apparently couldn't decide if he wanted to give us a Slasher film or a Psychological Thriller. He ends up doing a poor job trying to give us both.

Many slasher flicks try to find some way to isolate the hero to prevent them from simply running away. This one is so isolated it's hard to believe. There is no place to run no place to hide. The killer should have just knocked off our heroes in the first minute.

Psychological thrillers would instead play up the suspense, give you and the hero's some unconfirmed suspicions and let you wallow in your uncertainty. This one reveals fairly early that the stranger is 100% psycho type killer.

This leads to so many implausible situations that the viewer's ability to 'suspend disbelief' is stretched beyond practical limits.

For example, after husband John (Sam Neill) decides that the stranger they have taken on board, Hughie (Billy Zane) is lying and possibly dangerous, he decides to leave his wife isolated on a small boat with the dangerous man while he goes back to investigate the wreck.

Was he thinking "We've got a good 40 or 50' boat here, he'll never notice I'm gone." Or "My wife won't mind if I leave her here with a dangerous stranger." Or maybe "What could he do, leave me here? I suspect he's a killer but I'm sure he wouldn't abandon me."

Well Hughie DOES notice John is gone, DOES abandon him and wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) DOES mind!

Now revealed to be a killer, Hughie doesn't mind openly terrorizing Rae. But without actually killing her outright, there is only so much that can be done in the confined space so this part is pretty boring.

Hughie must be very confident because he leaves Rae many opportunities to strike back. And his confidence is well placed because Rae passes up, without explanation, several good chances to kill or dump Hughie and go back for John. She does manage to keep some radio contact with John though since Hughie has thoughtlessly allowed both ships radios to remain intact.

Well, if your going to have a lousy plot and lousy direction, you probably should throw in some skin shots. That's the only reason I can think of why Rae, who apparently can't bring herself to kill Hughie, decides she CAN bring herself to seduce and make love to him. This is the behavior I expect from most clinically depressed women who think their husband is about to drown a few hundred yards away. NOT!

Of course, it's just to save John right? How she thinks this will help I can't guess. She must think Hughie will suddenly trust her so much that he'll hand her a loaded gun. He's already given her every opportunity short of that to kill him so what else could she be hoping for?

Eventually she does try a few things but this woman is totally inept (did Hughie know that?). At one point, she takes a harpoon gun and, when the cabin door starts to open, she shoots. Turns out that her dog somehow had learned to open doors so he got hit. I'm not sure though if the dog was standing on a chair to open the door, or if Rae was trying to shoot Hughie in the knees. Either way, if it wanted to kill Hughie, she would have been aiming too low.

Just for good measure, we end the film the same way every slasher film ends, with the killer coming back from the dead for one last shot. He's killed for the second time with a shot at a shadow through a sail that should have killed Hughie AND Rae but that wouldn't make as good a story would it.

I can't believe that a story which could have been a good Psychological Thriller, given to 3 actors who have all since proven their exceptional talent, could still be directed into this ridiculous piece of drivel.

Trivia note: This plot was reused AGAIN in an even worse film called 'Circuit Breaker' released in 1997. This time they decided to use space ships instead of sailing ships and the killer is actually an android!