Touches You

To me, this movie is perfection.

Redundant and unnecessary.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Having thought that the mid 1970s was something of a golden era where American TVMs were produced I gave DEATH CRUISE the benefit of the doubt when I saw the relatively high rating on this page and expected more than something you'd get on the Hallmark channel but to be honest it seems like I wasted my time The plot summary on the main details gives away the premise a bit too quickly . This is indeed how the plot unravels but there's far too much screen time dedicated to the characters all of whom are crashing bores . I've always got the impression these exotic cruise ship passengers are invariably badly dressed yawn merchants who quite literally suck the life out of everybody around them and this is exactly how they are portrayed in this TVM The murderer in the midst isn't the most obvious person you'd think off and it does have some unintentional funny moments such as two characters finding a fellow passenger has gone overboard and the female character blurting out " Darling I want to have a baby " but if you're watching a film that feels like THE LOVE BOAT mixed in with MURDER SHE WROTE you'll find yourself not only siding with the murderer but feeling he hasn't murdered enough passengers

"Death Cruise" (1974) is one of those nice little mysteries that follows the tradition of "Ten Little Indians" and Agatha Christie. The story follows three couples (one old, one middle age, and one young) who have seemly won a free cruise from the same contest that none of them can remember entering (never an encouraging sign in this type of movie). And sure enough, faster than you can say Sherlock Holmes, they quickly discover that it was all a ruse to get them on board as one by one, they all begin to meet their ends at the hands of a murderer. The one hope that might save them comes in the form of the ship's good doctor, Dr. Burke (Michael Constantine) who takes on the role of the amateur detective very competently. All of the actors play their parts very well, with Tom Bosley and Cheleste Holm as the older couple who are struggling to find their way now that their children are all grown up, Richard Long as a philandering husband and Polly Bergen as his poor wife, along with Edward Albert and Kate Jackson as a young couple just starting out, and Cesare Danova as the ship's captain. All of this, plus an enormous twist ending that Alfred Hitchcock himself might have appreciated, make this a nice pleasant movie to watch, especially if you like to dream of a simpler time, like the 70s. Catch it on you tube sometime. 8 out of 10.

It's About Time "Kate Jackson" got her credit for this film.., i can remember watching it & trying to understand it on TV.., my grandmother lay in bed dying from cancer & i was barely 15. i didn't find out till years later that Richard long had died tho.., i miss him on the other shows/movies he was in.I have a copy of the VHS tape still but it's NOT "CC'd" or Closed Captioned for the Hearing Impaired & thats the ONLY flaw in the movie that i can remember or know of to date.., i haven't been able to find a DVD or VHS copy that has sub-titles in English even. If someone out there knows of either copy on VHS or DVD thats CC'd or has English sub-titles please let me know.thanks - Cofffeenut

This is a pretty decent movie of the week from the Spelling-Goldberg production house. This movie is pretty much like Murder, She Wrote, which came out ten years later. Michael Constantine does a pretty decent job as the ship's doctor, who also happens to be an amateur detective and the cast, which is made up of many of the top stars of the small screen at the time did a pretty credible job playing the victims. Also, this happens to be one of the final appearances of Richard Long, who would die a few months later.