Wow! Such a good movie.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

S.O.S. Titanic (1979) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Decent telling of the April 14, 1912 tragedy with the main focus being on school teacher Lawrence Beesley (David Warner) and the fictional character Leigh Goodwin (Susan Saint James). Also included is David Janssen as John Jacob Astor, Cloris Leachman as Molly Brown, Ian Holm as J. Bruce Ismay, Helen Mirren as Mary Sloan and Harry Andrews as Captain Edward Smith. This film was originally shown over two nights on ABC with a running time of 150-minutes but the version I watched was the one released theatrically in Europe and running at 102-minutes. From what I've read the full version has never been released and all releases outside that original airing is the shorter cut. I have no idea if the longer version is better but I'm going to guess that the love story between Beesley and Goodwin was expanded. Their love story here is pretty hit and miss as it jumps all over the place and the conclusion also doesn't make too much sense. Those two characters get most of the screen time early on with the others getting bits and pieces here and there. The Molly Brown character is mainly used for comic relief but I found Leachman to be too over-the-top. I think Warner comes off the best here as he is very believable in the role and you just can't help but really like the guy. Holm is cold like a snake as Isley and Mirren does a pretty good job in her few scenes. I think the biggest problem is that none of the characters are written too well and many of them come off pretty one-dimensional. Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem in the longer version but none of them are overly entertaining here. I also wasn't too impressed with the direction, which seemed way too laid back for my blood. There's really no drama in any of the personal stories and even the sinking never reaches the type of drama that it should. With that said, the movie is still somewhat entertaining simply because of the subject matter. I really enjoyed the look of the picture and I found the sets to be extremely well done. I also found the sinking to be pretty good even though they do show the boat going down in one piece, which was thought to have been what happened at the time. The special effects are pretty good even though they never try to be too impressive and for the most part we see them from far shots. I've read mixed things about the extended version so perhaps it's a much better movie that fixes some of the problems I had with this version.

This is a very underrated film. If you look unbiasedly at it you can see where James Cameron got his inspiration, as some scenes of his Titanic are identical to this version. This is a well crafted film that tries to tightly stick to the point. It is very interesting that David Warner features prominantly in this version & in Cameron's. Why??? This film is very atmospheric & authentic, but unlike Cameron's version, it doesn't have the emotive sentimentality & glamour. Overall, this is an intelligent informative family film, for people who appreciate qualities other than special effects.

This movie was better than some and worse than others. It was interesting to see the second class point of view, but two major errors in the movie made it difficult for me to take the rest of it too seriously.At the start, when the Carpathia arrives, we see that Captain Rostron has made NO preparations until they've reached the scene. Dramatic license is not adequate reason to show Rostron as incompetent. A little later on, the big Sunday is shown as April 12 rather than April 14. I've made typos myself, but this was a bad one.

In 1979, this Titanic film did not have the grand special effects like any other movie. But this movie was shown on cable before National Geographic's premiere airing of Titanic when it was discovered by Bob Ballard. Well, this is my favorite Titanic film anyway. No, it is really an average movie but I always connect to that Sunday night memory when I first witnessed Titanic underwater and before most people were aware of it. I was thirteen and with my new VCR. I taped and saved the movie and the Titanic special. The special effects were nothing special. Strong acting from Susan St. James, Cloris Leachman, and Helen Mirren with a very small role. Helen's May Sloane says to Thomas Andrews, the ship's builder, "there will be many questions?" That scene in the smoking lounge is also a poignant since she is the last to see the man who built her and die with her. In the last moments of the ship, men knelt in prayer. What I will always take from this film is the ending. An ending which signified the true meaning of the disaster. The end of the film takes place in the following Monday morning on the Carpathia with all the survivors and the silence. Watching Susan St. James with her male companion was riveting. They were two second class passengers who lost no loved one from the disaster. At the last scene, Mrs. Astor is greeted by a Carpathian passenger who offers "it was God's will. You must move on. Coffee?" Mrs. Astor replies "No coffee, no God either. God went down with the Titanic." That was the last line of the movie. The last shot is over the water and the chairs with Titanic floating. There are other pieces of Titanic debris. But the debris represented the people which is enough for most squeamish viewers. The last film of Titanic filmed before the discovery. No, it's not Cameron. But it's a resolution. Something missing in the Cameron version.