Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Blistering performances.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

1981's "Goliath Awaits" was a huge ratings winner for Operation Prime Time, enabling independent UHF stations the chance to compete with the 'Big Three' - ABC, CBS, NBC - but at lower advertising rates that benefited everyone but the networks, in those early days before cable really took off. A highly improbable scenario is made believable by a strong cast of familiar faces, but nominal lead Mark Harmon is often too shrill to be effective. The ocean liner Goliath is sunk by German torpedoes in 1939, yet the 337 people found alive more than 40 years later survived due to the ingenuity of first officer John McKenzie (Christopher Lee), rightfully revered as their leader and captain ever since. A rescue team of four (Mark Harmon, Robert Forster, Alex Cord, John Ratzenberger) venture inside to offer their solution to the inevitable collapse of this insulated existence, only one month left before the fuel supply runs out for good. We have a number of fine character vignettes, in particular John Carradine (veteran of OPT's 1979 miniseries THE SEEKERS) as Ronald Bentley, famed swashbuckling movie hero, in perhaps a nod to one of his dearest friends, the late Errol Flynn. As one of the original survivors from the long ago sinking, he has spent the time educating the young about his life experiences, enjoying the one movie of his that has survived the years, wanting to be remembered as the virile young actor he once was, great with action, less so with dialogue. Still, it is Christopher Lee who stands out as the ambiguous McKenzie, who resists any attempt at rescue, knowing that his days as absolute ruler were bound to end sooner or later, his mysterious associate Dan Wesker (Frank Gorshin) a self appointed 'Angel of Death,' dispensing with people unable to work or feed themselves. Originally broadcast in two parts at over 3 hours-plus, it's never boring and makes good use of stock footage, thanks to the editing skills of director Kevin Connor, who had previously worked with Lee and Ratzenberger on the 1979 "Arabian Adventure." Not all our questions are answered, and the climax is unfortunately drawn out too long to sustain the tension, but overall a commendable effort that stayed with viewers over the decades since, much like the occupants below the sea.

When I saw this mini-series in 1981 I was very young and it made a real impact on me. The idea of a ship that sunk 42 years ago (1981-1939) and still had survivors is a great idea for a movie, or mini-series in this case. As a viewer you have to buy a lot of unbelievable stuff to still enjoy it. First the enormous pressure at a depth of 300 meters to which the ship sank in matter of minutes. Somehow this pressure was no issue for all the people aboard but for the divers in 1981 it was because they have to compress and decompress for days! Then somehow the ship didn't leak at all at this depth and didn't so after 42 years in saltwater! Air, drink water, food and electricity made possible by the genius leader of the survivors. If you buy in to that, you are set to go. Oh, and there are the bow people who can survive by stealing from the others for years despite being hunted down with guns. How difficult would it be to just bar the entrances to the bow? Then, nobody - NOBODY- is happy to see the divers after 42 years. The leaders OK, they have their little empire to lose, but the hundreds of people who are treated as slaves? No cheers, laughs, clapping or happiness at all? And the first two questions what comes to mind, -who won the war and how is this rescue mission going to be organized- are addressed only after a day or so.BUT, as a film lover you must have a flexible mind and then a very interesting en nice story will unfold. If some producer would remake this movie, it surely must address the plausibility I wrote above. The story of people stranded together making a new society with all the good and bad human qualities is worth any storytelling. Therefore it is after 35 still a good story to tell and to watch with good actors like a young Mark Harmon and Christopher Lee.

I just finishing watching Goliath Awaits that I ordered from my library. I remembered it vaguely from years ago and wanted to watch it with my son. Anyway, the movie was less than 2 hours running time and I thought it was much longer when I first saw it. The back of the VHS box states that the Goliath "emtombs a Nazi file whose secrets could destroy the free world forever." The divers were supposedly on a covert mission to retrieve the demonic document. There was nothing even spoken about retrieving this document. Also, the box says that the "bestial ship's insatiable boiler feeds on human blood." That would make this a horror movie and there was also nothing revealed in the movie about this. I can't remember the details when I watched this years ago on TV...but could the back of this box actually be true? Maybe the 3 hour movie revealed more details??Just wondering if anyone knows anything about this.

I am reaching way back into my memory for this one, for I saw it on T.V. in 1981 and haven't heard anything about it since, except in 1992 when a co-worker and I got on the subject of shipwrecks and somehow we both remembered this movie from our pasts. We were so vague on the details we had both thought it might have been a dream until we corroborated each other's memory!Brilliant how an "offshoot" society--a microcosm of our own, with all the various social strata--was represented. There was even a sub-sub-society, the "Bow People," who terrorized those in the main part of the ship.Also, chilling how the ship's brass were "relieved" to find out that Hitler had been defeated--not even realizing that they had established their own police state far below the surface of the ocean!