IceboxMovies The last 15 minutes are interesting, when the criminals take over the ship and become the new villains, but the rest of the film is pretty shoddy and can hardly be called a legit adaptation of "A Thousand Deaths". The filmmakers' first mistake was changing the relationship from a father killing and resurrecting his own son to... an uncle merely performing obscure experiments on his nephew. No real tension there. For whatever reason, the filmmakers care more about the nephew falling in love with a woman onboard than they do his complicated relationship with his uncle (something that is never really explored). Personally, I think that including female characters in this film was a mistake. The story is meant to be very Freudian and Oedpial, in the sense that a son is terrified by his domineering father; London allegedly wrote the story as a revenge fantasy about William Chaney, an astrologer who was probably his real father but forever denied it. Regrettably, no trace of that amusing autobiographical context is present in this film. London's original story was concise and simplified: a son is frustrated from being killed and brought back to life by his father over and over again. By comparison, this film is difficult to follow because there are too many characters and way too many individual stories being crammed into the 50-minute running time. Here and there, you can sense the screenwriters struggling to keep some of London's original dialogue in their convoluted script. "A chance one must take" = "Take the chances, since the affairs of men were full of such."The mad scientist's deathbed scene (which is not in the original story) could have worked better in the film had it not been so glossed-over. Seems like the nephew hardly cares.Ending was corny. We have no reason to care that the nephew fell in love.I kind of feel sorry for the orchestra that was hired to compose the music, considering that the music isn't memorable for a second. Seems like a big waste of talent.Of course, not every adaptation can be faithful, and sometimes even the loose adaptations still make for great films. What works against this film is that, aside from being profoundly unfaithful to London, it is also a crushing bore.

MovieResearch The Alpha Video release seems to be fairly complete with the entire story intact (except for some splicy sections in what was probably a 16mm television print: The story does make sense in this version which has the entire explanation of why the criminals are on the ship in the first place and what the doctor's motivations are.It is mysterious that the film runs about 63 minutes when the main IMDb description has it released at 57 minutes. That's probably incorrect and doesn't represent the original theatrical release, but rather some random individual's timing from a DVD or VHS tape that wasn't complete in the first place.

Hitchcoc There are a lot of people on this boat. Many are criminals who are going to be experimented upon against their wills. There is a boring Swedish guy who is supposed to be comic relief but turns out to be simply insufferable. There are people taken, escaping, taking over, taking back, getting injected, and so on. All in the name of science, I guess. There are many punches thrown. At one point, as they hit each guy coming through a door, they land, stacked nicely on the floor. One girl is a criminal, then she isn't, but she's here. It goes on and on and it just doesn't matter. Apparently some of the thing is missing. This may actually be merciful. It never piqued my interest for one second. And I actually recognized some of the actors. It's talky and obtuse. Don't bother.

Dukey Flyswatter Recently got one of those Mill Creek 50 pack of horror and mystery PD movies (Tales Of Terror) because there were about 25 of these programmers I had not yet seen.I was already aware from experience that the quality on most of these is less than desirable but some can't be had anywhere else or were not worth paying ten bucks for alone.In this case I was taken royally as this print is missing the first 8 minutes or so leaving one to guess the rest. Fortunately the plot is simple and you can pick it up easily but you'll still be burning at the Faux Pas. Don't know if Alpha's print of this is the same way but in any case this is one to avoid.