Don't listen to the negative reviews

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

When the first officer of an ocean liner (James Mason) finally gets a chance to captain his own ship it turns out to be the one on which crew members Broderick Crawford and Stuart Whitman are plotting to kill the ship's entire crew and somehow collect a million dollars in insurance. Entirely claustrophobic setting of the ship goes well with the plan to kill everyone. The overall sense of cold-blooded cruelty is a natural fit for Crawford, but Stuart Whitman's character turns out to possess a surprising degree of sliminess. How the great James Mason deals with this is but one of the great aspects of this under-appreciated masterpiece. Dorothy Dandridge, the cook's attractive wife, should have never been on the ship in the first place, but her presence is just another bit of the film's overall audacity and quality.

This B-Movie has a Few Things Going. First it is Off Beat and Surprisingly the Violence is Up Close and Disturbing for a Fifties Film. The On Location and On Board Filming is Authentic and Adds to the Realism. Director Stone seems to be Warming Up for His Masterpiece, The Last Voyage (1960) as it has the Same Setting and Crisp Camera Work and Hypertension.The A-Listers James Mason and Broderick Crawford, along with Sexpot Dorothy Dandridge (revealing Her charms more than typical for the Era), are OK, but the Rest of the Cast from Stuart Whitman on Down do some Pretty Bad Acting.This is a Film that is Stark and Quite Different in Tone than Most of the Films from the 1950's and has an Atmosphere of Dread that Works and there are some Scenes at Sea that are Extremely Well Done. Worth a Watch as a Tense Low-Budgeter and to See James Mason doing some Slumming and Swimming. Great Title.

First time watching and I was captivated throughout. I'm not sure why attention was given to Dorothy Dandridge as hers seemed like a small part. Very brutal but believable plot given that anything could happen on the open sea. I especially liked the scene of the ship intending to ram the lifeboat. It was a great camera angle and one actor uses sailor jargon like, "she's really got a bone in her teeth". I was also amused by the hip lingo used by the actors. Crawford reminds me of a ratpacker no matter what film he is in. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what ship(s) was used in the film for the interior and exterior shots? It looks like a Liberty Ship I took a cruise on, the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien.

These two merchant sailors -- Broderick Crawford and Stewart Whitman -- get a crazy idea aboard a freighter. They're going to kill every officer and man aboard, waterlog the ship, radio for help, claim there was a mutiny and everyone left the ship but them, and claim the ship, worth a million bucks, for salvage.Granted, the idea is slightly askew, but these guys are snipes, working down in the engine room and the temperature there runs around 116 degrees and sounds like the deepest pits of hell. That environment will drive anyone nuts. Besides, it's like the old joke. "How's your wife?" "Compared to WHAT?" If you put Crawford and Whitman next to the Manson Family or al Qaeda they look like paragons of rationality. So, okay, let's leave them some leeway, so to speak.I'll skip the plot, I guess, because it doesn't require much in the way of explanation. The dialog lacks verve and credibility. "Anything can happen!" "Whoever destroyed the radios must have had a PURPOSE." And when the officers find three corpses in the engine room, someone says to Mason, "Do you realize the ENORMITY of this?" The acting doesn't require much comment either. Everybody involved delivers about what you'd expect. Mason is smooth, Crawford plays a junk man, Whitman is a little ratty, and none of the others stand out -- except Dorothy Dandridge. She can't act very well, but -- wow! What a dish. I don't know about "a million bucks" but Dorothy Dandridge could start a genuine mutiny alright. I vaguely remember seeing this when it was released and, it may be hard for a contemporary viewer to understand but, like "The Sniper," which was released about the same time, it was shocking in its brutality. The theater suddenly went kind of quiet when Crawford deliberately picked off one of the crew members from a few feet away with a high-powered rifle. The sexy Dandridge was memorable too, although I don't recall that she quieted down the audience.The Perrys, who produced, had a habit of using real locations for their shoots. "Cry Terror," another suspenser with James Mason, made good use of New York locations. And they actually sunk a liner for one of their movies, something like, "The Last Voyage." I'm glad they never made a movie about the end of the world.The story isn't really a grabber and the acting is no more than routine but this is worth seeing, if only because it gives you a chance to feel what it's really like to be on a ship, not a mockup of the kind that John Wayne sails through with such ease. The ship, by the way, is pretty ship shape and not at all a rust bucket. She's also high in the water because she's carrying no cargo.