Excellent adventure film which was the second picture Alan Ladd made for Warwick Productions. He’s a lot more happily cast than he was in The Red Beret, and it results in a much better performance – he looks a bit pudgy here and there but is generally in good form.The main problem of the film is his character’s motivation for going on the whaling trip – Ladd plays an American who flies down to Cape Town basically just to smack around a man who has ripped off Ladd in a business deal (a good scene – before Ladd smacks him around he shuts the doors and all the windows in the room – surely a Richard Maibaum-written moment?); then Ladd decides on a whim really to sign up on a whaler in order to pursue the girl he chatted with on the flight over.
Joan Tetzel is the girl – she has a quite racy gratuitous introduction scene where she’s in a shower and we see lots of leg; the opening flirt scene on the plane is a bit awkward (the air hostess tells Ladd where Tetzel can be found – what if he was unwanted, air hostess?) but once on board ship they develop a nice chemistry. (And like The Red Beret its implied that Ladd’s character has sex with his female love interest – to make it even saucier it’s implied that Stanley Baker had rooted her too).
This film is set in a fascinating “world” – whalers off the coast of Antarctica – with the added advantage of some impressive second unit footage (some of the shots of whales being harpooned and cut up into pieces may be upsetting to viewers). There’s an excellent storm sequence, a couple of great fights – indeed all of Mark Robson’s direction is very strong. The acting is good too, especially from Stanley Baker as the villain.
Story-wise the film has a structural problem – it’s all about investigating the death of Tetzel’s father, then they figure out Stanley Baker did it (just by asking the right person)… and then that story gets dropped while the ship goes hunting for whales (with Ladd serving under a female captain, which is interesting).
It recovers towards the end with a terrific sequence of a ship being smashed by an ice breaker and the crew having to go on the ice and Baker going crazy and Ladd and Baker fighting it out on the ice with pics. Tetzel chases down Baker with Ladd and saves Ladd’s life – you know, just thinking about it, this is a semi-feminist film in a way, with its sexually liberated female lead and female ship captain (and these two characters become friends not rivals, too). Feminism in an Alan Ladd actioner, what do you know?
This film is set in a fascinating “world” – whalers off the coast of Antarctica – with the added advantage of some impressive second unit footage (some of the shots of whales being harpooned and cut up into pieces may be upsetting to viewers). There’s an excellent storm sequence, a couple of great fights – indeed all of Mark Robson’s direction is very strong. The acting is good too, especially from Stanley Baker as the villain.
Story-wise the film has a structural problem – it’s all about investigating the death of Tetzel’s father, then they figure out Stanley Baker did it (just by asking the right person)… and then that story gets dropped while the ship goes hunting for whales (with Ladd serving under a female captain, which is interesting).
It recovers towards the end with a terrific sequence of a ship being smashed by an ice breaker and the crew having to go on the ice and Baker going crazy and Ladd and Baker fighting it out on the ice with pics. Tetzel chases down Baker with Ladd and saves Ladd’s life – you know, just thinking about it, this is a semi-feminist film in a way, with its sexually liberated female lead and female ship captain (and these two characters become friends not rivals, too). Feminism in an Alan Ladd actioner, what do you know?
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