The Decks Ran Red

Critically panned at the time of its release, Andrew L. Stone’s The Decks Ran Red is a fascinating mashup of elements from Cape Fear (1962), The Ghost Ship (1943), and Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) and deserves reappraisal. Apparently inspired by actual events, the film stars James Mason as Edwin Rummill, assigned his first captain post by an American cargo shipping company when the previous captain dies off the coast of New Zealand. While much of the crew is skeptical upon his arrival, the real threat are two criminal crewmen — Henry Scott (a role tailor-made for the snarling Broderick Crawford) and Leroy Martin (Stuart Whitman) — who plan to defy all laws of probability by murdering everyone on board and setting the ship ablaze to collect the salvage reward. The mesmerizing Dorothy Dandridge plays Mahia, wife of the ship’s cook, whom the captain reminds to cover up for fear of exciting the sex-starved crew; still, Leroy feels perfectly okay sexually assaulting Mahia right in front of her husband. The film boasts little camera innovation and has no musical score to speak of, but the cast performs well — Crawford is at his most disgusting here — and the action is effectively paced, even if it strains credulity.