‘Trapped with a maniac on a sea of death!’
Blood Voyage is a 1976 American murder mystery film directed by veteran actor Frank Mitchell from a screenplay by William Tate and Jim Patton. Also known as Nightmare Voyage
Although Blood Voyage was his only directorial credit, veteran actor Frank Mitchell had a huge number of minor roles in films from 1920 onwards, mostly in westerns but also in genre titles The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942) and Ghost Catchers (1944).
The movie stars Jonathan Goldsmith [as Jonathan Lippe], Laurie Rose, Midori, Mara Modair, John Hart, Gene Tyburn, Pete Kellett, Doug Hume, Fred Stromsoe, Jim Patton, Warren Farlow.
A small group of people are sailing on a yacht to Hawaii for a wedding. Among them is a murderer. With libidos and drug-fuelled tensions mounting, passengers and the crew turn on each other in a desperate attempt to identify the killer…
Reviews:
” …the film has a few things going for it: 1. An 80-minute runtime, and 2. A certain sense of grimness. The sleaze is slight but present enough to keep you transfixed without being aware of it. When combined with that bilateral equilibrium (30 minutes of hots/30 minutes of zzzs), the whole thing nudges past ambivalence and heads straight for semi-satisfaction.” Bleeding Skull
“It manages to fill its 78 minute running time without ever becoming stultifying or engaging; it remains distracting (though not unpleasantly so) throughout. This is, or course, damning with faint praise, but, beyond the novelty value that it takes place on a yacht, this is by-the-numbers stuff.” Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings
“It’s of mild interest as a proto-slasher, complete with touches that would become standard in the coming years, such as a character saying “What you doing here?” to someone offscreen, before being offed by an unseen assailant. It’s topped off with a typically cynical 70s ending, which unfortunately falls kind of flat.” Hysteria Lives!
“It doesn’t really have a lot going for it and unless you enjoy boring films with an easy to figure out mystery and a killer that runs around giggling like the Joker (which gets annoying very, very fast) then this is one cruise you can skip.” Horror News
“Blood Voyage -average slasher before the term came along,in which a group of awful rich people get bumped off one by one on a trip to Hawaii. Easiest spot the killer competition since Friday the 13th 5 -a new beginning included within. Worth a look for a nice meat cleaver kill and a number of boobs. Twist endings average but arguably still original at time of filming.” James Peter Cox
“The film has almost all the crucial elements of a classic campy horror. It’s got the perfect set-up (confined yet isolated circumstances), a motley cast of one-dimensional characters (the embittered stepdaughter, the damaged war vet, the sailor cook who always seems to be holding a cleaver), plenty of gratuitously bare breasts, and that ham-fisted dialogue […] The only horror element that Blood Voyage lacks is, well, the horror.” Not Coming to a Theater Near You
Censorship:
Blood Voyage was released in British cinemas by Poseidon Films in 1979 in a version cut by censors to 1 hour 15 minutes. The 1988 UK Atlas Video version was subsequently savagely cut 4 mins 30 secs by the BBFC to remove footage of a heroin injection and to shorten a scene of a woman being strangled on a bed.
Technical specs:
1 hour 20 minutes
Audio: Mono
Watch the British cinema release version on YouTube
