blanche-2 "The Last Voyage" is a 1960 film starring Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien and Willy Strode. It's a film of firsts.The ship used as the Claridon was the Isle de France, and that includes the interiors, which the producers partially sunk. After that, the ship, which had been in service for 33 years, was scraped. The Isle de France was part of the rescue of passengers from the Andrea Doria, the first ship on the scene.The story concerns, like the Isle de France, an old ship, the SS Claridon, on his final voyage before retirement after 33 years of service. Unfortunately for the ship, the crew, and the passengers, the ship is ill-equipped to handle a boiler room problem and the ship starts to take on more water than it can handle. The Captain (George Sanders) refuses to listen to reason, believing that his ship is invincible.When fires break out and ceilings start falling, one family is especially affected, the Hendersons (Stack, Malone, and Tammy Manhugh - more on her later). Laura Henderson (Malone) is trapped under debris and can't move, and Jill is trapped on one side of a huge, cavernous hole, and her father is on the other. Henderson desperately tries to find someone on the sinking ship who can assist him in freeing his wife.This is a very exciting and suspenseful film, with great effects and overall good acting, particularly from Sanders, Strode, O'Brien, and Malone. Woody Strode is oiled up, muscular, and has no shirt on - definite eye candy. He plays a compassionate, hard-working man determined to help. Interestingly, Stack, Malone, Sanders, and O'Brien were all best-supporting actor nominees, and all except Stack won.I had a couple of problems with this movie, which is loosely based on the happenings on the Andrea Doria. First of all, when Henderson tries to save Jill, he gets a board and stretches it across the cavernous space. When he tries to crawl on it, it weakens and cracks. Why didn't he just have her crawl to him (which he ultimately does) instead of trying to get to her? And were they then going to cross on that board together? I don't think so.The other problem I had is that Malone, after being in intolerable pain and her legs probably broken and pinned under this steel debris was able to run like hell once she was carried off the boat (which certainly seemed unnecessary in light of later activity) and tread water to the lifeboat.This film was made before all the huge disaster films and does a good job of focusing on the plight of one family that needs aide in the midst of total panic. Also, in 1960, traveling by ocean liner was much more common than it is today, and it was just about to end and be taken over by the jet. So "The Last Voyage" represents a form of travel today used for vacationing, provided the passengers don't get food poisoning and the captain doesn't abandon the ship as it's heading for the rocks.On to the rather annoying daughter, played by Tammy Manhugh. Manhugh was a prolific child actress who retired from show business and became an exotic dancer. She ultimately married a bodybuilder named Rodney Lawson, who was ten years her junior. He was an abusive husband, and in 1996, she shot him in the back. She was sentenced to probation.Totally worth seeing.

marcslope Quite good thriller, made independently but released by MGM, suggesting that writer-director Andrew Stone (and his wife Virginia, who edited, excellently) should be judged on the basis of more than "Song of Norway." Ship buffs will find it irresistible, as it offers a last look at the Ile de France, and sinks it, in the name of drama. It's a beautiful, stately liner, and Stone seems in able control of all the elements--the technical details, the drama, the scampering of terrified extras. Poor Dorothy Malone has to spend nearly the whole movie trapped in a dismantled stateroom, but she does a lot of acting with her face, and Robert Stack must have lost several pounds scrambling up and down decks as her panicked husband. There's also the pretty spectacular Woody Strode as the one crew member who doesn't ignore them, and good superciliousness from George Sanders, in Addison de Witt mode, as the captain. About the only technical error I can find is that the sky shots don't quite match--they're alternately sunny or gray depending on the day of the shoot. But it's a spectacular, creepy visualization of a calamity at sea, and it has more gravitas than the disaster movies that followed a decade or so later.

ranger7774 This movie isn't too bad for 1960. It is a G rated film and is kind of nerve racking. The narration reminds me of a docu-drama type of film along the lines of 13 Rue Madeleine or Boomerang. Some of the rescue scenes are very amplified and prolonged for tension effect. The lack of a film score in most of the movie is quite effective too. Dorothy Malone is quite beautiful in this and the little girl, although overly dramatic, does pretty well for such a small child.There is a major blooper at the end. No one thus far has mentioned it. I caught it right away when I saw it. This is the first time I have seen the movie since 1960 at the Boulevard Drive In Theatre on Camp Bowie in Ft. Worth. I recall this movie back then. It impressed me for its realism being an 11 year old at the time.The blooper concerns Edmund O' Brien. Count the people getting off the ship at the end and watch closely you will catch it. Also count them getting in the lifeboat once they swim out there and count them swimming. You will see the error. Its pretty big.JW.

zugbugfshr I am a retired U.S. Navy Captain, an Engineering Duty Officer who ran shipyards for many years and was Chief Engineer of an aircraft carrier. Ships and what make them tick were my thing for 30 years. I trained for the disaster depicted in "The Last Voyage" for many years and fortunately never encountered it.I can tell you with some expertise that this is the most realistic film of this genre ever made. I was astounded watching it. They actually got most of the terminology and sequence of events correct. Edmund O'Brien made a convincing Engineer. It could almost be a training film for: > attempting to manually trip a boiler safety valve > shoring up a bulkhead in an adjacent flooded space etc.If you want to see what something like this might be like, watch this film. I also found the ending pretty suspenseful - I wasn't quite sure who was going to live, and who was going to die.