The Decks Ran Red (1958)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) The James Mason vehicle thriller The Decks Ran Red may not be all that well known today, but it does have a few things going for it. I could say that the first is Mason’s good-guy performance as a cargo ship captain dealing with murderous mutineers, but I won’t lie: I only had eyes for Dorothy Dandridge in a supporting turn as the ship’s sole female presence. It’s an ungrateful role—she’s ethnically miscast as a Polynesian woman brought aboard the ship as a stewardess because she’s the wife of the new cook, and spends much of her time being threatened by the mutineers—but it’s not as if we’ve got a large number of substantial Dandridge roles available to us, so I’ll take it (especially given how the character has a full arc and a moment of triumph). The Decks Ran Red itself isn’t much more than a straight-ahead thriller, albeit with the claustrophobia of being stuck at sea with a bunch of criminals who see murder as a profitable enterprise. Mason is pleasantly heroic here: the film isn’t particularly interested in subtlety, so it’s not as if the captain is provoking the mutiny by his actions. By the time he comes aboard, the villains (led by a suitably gruff Damien Broderick) have already figured out their murder-sabotage-and-salvage scheme: but the rotten rascals hadn’t planned on everyone fighting back. It all culminates into an extended fight aboard the ship, and an unusual climax with a ship headed for a lifeboat. Shot in spare, more realistic style than many other thrillers of the time, The Decks Ran Red can’t be called a great film… but it’s a surprisingly decent one, and it can boast of three great screen presences in its cast.