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Dead calm

Threat advisory: Under evaluation

Movie propaganda

High seas, deep terror.

veteran sailor John Ingram (Sam Neill) joins his beautiful young wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) on the deck of their sailing yacht Saracen, and finds the ocean mirror-flat, the air dead calm. A career Royal Australian Navy officer, Ingram has seen the world's oceans. But this particular voyage represents a far more personal odyssey - it gives John and Rae the opportunity to soothe the memory of that single rainy night many months before when a devastating auto crash took the life of the couple's young son - and almost killed Rae as well.

Suddenly, John and Rae's private, healing cruise is interrupted when they spot a dinghy being furiously rowed away from a large schooner lying some half-mile to starboard. The other ship - named the Orpheus - shows no other signs of life. The sole occupant of the dinghy is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane), a frightened young American who pours out his ordeal to the rescuers - his shipmates have all died, the apparent victims of food poisoning.

But Ingram, skeptical of the stranger's tale, rows out to the schooner and discovers that something much more ominous and horrifying may have occurred on the Orpheus. Heart pounding, John races back up onto the crippled schooner's deck and stares in anguish toward his own boat. On deck, Rae is screaming and Hughie is at the helm of the Saracen, steering her under full power - in the opposite direction!

Also starring Rod Mullinar as Russell Bellows, Joshua Tilden as Danny, George Shevtsov as the doctor and Michael Long as the specialist doctor. Written by Terry Hayes, directed by Phillip Noyce.

Cinematic intelligence sources

Studios and distributors:

Warner Bros * Roadshow Films

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

I saw nothing. This DVD was stolen from my potato's office but I won't name names because that won't bring them back or bring the two scum-sucking culprits to justice.

Meanwhile, when I first saw Dead calm all those years ago, it was pretty intense and I got to see Nicole Kidman's bum, which was a big thing back in those days. Sam Neill and Billy Zane keep their bums tastefully hidden, as you'd expect.