Dead Calm (film)

Rae Ingram is traumatized after a car crash results in the death of her young son. Her older husband, Royal Australian Navy Captain John Ingram, suggests a vacation on their yacht, the Saracen. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they encounter a drifting schooner that appears to be taking on water. A distressed man rows a dinghy over to the Saracen. He introduces himself as Hughie Warriner and tells them the schooner is sinking, the other passengers having died of food poisoning ten days prior.

While Hughie sleeps, a suspicious John rows out to the schooner, the Orpheus. In the partially-flooded hold, he is horrified to discover the mutilated corpses of the other passengers and rushes back toward the Saracen. However, Hughie awakens and sails the yacht away, knocking Rae out when she tries to stop him.

Returning to the Orpheus, John manages to pump enough water out of the hold to restart the engine and begin pursuing the Saracen. He also discovers video footage showing Hughie's increasingly unhinged behavior toward his fellow passengers, culminating in their murders. Rae awakens, and after a confrontation in which Hughie displays extreme paranoia and mood swings, she starts working to gain his trust. John manages to hail Rae on the radio, but water damage makes him unable to reply except through clicks on the receiver to signal yes or no to her questions. He tells her the Orpheus is beyond salvaging and will sink within hours, before his radio dies completely.

To save John, Rae plays along with Hughie's overtures, which gradually turn sexual. As they start to kiss and undress, Rae excuses herself to the bathroom. She runs on deck to assemble the yacht's shotgun, but her dog Ben follows and starts barking, causing Hughie to investigate. Unable to stall further, Rae leaves the gun behind and reluctantly has sex with Hughie.

Afterward, Rae spikes some lemonade with a heavy dose of her prescription sedatives and tricks Hughie into drinking it. Claiming she is going to get dressed, Rae returns for the shotgun, but Hughie catches her and they fight as a squall hits the yacht. Hughie wrestles the shotgun away, but the sedative disorients him and he shoots the Saracen's radio. Finding a harpoon launcher, Rae locks herself in the bedroom and fires through the door, accidentally killing Ben. Hughie breaks in and begins to strangle her before the sedatives finally take effect and he passes out. Rae ties him up and begins sailing back toward John. Reviving, Hughie cuts himself loose and comes after Rae, who shoots him in the shoulder with a harpoon and beats him unconscious. She sets him adrift in the yacht's life raft.

Damaged further by the squall, the Orpheus floods as a collapsed mast traps John below deck. He breaks free by kicking through the hull and sets the wreckage on fire. At dusk, Rae catches sight of the flames and finds John on a piece of floating debris, pulling him back onto the Saracen before they tearfully embrace. The next morning they encounter the life raft, which is empty; Rae destroys it with a flare.

The following day, Rae is washing her hair on deck while John is below preparing breakfast, when a gravely injured Hughie appears and attacks Rae. Coming upon the scene, John grabs a flare and fires it into Hughie's mouth, killing him.

The film is based on the novel Dead Calm by American author Charles Williams. Orson Welles had optioned the film rights in the mid-1960's. Under the title The Deep, Welles shot the film between 1966 and 1969 off the coast of Yugoslavia. The prospective film starred Laurence Harvey as Hughie, Michael Bryant as Ingram, Oja Kodar as Rae, and Welles himself played Russ Bellowes. Jeanne Moreau played Hughie's wife Ruth, a character present in the original novel but cut out of Noyce's film.

Welles' production was plagued by financial and technical problems, and effectively halted at the end of 1969. Principal photography remained incomplete, and Laurence Harvey's death in 1973 effectively ended any hope of completing the film.^[9] The original film negative is considered lost, though two workprints survive, and footage from the film has been displayed since.

Producer Tony Bill had tried to buy the rights from Welles but was never successful. He mentioned this to Philip Noyce, giving him a copy of the book in 1984. Noyce enjoyed the book and showed it to George Miller and Terry Hayes, who were enthusiastic. Miller managed to persuade Oja Kodar, Welles's companion, who controlled the rights to the novel, to sell the book to Kennedy Miller.^[10][11]

The book features several other main characters (including Hughie's wife and survivors John finds on the Orpheus), and presented Hughie as a nominally asexual manchild.^[12] It also goes into further detail about what caused Hughie's psychotic break.

Dead Calm was released theatrically in the United States and Canada on 7 April 1989 by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film had its Australian release the following month on 26 May 1989, distributed by Roadshow Films.^[14]

• The Deep (unfinished film)
• Cinema of Australia