Dead Calm **** (1989, Sam Neill, Nicole Kidman, Billy Zane) – Classic Movie Review 3335

Director Phillip Noyce’s brilliant 1989 Australian horror thriller Dead Calm stars Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman as a married couple called John and Rae Ingram, who are trying to recover from the tragic death of their son in a terrible accident by taking solace from sailing their yacht in lonely seas off the coast of Australia.

They make the usual rookie error of picking up a plausible stranger (Billy Zane), the sole survivor of a half-sunken schooner. Bad mistake! He turns out to be a homicidal madman. Then their troubles really begin.

Zane tells them that his crew members have all died of food poisoning, but when doctor Neill rows over to take a look, he finds them all murdered, and now Zane is alone with Kidman.

Noyce (Newsfront, Patriot Games, Salt) skilfully directs a taut, nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat thriller, with a neat, compelling plot and resourceful acting from what is basically just the cast of three. You cheer on Kidman, then a Sigourney Weaver-lookalike, as she turns from little wife into resourceful survivor in the deadly battle of wits. Terry Hayes’s sizzling screenplay is based on the novel by Charles Williams.

The four-letter words are cut out in the TV version.

Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm.

Dead Calm proved Kidman’s passport to Hollywood and romance: Tom Cruise saw her in this and booked her for Days of Thunder (1990) and they got married soon after – on 24 December 1990. They appeared in Far and Away and Eyes Wide Shut together, but divorced on 8 August 2001. She married Keith Urban on 25 June 2006.

The yacht ‘Storm Vogel’ was used as the yacht the ‘Saracen’ and the producers thanked the owners for the use of their yacht.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3335

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