It was an average quality VCR TV rip copy with commercials included. The parallels to Covid 19 on cruise ships is prescient. Lots of good B-level actors from the 1970s have small parts in it.
4 Reviews
Just watched it on YouTube
rojan613 April 2021
Decent TV movie time killer
udar553 August 2022
Perhaps hoping to merge The Poseiden Adventure (1972) and The Cassandra Crossing (1976), NBC gave TV audiences the virus-is-loose-on-a-ship thriller Killer on Board (1977). Departing from the Philippines and heading for Hawaii, a cruise liner gets into troubled waters (booooo!) when two stowaways bring a virus onboard. Naturally, the dumb ship's doctor (Murray Hamilton, forever cast as a impassive bureaucratic cog after Jaws) says it is the flu when crew members start getting sick, while another doctor (Frank Converse) feels they have a panic on their hands. There is a stellar cast here including Patty Duke-Astin (as a widow with her son), Susan Howard (as Duke's lovelorn sister), Jane Seymour (as a tour guide), William Daniels (as a rich snob who thinks he can buy his way out of a pandemic), Beatrice Straight (a woman dying of cancer), Len Birman (as a casanova lounge singer), John Roper (as a hysterical "junkie musician"), Michael Lerner and Thalmus Rasulala (as CDC docs helicoptered onto the boat), and Claude Akins and George Hamilton as the boat's captain and second-in-command, respectively (damn, those are some fine heads of hair piloting this ship). Unfortunately, they aren't given much to do except talk about their relationships and stuff. The most suspense we get on the boat is when Roper sneaks around to try to recover his drugs from a quarantined area; the end also has a brief chase of an infected person who swims to San Francisco. The best thing about the version I watched on Youtube is the person uploaded the entire broadcast, including the commercial breaks. What a different time, Jimmy Carter was looking to unveil his universal health care plan and you could put $99 dollars down for a car. Nowadays that wouldn't get you into a theme park.
No Reviews For This One? I Can't Believe It!
richard.fuller16 November 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I'll give it a seven. It might have been better but it has been so very long since I saw it.
Basically a disease breaks out on a passenger ship; not everyone starts falling down ill, but they have all been exposed, so the ship is now wary of any dock it tries to enter.
There was also Cassandra Crossing from 1979 and SST: Deathflight to Nowhere, both with all-star casts, Cassandra was a train, Deathflight obviously was a plane.
Each one had a virus running rampant through the transportation and the passengers were quarantined.
Perhaps it was Killer On Board's title that was so misleading.
The cast wasn't that remarkably standing out. Claude Akins? It just seemed very well done, television-wise.
Like Cassandra Crossing, there was a drug-user on the ship. He ended up jumping overboard. On Cassandra, it was Martin Sheen who was the drug-runner.
About the only two incidents I can recall really well (aside from the drug addict) was Patty Duke Astin in another one of her 1970s abused roles; here, she is thrown down a flight of stairs in front of her young son.
The other event was the woman whose husband died and they debated if they should do an autopsy, tho she objected. They decided they had to, to see if he had the disease, and she was very enraged.
My sister thought this woman was Patricia Neal, I thought it was Fritzi Burr, who appeared on episodes of "Sanford & Son" and "What's Happening?" I see now that it was Beatrice Straight (Network), but it may have been Burr as well, because she is listed in the cast also.
Just can't remember how significant this woman's role was.
Not a bad movie, not a badly done subject. Could be redone as this Michael Bay movie "The Island" or whatever it was, was a remake of "Parts: The Clonus Horror".
Basically a disease breaks out on a passenger ship; not everyone starts falling down ill, but they have all been exposed, so the ship is now wary of any dock it tries to enter.
There was also Cassandra Crossing from 1979 and SST: Deathflight to Nowhere, both with all-star casts, Cassandra was a train, Deathflight obviously was a plane.
Each one had a virus running rampant through the transportation and the passengers were quarantined.
Perhaps it was Killer On Board's title that was so misleading.
The cast wasn't that remarkably standing out. Claude Akins? It just seemed very well done, television-wise.
Like Cassandra Crossing, there was a drug-user on the ship. He ended up jumping overboard. On Cassandra, it was Martin Sheen who was the drug-runner.
About the only two incidents I can recall really well (aside from the drug addict) was Patty Duke Astin in another one of her 1970s abused roles; here, she is thrown down a flight of stairs in front of her young son.
The other event was the woman whose husband died and they debated if they should do an autopsy, tho she objected. They decided they had to, to see if he had the disease, and she was very enraged.
My sister thought this woman was Patricia Neal, I thought it was Fritzi Burr, who appeared on episodes of "Sanford & Son" and "What's Happening?" I see now that it was Beatrice Straight (Network), but it may have been Burr as well, because she is listed in the cast also.
Just can't remember how significant this woman's role was.
Not a bad movie, not a badly done subject. Could be redone as this Michael Bay movie "The Island" or whatever it was, was a remake of "Parts: The Clonus Horror".
"Now, I'm Not About To Get Hysterical About Some Bug!"...
azathothpwiggins1 July 2021
KILLER ON BOARD features an "all-star cast" on a luxury cruise, unaware that they're about to get far more than they paid for!
Stowaways have come aboard, infected with a lethal virus!
Imagine an episode of TV's LOVE BOAT, complete with soap opera situations, where the passengers are suddenly stricken with a fast-spreading disease. That's pretty much what we have here.
The cast is impressive, with Patty Duke, Jayne Seymour, Susan Howard, Claude Akins, and George Hamilton on hand to be tormented.
One big plus is how quickly the disease spreads, causing death and panic. Within minutes, the victims start piling up!
Ms. Duke and Ms. Howard's characters bicker, while George Hamilton shows off his impossible tan. William Daniels plays the same sort of terse, cranky role he usually plays, and Murray Hamilton, as the ship's doctor, reprises his wimpy Mayor role from JAWS. All, while Ms. Seymour radiates beauty as the tour director.
Pure fun, escapist fare...
Stowaways have come aboard, infected with a lethal virus!
Imagine an episode of TV's LOVE BOAT, complete with soap opera situations, where the passengers are suddenly stricken with a fast-spreading disease. That's pretty much what we have here.
The cast is impressive, with Patty Duke, Jayne Seymour, Susan Howard, Claude Akins, and George Hamilton on hand to be tormented.
One big plus is how quickly the disease spreads, causing death and panic. Within minutes, the victims start piling up!
Ms. Duke and Ms. Howard's characters bicker, while George Hamilton shows off his impossible tan. William Daniels plays the same sort of terse, cranky role he usually plays, and Murray Hamilton, as the ship's doctor, reprises his wimpy Mayor role from JAWS. All, while Ms. Seymour radiates beauty as the tour director.
Pure fun, escapist fare...
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