These days, when the cruise ship industry is wrecked by the global pandemic, perhaps we should be reminded that cruise ship passengers experienced all kinds of dangers before. At least in screenplays like the one used for Golden Rendezvous, a 1977 South African action thriller directed by Adam Lazarus. The protagonist, played by Richard Harris, is John Carter, First Officer of the Caribbean Star, a cargo freighter converted into a floating casino for the world’s elite. Before sailing from port, Carter notices all kinds of strange happenings – constant delays, the arrival of strange cargo like coffins, as well as even stranger passengers that include a comatose patient guarded by sinister-looking nurses. While at sea, someone starts murdering the crew and Carter begins to investigate, but his investigation becomes moot after Luis Carreras (played by John Vernon), one of the passengers, turns out to be the leader of heavily-armed mercenaries who hijack the ship. With the help of the ship’s doctor Marston (played by Gordon Jackson), Carter tricks the hijackers into believing that he is gravely wounded and uses that opportunity to discover and possibly foil their sinister plans, which involve US Treasury gold shipments and a stolen nuclear device.
Golden Rendezvous is based on the novel by Alistair MacLean, author of best-selling thrillers, including those which later served as the basis for action film classics like Guns of Navarone. This one is far from them, and that can be explained by the inept direction of Lazarus, which makes the film appear much cheaper than it really was. The first half of the film, when the audience gets familiar with the complicated and sometimes barely comprehensible plot, goes at a snail’s pace, and it is easy to imagine many viewers simply giving up. A large and relatively well-known cast, which includes some Classic Hollywood stars, is wasted in forgettable, one-dimensional roles, with a possible exception of Burgess Meredith as a comically degenerate gambler.
The production of the film was affected by financial troubles (later leading to a major scandal involving alleged misappropriations of the Apartheid-era government’s PR funds), as well as Harris allegedly enjoying too much vodka on the set. However, regardless of what went on behind the camera, Harris is actually the best thing in Golden Rendezvous. The character of Carter seems tailor-made for his image of a no-nonsense action hero, which in many ways predates John McClane from Die Hard. Harris also has very good chemistry with his wife, Ann Turkel, who plays the otherwise poorly written character of the mysterious Mrs. Beresford. Yet, despite Harris’s best efforts, Golden Rendezvous fails, and for all those who happen to watch it, its obscurity is hardly surprising.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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