Hitchcock Month - Lifeboat

Lifeboat (1944)

Starring Tallulah Bankhead, Hume Cronyn, and Walter Slezak

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Well, these can't all be winners.  And the less said about Lifeboat, the better.

A German U-boat sinks an American ship heading towards Britain.  A group of people manage to clamber aboard a lifeboat.  However, one of the group is a Nazi U-boat captain and the Americans and British are unsure whether to trust the captain even though he is the most knowledgeable about the sea.

An hour-and-forty-five minutes of the most boring stuff imaginable.  The movie takes place only on the lifeboat and one would think that tensions would inevitably rise as the group would start to turn against each other.  I was actually eagerly looking forward to viewing this flick for that very reason.  It's got to be exciting, right?  Nope.  Not in the slightest.  

This is seriously one of the most boring films I have ever seen.  It's incredibly talky when it doesn't need to be.  It's filled with some bad overacting (mainly thanks to the ridiculously over-the-top prissy character played by Tallulah Bankhead).  There's nothing good here.

I came away from my Book-a-Week Quest last year loving John Steinbeck.  Seeing as he he penned the script for this flick, I was looking forward to seeing it.  However, there isn't a single thing to recommend here.

The RyMickey Rating:  D-