A creepy if formulaic chiller, this isn't quite Halloween but still
bears a lot of John Carpenter's trademarks, as the malevolent ghosts of
dead sailors terrorise a coastal village. It has a very good opening,
with machines and lights switching themselves on under cameraman Dean
Cundey's expert scrutiny. No one's better at making the inanimate
scary than Carpenter. The human beings, though, including wife-to-be
Adrienne Barbeau, Hal Holbrook, and the mother-daughter pairing of
Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, aren't given much to do, and this
basically belongs among its director's more disappointing
offerings.
