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16 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
A good movie if you can stretch believability, 11 March 2004

Author: Tom Willett (yonhope) from Central Midwest, USA

Hi, Everyone,

I worked on this movie at The Queen Mary (ship) in Long Beach in May of 1981. The crew and cast were fun to be with. I was an extra who was supposed to be a passenger on the Goliath down at the bottom of the ocean. We were all still alive years after the ship sank.

A group of us were taught the dances of the 1920s (Lambeth Walk, Charleston). We worked in the cargo hold of the Queen Mary for some of our scenes. There were good guys and bad guys. Frank Gorshin and Christopher Lee were the villains. Christopher Lee was the Captain who kept the people alive and wanted to stay underwater when the rescuers arrived.

John Carradine was a very pleasant man to work with in his scenes. He had arthritis but he managed to negotiate the stairway that led down into the hold of the ship. Mark Harmon was the hero who arrives to rescue the passengers.

This movie was originally shown over a two night period on TV. It later was packaged as a VHS movie with some scenes edited out, but the short version seems the better and more fast paced of the two.

There is one scene where the music does not match the dancing in the background. Watch for dancers moving at the wrong tempo. The scene was rehearsed at one speed (No music actually is played. The dancers are given a tempo and they dance without music while the dialog is being recorded. The music is inserted later.)and different music was put in for some reason.

I liked the movie but it was not great. It was an interesting idea that will hold your attention for a couple of hours. If you like ship movies, try "Sea Chase" with John Wayne and Lana Turner or "Assault on a Queen" with Frank Sinatra.

Tom Willett

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Chilling beginning then sinks., 18 October 1999
Author: yenlo from Auburn, Me

An ocean liner goes down during WWII and a number of passengers survive and establish a civilization under the sea in the wreck. The film starts out good but then begins to wither. Too many little subplots are injected into the story, which sink it. (No pun intended) It begins to take on a Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea TV series episode type plot and the chilling Twilight Zone potential of the picture is lost. Christopher Lee does a superb job as the ship captain and is the film only really interesting character. A man who has gone from captain of the ship to absolute God in his underwater kingdom. The other characters particularly the Navy personnel who discover the wreck are weak to say the least. John Carradine co-stars as a silent film star who was aboard the liner when it went down and is now revered by the younger generation as one of the `Elders' Frank Gorshin is also aboard as the captains sinister law enforcer.

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Chilling, 15 December 1998
Author: Eric Rodriguez (eric.rodriguez2@phs.com) from Encino, CA

I am reaching way back into my memory for this one, for I saw it on T.V. in 1981 and haven't heard anything about it since, except in 1992 when a co-worker and I got on the subject of shipwrecks and somehow we both remembered this movie from our pasts. We were so vague on the details we had both thought it might have been a dream until we corroborated each other's memory!

Brilliant how an "offshoot" society--a microcosm of our own, with all the various social strata--was represented. There was even a sub-sub-society, the "Bow People," who terrorized those in the main part of the ship.

Also, chilling how the ship's brass were "relieved" to find out that Hitler had been defeated--not even realizing that they had established their own police state far below the surface of the ocean!

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Lost Gem, 23 April 2003
Author: Reno-007 from san diego, CA

I remember this when it premiered in Nov. of 1981 when I was in the 7th grade. I remember the specifics very well, however other reviewers are wrong about a few of the facts. First off Christopher Lee's character was NOT the captain, he was the third officer of the ship and was in charge of the engine room. Second, the movie was not made to be a horror flick. I remember the T.V. Guide writeup about it then and it is a Mystery-Suspense story. Overall a very cool movie that had an interesting premise of what if? What if the Queen Mary sank or the Queen Elizabeth sank and what would the people be like after 40 years of isolation from the world. Lee is the most noteable when it comes to the acting. I like the other actors in the film but I will say that Mark Harmon, who is a good actor, in this one really overacted a few times. All in all a great story, decent acting and cool sets.

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4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Goliath Awaits inspires humans to have underwater homes, 12 June 2004

Author: xbrad68 from SAINT CATHARINES,ONTARIO

Goliath Awaits came out in 1981 and the special effects for it are aging gracefully. The notion of people living in a sunken ocean liner may seem far fetched but as Neil Peart of RUSH wrote "We suspend our disbelief and we are entertained." Director Kevin Connor does a nice job of directing thus helping to salvage a soggy script. The mysterious disease that befalls the passengers of the GOLIATH makes the viewer curious about its origins. Later in the movie it is revealed that the ships Doctor is singling out people that he doesn't approve of. The doctor is of course extremely bigoted and wrong to use euthanasia on the ships passengers. The luxury of unused sheets of paper to the children of the ship is revealed. The Captain of the ship seems well meaning but the thought of using geothermal vents for power and oxygen is far-fetched given the ships level of technology. Who knows if Aliens could be powering underwater spaceships from geothermal vents. If so then the Aliens have accomplished an impressive feat. Goliath Awaits inspires humans to think about living in underwater homes for years at a time. Such an underwater project should be made part of the NASA space program. Humanitys survival in a big bad universe might depend on underwater habitats.

In Goliath Awaits you feel sorry for the passengers stuck shoveling coal at the same time you are wondering why they have never run out of coal. I gave Goliath Awaits a 10 out of 10 for its novel plot.

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4 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Potential chiller lost by subplots, 18 October 1999
Author: yenlo from Auburn, Me

An ocean liner goes down during WWII and a number of passengers survive and establish a civilization under the sea in the wreck. The film starts out good with but then begins to wither. Too many little subplots are injected into the story, which sink it. (No pun intended) It begins to take on a Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea TV series episode type plot and the chilling Twilight Zone potential of the picture is lost. Christopher Lee does a superb job as the ship captain and is the only really interesting character. A man who has gone from captain of the ship to absolute God in his underwater kingdom. The other characters particularly the Navy personnel who discover the wreck are weak to say the least. John Carradine co-stars as a silent film star who was aboard the liner when it went down and is now revered by the younger generation as one of the `Elders'. Frank Gorshin is also aboard as an individual who serves the captain in much the same way Beria served Stalin.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Begs for a sequel, 26 June 2003
Author: jlapre from Sacramento, CA

When I see movies like this, I want to know what happened later...how did the people react to changes in the world after 40 years. I was curious about how they would find jobs, make their way in a new society. I did agree with the comments on weaknesses of the film...but the premise was fascinating.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
It is an interesting movie, but not a compelling one despite a fine cast of character actors, and one fantastic newcomer,Duncan Regehr!, 24 November 2000

Author: (xeresa@home.com) from San Diego,California

This was the film that first introduced me to the actor, Duncan Regehr, who played the leader of the Bow people. His performance and that of Christopher Lee as the conflicted leader of the sunken Goliath were the only bright spots in this sci-fi thriller. It could have been a great picture for the idea was fascinating, but the writing was heavy-handed. Even such top-notched character actors as Jeanette Nolan, John McIntire,John Carradine, and Jean Marsh were hampered by the insipid dialogue. I love Frank Gorshin but his performance here was a comic book caricature and unworthy of him. Both Mark Harmon and Emma Samms were pretty to look at, but bland. Duncan Regehr came across as sexy and powerful, and one of the film's implausibilities was that the heroine would prefer Mark Harmon over him! Duncan Regehr and Christopher Lee, were the only actors who gave a three-dimensional performance to what was written as one-dimensional characters. Still it's not a bad picture-- it is a interesting picture, but not a compelling one!

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3 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Based on "The Watch Below"? / Sinking is falling, 14 November 2006

Author: threehundred60decrees from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

These might not be spoilers, but better safe than sorry.

"The Goliath Awaits" appears to be loosely based on the science fiction novel "The Watch Below" by James White. In it, a few passengers and crew of a trading vessel sunk in World War II manage to survive because their supplies include pedal-operated electric generators, light bulbs, bean or pea plants for food and air replenishment, and a huge trove of powdered eggs and powdered milk. Water is collected from condensation and, if I remember correctly, also distilled from brine somehow. To pass the time and keep sane they play a memory game, recalling every detail of their lives including everything they've ever read, seen, and learned. And so they pass on their knowledge to their children who pass it on to theirs.

Unlike in "Goliath" there is a science fiction element to the story: 150 years after the sinking their descendants are rescued by aquatic aliens who fled their dying world hoping to find refuge in Earth's oceans. The crew of the spaceship were similar to the denizens of the wreck in that they were descendants of the original crew, who had discovered that repeatedly entering suspended animation caused crippling brain damage. The shipwrecked Earthlings use their well-trained memories to learn the aliens' language and plead their new friends' case to wary Earth authorities. (The novel all along cross-cuts between similar events in the wreck and the spaceship, such as the breaking off of rival factions and their later reconciliation.)

A major technical flaw in a story like "Goliath Awaits" is that a sinking ship is basically a falling object. The Titanic, for instance, did not settle on the ocean bottom 12,000 ft. down, it SLAMMED into it. I don't have the figures for how fast it was determined to have been moving just before impact, but these vessels are found lying in pieces. (The ship of "The Watch Below" was in much shallower water and was visible from low-flying observation aircraft.) If the people on board aren't killed or badly injured in the crash it is doubtful that there would be enough integrity in the hull to maintain air pressure for long.

The movie was diverting if predictable. The lack of pallor of the people and the good condition of their clothes was an omission typical of American TV of 1981. Ridley Scott-type production design had not yet penetrated television and wouldn't really start to until MTV's influence was felt (in shows like "Miami Vice"). It takes more time and money, so the financiers would not budget for it until forced to do so by competition.

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Questioning the writing on the back of the box, 2 April 2007

Author: billieh1956 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I just finishing watching Goliath Awaits that I ordered from my library. I remembered it vaguely from years ago and wanted to watch it with my son. Anyway, the movie was less than 2 hours running time and I thought it was much longer when I first saw it. The back of the VHS box states that the Goliath "emtombs a Nazi file whose secrets could destroy the free world forever." The divers were supposedly on a covert mission to retrieve the demonic document. There was nothing even spoken about retrieving this document. Also, the box says that the "bestial ship's insatiable boiler feeds on human blood." That would make this a horror movie and there was also nothing revealed in the movie about this. I can't remember the details when I watched this years ago on TV...but could the back of this box actually be true? Maybe the 3 hour movie revealed more details??

Just wondering if anyone knows anything about this.

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