Trivia for
Dead Calm (1989) More at IMDbPro »

• The movie is based on the novel "Dead Calm" by Charles Williams. Orson Welles had filmed it under the name of "The Deep" (previous title: "Dead Reckoning"), based on his own script. The film starred Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey, Michael Bryant, Welles' then-wife Oja Kodar, and Welles himself. The original story had more characters in it than the 1989 film version. Filming lasted from 1967 till 1969. A few scenes could not be filmed, due to the death of Laurence Harvey in 1970, and so Welles' version never reached the big screen.
  
  
• Around 1997, there were rumors that Orson Welles material had been revised and seemed "as good as complete (compared to the shooting script)," and that his widow, Paola Mori, was trying to get it cut and distributed.
  
  
• The yacht 'Storm Vogel' was used as the yacht the 'Saracen'.
  
  
• Before filming began, Nicole Kidman took lessons from the owner of the Storm Vogel on how to operate the ship. During the storm sequences near the end of the film, she is actually piloting the yacht.
  
  
• Sam Neill met his wife, 'Noriko Watanabe', in the making of this film.
  
  

• SPOILER: The film originally ended with Rae bashing Hughie's head in with the spear gun and throwing him into the ocean on the inflatable mattress to float into the distance, before turning the boat around and saving John from his makeshift raft. The last shot of the movie was Rae hugging John and telling him she loved him and that she hadn't given up hope, giving her character closure from her hopeless outlook at the film's bleak opening. Audiences, however, weren't satisfied with Hughie's ambiguous fate (although the implication was that Rae had killed him with the blows to the head), and the ending was re-shot at the behest of studio heads, who were afraid audiences would spread bad word-of-mouth.
  
  

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