Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Nonureva Really Surprised!

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

blanche-2 "Dynasty" fans may recall when Joan Collins, as Alexis, posed as a nun. Well, here she is a nun again, in "Sea Wife," also starring Richard Burton, Cy Grant, and Basil Sydney.The jolly foursome are stuck on a lifeboat in 1942 when the ship they were on explodes as they escape from Singapore. For reasons known only to themselves, they all adopt nicknames - Burton is Biscuit, Collins is Sea Wife, Grant is No. 4, Sidney is Bulldog. Sea Wife neglects to tell anyone she's a nun, but Number 4 knows, and uses it to get food and water from an enemy ship. The big mystery of the film is why she doesn't tell anyone.Not much happens in this movie. The story is told in flashback, when Burton goes on his search for Sea Wife, with whom he is madly in love. He visits Bulldog, and the story of their voyage begins.Lots of shots of their boat floating on the water. Sidney's character is most unpleasant - he distrusts No. 4, who is black, even though the man gets food and water for them and also saves his life. Burton is handsome, and he definitely had one of the greatest voices in film. Collins here is young and beautiful, but she made such a reputation for herself as Alexis, it's kind of funny to see her as a reverent, devoted nun - who doesn't tell anybody. She and Burton don't have much chemistry.Skip it.

bbbvvv312 I picked the wrong one. I am not an art or movie critic, but I know what I like. And this wasn't it. It was an incredibly long morality tale, told in a huge flashback. All I can say is that if I am stuck in a lifeboat, and some guy starts talking about the inevitability of having to suck the blood out of some still-living victim within five minutes of going overboard, there is going to be one less psychopath in the boat the first time I get my hands on an oar. Come to think of it, the movie would have been much better if the "negro" Number 4 had just brained Bulldog the moment he he started mouthing off. Instead I had to sit through almost another hour of the noble, long suffering savage versus the racist moron. With the dreadfully serious Romantic leads chasing after each other the whole time like the lovesick couples in teen slasher movies. She leads him on with cryptic excuses, while he pleads his undying love to the cold maiden. A simple statement like "I'm a Nun" would have put his hormones on ice real quick. But no. Then you wouldn't have him pining for her through the whole damned movie. Oh, and to top it all off, at the end of the film, he walks right passed her without noticing her dressed as a nun, as he has just been told that she is dead, and she doesn't bother to say "hi", or "hello", or "here's the reason I couldn't jump you on that island..." No. She mutters something about nobody looking at nun's faces to her fellow nun, and walks off. Of course nobody looks at their faces. We all look at their dresses, and wonder if they really have feet under there...

moonspinner55 Facile dramatics about four disparate characters--three men and one woman (Joan Collins)--shipwrecked off the coast of Singapore in 1942. One of the men grows very fond of the lady, who is secretly a nun. The nun's curious reluctance to divulge her vocation unnecessarily drags out these proceedings (and makes Sister Collins out to be something of a tease, which is touched upon fleetingly). Film verges on camp but is saved from silliness by an adept, surface-pretty production, also by Richard Burton's fiery emoting (predictably, he's colorful and mercurial as ever). Shallow, but certainly entertaining on a minor scale. **1/2 from ****

Michael The author of the story from whence this came (JM Scott, 'Sea-Wyf and Biscuit') evidently did not write with the cinema in mind; but judging by this mile-high venture the Fox production machine was less than fastidious in its choice of material to show off Cinemascope to worry too much about such trivial dramatic considerations.Four WWII disparates - a nun, a black, a racist, and a slice of ham - are thrown together on a lifeboat and begin to drift aimlessly. The film in which they find themselves marooned quickly decides to follow suit, as they attribute themselves misnomers such as "Biscuit", "Seawife", "Bulldog" and "No. 4", and spend most of the rest of their time posturing at opposite ends of the boat for the Cinemascope frame, and expatiating whilst bearing 'meaningful' fixed stares of interminable solemnity. Yes, we're in the sort of 'external monologue' territory that most of those predisposed to such masochism sensibly choose to do so within the confines of the theatre.Attempts are made to liven things up with the introduction of some men overboard, Japs, sharks and a desert island (in no particular order); however the pervasive verbosity continues unabated, as does its failure to translate into dramatic coherence; and with it the lament that the unjust critics reception of Collins' performance in 'Land Of The Pharoas' two years earlier pretty much killed off her chances of ever getting to do anything remotely credible within the American mainstream cinema. Connoiseurs of cinematic Wartime seasickness are best advised to stick with Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat'.