Pacific Liner (1939) User Reviews

Cholera on board

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 9 March 2020]

If one is thinking that Victor McLaglen and Chester Morris are doing yet another version of Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt in Pacific Liner that is most definitely not the case. There are some hijinks to be sure, but for the most part this is involved with fighting the serious business of a cholera epidemic.

McLaglen is the chief stoker and Morris the ship's doctor on board the passenger liner The Arcturus. Cholera breaks out among the crew and those still on their feet try to keep it all from the blithely unconcerned passengers.

These two are also in competition for Wendy Barrie the ship's nurse. She has some history with both guys.

Newsreel footage of ship's operations are blended nicely into the story. Like you would see in an O'Neill play, these sailors do live in a world of their own away from the passengers. The sailors are a lot of familiar character players headed by Barry Fitzgerald and Alan Hale.

Pacific Liner holds up very well after 80+ years.

Outbreak on the high seas.... as seen from the engine room

[ksf-2 · 6/10 · 19 February 2010]

With that bucket load of stars, it's a shame this one wasn't better. It WAS made five years after the Hayes code came whooshing in, so I wonder if it wouldn't have been a little more interesting if it had been made a couple years earlier... LOVE the scene where Alan Hale and another engine room worker are dancing together to the music coming from the upper decks. Alan Hale Sr. was the real life father of the Skipper on Gilligan's Island. He was the jolly, laughing character actor in about half the films made in the 1930/1940s. Viewers will recognize "Britches"...Barry Fitzgerald is the shorter Irish gentleman from The Quiet Man & Going My Way. Chester Morris (was sleuth "Boston Blackie") is the ship's doctor, who must deal with cholera outbreak. A stow-away has brought the deadly disease on board, and the captain (Halliwell Hobbes) must come up with a plan as it threatens to spread through the ship. Victor McLaglen is the burly, tough Chief Engineer, and had been a boxer in real life, which came in handy, since he needs to keep firm control of the men here. McLaglen would also work with Fitzgerald in "Quiet Man". Bombshell star of the 1940's Wendy Barrie is the ship's nurse. The film is OK, but it just kind of ends, without any drama or big climactic scene. Directed by Lew Landers. Worth watching on Turner Classics, but I sure wouldn't buy this one...

I think those stokers might wanna consider unionizing!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 9 March 2020]

In light of the hysteria currently surrounding the Corona Virus recently, TCM showing "Pacific Liner" seems very timely! The film is about a cholera outbreak among the stokers on an ocean liner...and the Chief Engineer (Victor McLaglen) and Doctor's (Chester Morris) actions to try to contain the illness.

Much of the film is set in the lower depths of the ship among the lowly stokers who shovel coal in to the ship's steam engines. Oddly, although temperatures among the furnaces should be at least 100-120 degrees Fahrenheit, the Chief Engineer's uniform seems always clean and sweat-free...and he wears a very heavy uniform throughout the movie. His way of dealing with the crew is to slap them around and intimidate them but this bullying is tested when Cholera breaks out, as these tactics might stop working once panic sets in among these men. At the same time, the Doctor is against these tactics and the two men are pitted against each other during much of the story. They also are rivals for the attention of the pretty nurse aboard the ship (Wendy Barrie).

This is a tense and well made film despite looking in some ways like a B-movie (though at 78 minutes it wouldn't qualify as a B). Worth seeing and exciting.

Not bad little b-film

[vandino1 · 26 January 2006]

Shanghai 1932. Chester Morris is pipe-smoking doctor who has signed on to the passenger ship the S.S. Arcturus. It's run above decks by the Captain played by Hobbes and below decks by Chief Engineer McLaglen (his character's name is "Crusher" McKay). Barrie is the nurse in love with Morris, but also pursued by big lug McLaglen. Then comes a cholera epidemic below decks. Cholera, of course, involves massive diarrhea, but here the actors just clutch their side and keel over. Eventually even McLaglen gets it. But of course Doctor Morris saves the day, gets the girl, and the ship makes it to port. But there is also an interesting, rather odd, sociological point of view to all this. The passengers are never told about the cholera, and the the above decks crew treat the below decks staff with contempt. Guilfoyle plays one of the "below deckers" who rails on about the despised "haves" living comfortably above. In fact, when the crew members die of cholera they aren't even given burial at sea, they're burned in the ship's furnaces! And at the end of the voyage the passengers leave complaining of the customer service with haughty contempt. This film certainly likes to stick it to anyone who doesn't shovel coal. But there is plenty of snappy dialogue and the inimitable over-sized presence of McLaglen to recommend it.

Dancing on the Lid of a Coffin

[Cineanalyst · 6/10 · 6 April 2020]

What begins as a cheap, stage-bound love triangle featuring two brutish leading men, Victor McLaglen and Chester Morris, and coarse humor, "Pacific Liner" becomes something of a commentary on class and contagion when an infectious disease breaks out aboard a cruise ship. Sound familiar? In the case of this film, it's cholera infecting the crew in the engineering section of the liner. As men slaving away shoveling coal into furnaces are dropping dead or ill below, ignorant passengers above continue dancing, while the captain requests more steam power--and McLaglen's foreman ridiculously obliges! Meanwhile, the vessel's doctor runs around admonishing the crew to stop touching stuff, as he ignores his own advice by touching everything and everyone and in between brushing his own sweaty hair back with his bare hands. His idea of hand washing, too, seems to be dipping his hands in two buckets of water or some solution.

Also of interest is that cholera is, first, referred to as "Asiatic cholera" and is brought on board by a Chinese stowaway. The picture's representation of an African-American stoker, referred to as "professor" because he's smarter than the others, however, is comparatively benign, if not enlightened, for being released in the same year as "Gone with the Wind" (1939). To top it off, an Oscar-nominated musical score helps maintain the claustrophobic tension.

PACIFIC LINER explores the effects of a Far Eastern . . .

[oscaralbert · 7/10 · 22 April 2021]

. . . Cholera Pandemic among a blind-sided Occidental population of innocent bystanders trying to mind their own business. A nefarious Chinese saboteur stows away aboard the target vessel, biding his time until the ship is well out of port. Then this malingering miscreant launches a sneak attack upon the doomed crew's water supply, infecting bucket after bucket of communal hydration sources with his vicious vile vermin. Even though the liner's doctor soon orders this foreign intruder and everything he touched to be burned in the coal-stoked boiler ovens, it's too late. More than a dozen crew in the prime of their lives suffer horrible deaths at sea at the hands of the dastardly Super Spreader. This all will sound very familiar to American survivors of the viral sneak attack launched via a PACIFIC LINER against our USA Homeland in 2020, which has already slain more than 600,000 of us with no reparations, justice or vengeance in sight.

It Seems To Continually Forget Its Own Story

[sddavis63 · 4/10 · 18 February 2010]

A ship sailing from Shanghai, China to the United States is suddenly stricken with a cholera outbreak after the disease is brought aboard by a Chinese stowaway. That's the basis of the story here. It sounds as though a pretty good movie could be made out of that, as the cholera spreads throughout the ship and causes rising panic. Somehow, though, that was never really accomplished. Instead, from the very beginning, the disease was pretty well contained - kept in the boiler room where the stowaway was found. Yes, some of the boiler room crew died, but there was never any sense that the entire ship was at risk, the biggest issue seeming to be how much of a delay would be caused as the boiler room crew keep succumbing to the disease. On the side, there's a competition going on between the ship's doctor and the chief engineer for the attention of a beautiful nurse, and a lot attention paid to the relationship between the chief engineer and his men. All those things, though, seemed to keep distracting the movie from what should have been its real focus - the cholera outbreak. The only point at which there was any real drama - and when it looked for a moment as though this was really going to become a suspenseful movie - was the point when several of the boiler room crew started to mutiny and threatened to take the disease above decks, which would have put the passengers at risk. But that just fizzled out. The story overall was disjointed and disappointing.

The problems with the story were somewhat (but not totally) compensated for by pretty good performances, especially from Chester Morris as the ship's doctor and Victor McLaglen as the chief engineer. Unfortunately, their talents could have been made better use of. 4/10

Great supporting cast

[drjgardner · 5/10 · 5 April 2019]

This 1939 film has a plethora of great supporting actors including Barry Fitzgerald ("Going My Way", "The Quiet Man"), Alan Hale Sr. (Little John in "Robin Hood"), Paul Guilfoyle, and Halliwell Hobbes. Look for a young Eddie Bracken among the sailors. Of course you need to love Victor McLaglen who chews through the scenery as few can do.

Mediocre Yarn

[evanston_dad · 5/10 · 21 June 2021]

A mediocre yarn about an outbreak of cholera on an ocean liner and the differing attitudes of the engine room's foreman (Victor McLaglen) and ship's doctor (Chester Morris) about how to handle it. There are a lot of sweaty men shoveling coal and then dropping dead on the spot, as if that's the way cholera even works. There's a love interest running around in the background that the men fight over, but it's hard to hear anything over McLaglen's constant shouting. This is a B programmer all the way, and the only hope of enjoying it is to know that going in and lean into it.

"Pacific Liner" does earn its small spot in film history books by virtue of being a.....wait for it.... Oscar nominee, if you can believe it. It was nominated for Best Original Score in the first year of that category's existence (1938, though awards for music had been handed out since 1934). Russell Bennett, who would go on to win an Oscar for "Oklahoma!" provided the score to this film, the first year that nominations for music scoring went to the actual composer(s) and not the head of the studio's music department. There were 11 nominees, since rules back then allowed studios to just pick movies for guaranteed nominations, but it still counts. And get this, Bennett lost to Erich Wolfgang Korngold for "The Adventures of Robin Hood." That's like Zach Efron competing in the same category as Laurence Olivier.

Grade: C.

Disappointing Morris Drama

[Michael_Elliott · 19 February 2010]

Pacific Liner (1939)

** (out of 4)

Disappointing RKO picture about a ship going from Shanghai to San Francisco and the crew coming down with cholera. The Captain (Victor McLaglen) tries to keep the men calm but soon they're threatening mutiny while the ship's doctor (Chester Morris) tries to find a way to keep the epidemic from spreading. Being a fan of McLaglen and especially Morris, I found this film to be pretty disappointing and it was made even worse when I noticed Landers was the man behind the camera as I usually enjoy his "B" pictures. What didn't work for me was the fact that the film seemed to forget what type of story it was trying to tell. The screenplay is all over the place as we're sometimes looking at the feud between the Captain and the doctor but then we'll jump to stories involving the crew members and then jump again to the outbreak on the ship. The movie just keeps jumping all over the place and at times I started to wonder if it had completely forgotten the stuff dealing with the outbreak, which seemed to be the main story for most of the running time. McLaglen gives his usual tough performance as he was born to play this type of role. Morris really doesn't get to do too much and I must admit that he left me a bit disappointed in terms of his performance. Not only is the character laid back too much but it seemed like Morris just wasn't all that interested in anything that was going on. The supporting cast includes Alan Hale, Barry Fitzgerald and Wendy Barrie. The film runs 76-minutes but it feels much longer due to the slow pacing and the lack of any real energy or thread of danger. Landers lackluster direction really doesn't help matters but I guess it's worth noting that RKO would use this ship again in Val Lewton's THE GHOST SHIP. It's also worth noting that the music score got an Oscar nomination even though you hardly hear it here.