A two-part 1981 3-hr-plus TV movie made for First-Run Syndicationnote starring Christopher Lee. 43 years after the cruise ship Goliath was sunk in World War II, it is discovered by the U.S. military, who dive for it, hoping to find retrieve diplomatic documents about a war-time plan that could prove embarrassing if revealed. To their shock, they find 337 people still alive in the ship, having managed to survive in an air pocket and make the ship water tight, and with an air recycling system since they were first sank. But the society is not a stable one, and not everyone is happy at the thought of rescue.
Lee appears as McKenzie the leader of the ship. John Carradine plays a golden age movie star who was quite famous when the ship sank, John Ratzenberger, Mark Harmon, and Robert Forster are members of a rescue party that discover the survivors, Frank Gorshin is an aide to McKenzie, and Jean Marsh also appears as the Goliath's doctor. Also, Kirk Cameron turns up.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Syntax: The Morse Code message about the fate of Goliath ends with what seems like a sign-off ("Beware, McKenzie)," but later turns out to be a warning not to trust the man himself ("Beware McKenzie").
- Anti-Villain: McKenzie does a lot of things he believes are for the good of the cause, but some of his decisions are influenced by the power he's been granted by the community, and some of his methods are questionable at best. Still, he's not intentionally being a villain. He's just colored by the situation and a bit misguided.
- City in a Bottle: The Goliath was sunk by a u-boat partially saved and transformed into an underwater version of this by a genius inventor/Chief Engineer McKenzie. Generations have grown up with no good idea of the outside, and some people don't want to return to the outer world when a crew finds them 43 years later.
- Cool Old Guy: Ronald Bentley is a suave movie star from the first half of The Golden Age of Hollywood. He entertains his fellow survivors, gets along well with kids, and strikes up an Inter Generational Friendship with one of the men who discovers the City in a Bottle. In the climax, Bentley plays a big role in helping to evacuate the ship despite his belief that modern society has no place for him.
- Crapsaccharine World: The community in the Goliath has a certain amount of luxuries and is miraculous in its mere existence. But it also has a somewhat dictatorial system, a certain amount of lies told too its people and the constant threat that one day the water might break in and kill them.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Passengers who become too weak to be productive are euthanized by Dr. Goldman. The death is blamed on a made-up "disease" that supposedly affects those on the ship. Considering that Dr. Goldman is Holocaust survivor, when Dr. Marlowe figures out the truth, he rightly calls her out on her actions.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Wesker, McKenzie's aide and enforcer, who runs a police force with no restrictions on their power and is the one to do any killing when there's too many people for the food they have, or someone is arguing against McKenzie too much. He does all of this out of a sense of loyalty and belief that it's what's best, even as his leader is unaware of everything he's doing and is more passively opposed to the rescue party, whereas Wesker is willing to use deadly force against them.
- Driven to Suicide: Dr. Goldman can't accept her actions in euthanizing passengers that were unproductive and declines to leave with the passengers being rescued to the surface. She finds McKenzie and chooses to die with him when the ship is destroyed in the end.
- Face Death with Dignity: Despite knowing the "society" of the ship is coming to an end, McKenzie, Goldman, and a number of passengers decline to be taken to safety by the rescue party, and wait among the toxic gasses until the ship is destroyed in the finale.
- Fallen Hero: McKenzie is this or a Well-Intentioned Extremist, if not both. Downplayed a bit with the reveal that, although still resisting being taken to the surface, he's genuinely oblivious to most, if not all, of Wesker's murderous actions on his behalf.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Jeff Selkirk and Peter Cabot don't get along at first, but become this by the end.
- First Time in the Sun: The film ends with Lea taking in the sunlight for the first time and marveling at its beauty.
- Gadgeteer Genius: McKenzie, a ship's engineer, manages to devise a way for the survivors of the ship's sinking to stay alive on the ocean floor for four decades. It's understandable that he's generally viewed by the surviving passengers as a sort of God.
- Humans Are Bastards: McKenzie fully believes the outside world is flawed, corrupt and dangerous, partially because of the contents of the diplomatic papers that the Americans are after which (unknown to their divers) is a contingency plan (written at a time when it seems like Germany might conquer England after the Battle of Dunkirk) to destroy the entire British Navy (and its sailors) to keep them out of Nazi hands.
- I Ate WHAT?!: One of the rescue party members is quite upset to learn that he is eating octopus eyes.
- It Will Never Catch On: Referenced in the past tense, Ronald Bentley is surprised to find out that television did indeed succeed and stick around.
- La Résistance: There are a group of passengers opposed to McKenzie, living in hiding in uninhabited parts of the ship, such as Paul Ryker.
- MacGuffin: The war treaty between the American and British governments.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Mad scientist might not be the right description for McKenzie but he is a somewhat unstable engineer who managed to achieve something miraculous with his saving the people on the ship and keeping it intact under water for 40 years. His daughter Lea is a pretty, somewhat sheltered girl who becomes the love interest of the story.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- When the salvagers first find Goliath, they decipher a series of bangs against the hull leaving a message in Morse Code that ends with the sign-off "Beware, McKenzie." Turns out the message was made by the rebellious Bow People, and was intended to be heard as Beware McKenzie.
- Early in the movie, Commander Selkirk is told to find diplomatic papers about the contingency plan to blow up Allied ships in the event of German victory, as they were forged by German intelligence themselves. Towards the end, McKenzie reveals he found the papers and that it was one of his main reasons for refusing to return to the surface. Unfortunately, the only rescuer he tells this about is Sam, who does not know what Selkirk does.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Ryker tends to go shirtless.
- Wasteland Warlord: While the outside world is perfectly safe, the people aboard the sunken ship the Goliath have been trapped in their City in a Bottle for forty years and are led by a brilliant and charismatic but engineer who tolerates no dissent against his ideas and refuses to return to the outside world even though the devices keeping everyone inside the ship alive may soon break down.
- Wham Shot: The divers are pretty surprised when they reach the ship and see a live woman staring at them out of a porthole.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Ronald Bentley (who was a matinee idol in his prime during the sinking) has insecurities about being one if he's rescued after so many decades and placed in a world which wouldn't have any place for him to resume acting.
