Nickel Tour: Dead Calm (1989)

Here's the nickel tour:

In this installment of "Eighties movies I've never seen before," we touch on a thriller that launched Nicole Kidman's career- she still has he kiwi accent as the wife of Sam Neill in the middle of the ocean on a boat with a crazy man, Billy Zane. Even though this movie had some obviously dated plot points, it captivated me almost from the opening shot through the end. As always, Neill does a wonderful job going slightly mad. Zane, while almost too pretty to play a lunatic, also convinces. And Kidman does quite well with the script she has. The isolated environment of the ocean and the limited cast (three, plus a dog, not counting characters seen on a videotape) really work well for this sort of story. I give it a "I really want to see a remake of this, set in space."