After winning a pleasure cruise in a contest, three couples find that their tickets have guaranteed them a one-way passage to death. But as they begin to die one by one under mysterious circumstances the ship's doctor uncovers a bizarre connection linking the murdered passengers which proves that pleasure was definitely not the object of the cruise. Death Cruise is available only on VHS. It hasn't been released on DVD yet. It is considered one of the hard-to-find Kate Jackson videos.

This is a pretty decent movie of the week from the Spelling-Goldberg production house. This movie is pretty much like Murder, She Wrote, which came out ten years later. Every time this movie used to re-air on late night TV in the late 70s and early 80s I would always make time to sit in front of the TV and watch it. To see the lovely Kate Jackson,  the "great" Polly Bergen whom I've never seen anywhere else except for this TV movie, the endearing Tom Bosley, and another "great" whom I've never seen outside this movie, Celeste Holme. Michael Constantine does a pretty decent job as the ship's doctor, who also happens to be an amateur detective. The cast is made up of many of the top stars of the small screen at the time did a pretty credible job playing the victims. Also, this happens to be one of the final appearances of handsome Richard Long, who would die a few months later. This is truly the Love Boat on a cruise to murder and mayhem and boy was it ever good!! And every time I would watch it I would always forget who the real murderer was.

This little 1974 'TV gem' has a delicious cast succumbing to a hackneyed Agatha Christie plot. Can you spot the killer(s) before it becomes obvious? Kate Jackson is both gorgeous and fascinating... she spent so much of her career trying to cover her neck and throat (Charlie gave her so many scarves and polo-necks), yet amidst the halter-necks and scarves here, some scenes show a lovely (and perfectly sexy) neck. Am I missing something? Also, an agent or personal manager with more smarts might have suggested she was SUPERB at playing hard-faced beauties... she should have been the QUEEN of gorgeous villains!

If you ever get a chance to watch it on TV someday, which isn't likely, watch it. In light of "The Girl Most Likely To" finally coming out this year on DVD, maybe there's hope for a DVD release of "Death Cruise."