I approached this film with some trepidation. I was only watching it to glimpse an early McGoohan film performance. However Peter Finch was in it so it couldn't be all bad, I hoped.

Finch,in truth, sleepwalks the part but the stand-out performance is from Bosun Ike, played by Geoffrey Keen. He is the disciplinarian peacemaker who keeps the ship running. As a short stocky man, Keen looks physically improbable as the man to keep the crew in line but it is a tribute to the actor and stunt co-ordinator that you believe he does!

The plot of the movie is that an elderly Finch is retiring (his make-up is spookily accurate as to his eventual appearance in his sixties). He is given a framed painting of one of his first ship commands, as a retirement present. This sparks the remembered story of that voyage. It involves Diane Cilento as a fragile blonde governess being evacuated by the unwilling Captain. She is so sweet that Finch inevitably falls helplessly in love with her. The movie revolves around the crew's reactions to their stern captain's emotional dissolution in the face of feminine charm. All the performances are good, particularly the cynical, but obsequious steward, who can observe the skipper closely.

McGoohan makes brief appearances but his first line is 'immortal'. He delivers it with just the right level of insubordinate wit: "Try talking about the potatoes", he says to the officer. You'll have to watch the movie to understand the importance of the humble spud in this voyage.

The voyage ends with storms all round. The nice Second Mate gets the girl and the tragic Skipper accepts his life will be professionally successful but personally lonely. This final point is emphasised at the end of the movie when we return to the retirement party. Finch leaves alone, in a taxi. A strangely un-aged Cilento watches him depart, with a sad expression, before returning to the arms of her husband, Anthony Steel. Sadly the skilled make-up applied to Finch is not replicated on Steel. His ageing process leaves him looking somewhat akin to one of Romero's zombie-dead!!