An enjoyable, but altogether lacking, vampire Nazisploitation flick. It lacked the drama, action, and horror of what it could have been. This boat takes you to the destination that it promises, but the ride was much too choppy. And once the blood of this one is sucked, it becomes but a ghoul in your mind, empty, lost and never to persist as the true undead.
Quite the “game of Clue” cast of characters, as it sprays to all fields and covers all its bases, racially and politically of the time. It may lay it on a bit thick, but at least it was trying to not be monotone. I will applaud it for that.
The ambience is right for this ghost ship/haunted house. It is dark and monotonous, but the suspense never truly creeps in. Mostly artifice and stylistic possibility. That can’t be said though for the villains. The design and look of the strigoi and their ephemera was pretty solid and a definite highlight of the film.
In the end, there were not as many twists or variances as I might have wanted, but “vampires on a Nazi ship that must be fought off” is what was promised and is exactly what they gave you. But it wasn’t able to deliver the tension, spectacle, and characterization to make me care more; things that its recent genre companion Overlord was able to do. It just couldn’t reach the height that it needed to really BE something.