Juggernaut

Juggernaut (1974) was shot mainly aboard a real ocean liner. The Hamburg had recently been sold by its German owners to the Soviet Union. Before the Soviets took delivery of the liner, they rented it to the movie company. The liner was painted in the livery of a fictional shipping line, very similar to the livery used by the Soviet Morpasflot line, and renamed the "Britannic." Advertisements were run in British papers, soliciting extras who would take a lengthy cruise in the North Sea for free, but with the knowledge that the ship would actually seek out the worst possible weather, as the story demanded seas too rough for the lifeboats to be lowered, trapping the passengers on board.

They received 2,500 applicants and had to select 250. Weather was bad; Sir Ian Holm did not go on location but says he heard "reports of horrible storms off Iceland and everybody getting drunk to deal with it. The story was the bar closed only between seven and seven-thirty in the morning."

Juggernaut tells Porter that there are seven 50-gallon drums of Amatol on the ship, 7000 pounds total. This would mean each drum has to contain 1000 pounds of explosives. Amatol is a dry pressed or cast mixture of TNT and Ammonium Nitrate. Drums of that size typically only hold about 250 to 400 pounds of dry chemical compounds depending on their density, plus we know the drums are not full since each has a sizable cavity in the middle as seen during the defusing.

Actor Roy Kinnear's character, "Social Director, Mr. Curtain" is misspelled in the end credits as "Mr. Curain."

Edited into Crociera di sangue (1999)