LIFEBOAT (1944) Suspenseful? U-boat your life!

Only Alfred Hitchcock could (1) trap us with shipwrecked survivors in one small lifeboat for 96 minutes (2) make a cameo appearance in the middle of the North Atlantic? In LIFEBOAT, he accomplishes the first by establishing an edgy situation in which a disparate group of eight (great cast!) floats adrift without sufficient food, water or space after their ocean liner is torpedoed by a German U-boat – and one of them is the Nazi U-boat captain! By the way, he’s the only one aboard with navigational skills and a compass, and everybody wants to kill him!) As for the second, Hitchcock shows up in a "Before/After" diet pill ad on the back of a newspaper one of the passengers is reading. Through the dialogue of the characters, who represent a cross-section of world citizenry, the movie tells us a lot about what people were thinking and feeling during the war years. It also keeps you on the edge of u-seat.