Video and DVD distributors have long been notorious for slapping lurid images on to the covers of otherwise unsensational fare, but they've outdone themselves this time. While browsing in my local branch of Fnac - the popular French retail chain specialising in music, films and books - I was stopped in my tracks by a DVD cover depicting outstretched clawlike hands and a ghastly face distorted by a rictus grin. The title of the film was Naufrage (Shipwreck) and I'd never heard of it. Assuming it had to be about zombies or cannibals, at the very least, I moved in for a better look.
Closer examination revealed the Houses of Parliament stripped in at the bottom of the image and a subtitle: Terreur sur la Tamise (Terror on the Thames). Amused by the idea of what I naturally assumed was a low-budget British horror movie about zombies or cannibals on the loose in London, I flipped the DVD over to read the smallprint on the back.
Mea culpa. The smallprint did what few horror movies do these days - it shocked me. For this was no horror movie. This was a film about the sinking of the Marchioness, the pleasure boat that went down after a collision with a dredger on the Thames in the early hours of August 20 1989. Fifty-one people lost their lives. Naufrage turns out to be the French title of The Marchioness Disaster, a docu-drama made in 2006 for ITV. It was never broadcast on British television, due to what Nick Elliott, former director of drama, said were unresolved "creative issues".
I showed the DVD cover to some French friends. "Yuck!" said one. Another seemed disappointed that it wasn't about zombies or cannibals. Neither had heard of the Marchioness, but both were stunned when I told them the film was based on a real-life incident that happened not so very long ago. "That's very bad taste." "It shouldn't have a cover like that. It makes it look like a horror movie."
In the docu-drama itself, there are harrowing shots of trapped people hammering on windows as the boat sinks, but nowhere is there an image like the DVD cover art. At its best, the film feels like a particularly intense episode of Casualty - not necessarily intended as an insult. There's plenty of duff dialogue ("I couldn't help noticing you've got fantastic posture," one partygoer remarks to another prior to the collision) but a real sense of terror and confusion as survivors struggle in the water. At its worst, the actors step out of character to make speeches to the camera, but useful points are made about the inadequate response of emergency services, the unjustifiable attempt to identify bodies by cutting off their hands, and an apparent lack of regulation to stop boats ploughing up and down the Thames in the dark, without proper look-outs. And there's some press-bashing, as well, which is always welcome.
Ken Horn, director and producer of The Marchioness Disaster, sounded horrified when I told him about the DVD. After seeing it, he told me, "We had no knowledge of this image and agree it is inappropriate. We are trying to trace who authorised it." The only cover art he'd been aware of was a sombre image depicting the dark river, people struggling in the water, someone being helped on to a boat. A model of reticence compared to the French version, which wouldn't be out of place on 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead. Could this be the most tasteless and inappropriate DVD cover ever?
