THE POWERS

Trashy melodrama-at-sea (bad imitation Peter Benchley)--with a dippy occult ending (bad imitation Stephen King). Sportswriter Jon Bellevue and pregnant wife Lisa are vacationing in Florida; despite Lisa's premonitions (her visions are ""nothing other than a direct link between herself and the powers of evil""), they charter a boat named Charon (ho-ho) for a fishing expedition. And eventually they meet up with a trawler wrecked by demented whales--so Lisa, John, and their captain help the wreck's survivors up on board. Who are these survivors, however? Well, their leader happens to be drug-smuggler Crockett Scarr: a blood-obsessed, incest-ridden schizo/psychic with a terminal disease, a hugely deformed penis, and a variety of mutilation-murders to his credit. In no time, then, Crockett has killed the captain, raped Lisa, fed everybody hallucinogenic drugs, and cut his girlfriend's heart out . . . while Lisa and Jon escape on a raft. And finally there's a death-duel exorcism/showdown between Lisa and the evil powers of the death-boat Charon--with a Satanic apparition presiding. (""The apparition transformed itself into the image of Adolf Hitler, his mustached lip twitching, hate and paranoia blazing in his eyes."") Crudely amateurish as horror-suspense, utterly without conviction as supernaturalism: a bottom-of-the-barrel attempt at pop fiction, exploitation-style.