The Rime of The Ancient Mariner in Popular Culture - Film

Film

• In the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World an attempt is made to shoot an albatross which leads to negative results.
• In The Men Who Stare at Goats, Clooney's character asks McGregor's character if he ever heard the poem about the sailor who had to wear the dead seagull around his neck. He is referencing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• In the 1999 film Noah's Ark, a group of skeptics mock Noah's warnings of the flood, while the land suffers drought, with a chorus of "Water, Water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.".
• In the 1985 film Out of Africa Denys Finch-Hatton quotes from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner as he washes Karen's hair. She says "you're skipping verses" and he replies "Well, I leave out the dull parts".
• The poem is extensively featured in the film Pandaemonium, which is based on the early lives of Coleridge, Dorothy Wordsworth and William Wordsworth.
• The Pirates of the Caribbean films contain many parallels to the epic poem, including life and death playing dice for the souls of men (the game Liar's Dice), Calypso (as Tia Dalma's true form), smelly slimy creatures (Davy Jones' crew), the "frost and the cold", and even "water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink" when the characters are at sea and out of drinking water.
• In the 1996 Ridley Scott film White Squall, the Ocean Academy's ship is christened the Albatross; the ship's captain Christopher Sheldon makes mention of the albatross being a very good omen which "embodied the spirits of lost sailors." "Only bad luck if you kill one," he added.
• Raúl daSilva produced and directed a critically acclaimed six-time international prizewinning visualization of the epic poem, titled Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1975) using the work of illustrators of the past two centuries who attempted to bring life to the epic. Sir Michael Redgrave, who once taught the poem as a schoolmaster, narrates it. The film also includes a biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and how he came to write the poem.
• Ken Russell directed a film about Coleridge, called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in 1978 for British Granada Television.
• The original Sherlock Holmes film series (starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson) contained a film titled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, released in 1939, in which Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty (played by George Zucco) creates a series of murder threats to draw Holmes' attention away from his real plan. These diversionary plots all revolve around a series of drawings which depict a man with an albatross around his neck. Throughout the film, Holmes makes references to lines from Coleridge's work.
• In Richard O'Brien's Shock Treatment, the character Betty Hapschatt recites the entire poem to Judge Oliver Wright who, along with an entire theater of people, has fallen asleep by its closing lines. When the lights are turned back on, the security guard Vance threateningly presents her with a dead white bird.
• Larry Jordan directed a short film that features animations of Gustave Dore's engravings and Orson Welles as the narrator of the poem, along with sound effects (the albatross, the sea, etc.).
• In 1998, BBC produced "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" as a 57 minute made-for-TV movie with Films for Humanities and the Sciences (FHS) that features Paul McGann as both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Ancient Mariner. The film was directed by Juliet May and produced by Anne Brogan.
• In Serenity, The Operative refers to River Tam as an albatross, causing Malcolm Reynolds to reply: "Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, 'til some idiot killed it." he then assures Inara: "Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint."
• In the 1983 film Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone Wolff (Peter Strauss) quotes the "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" line while walking across a dried up lakebed, explaining to Nikki (Molly Ringwald) that it's from "the first poem you learn in Highschool"
• In the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, as the group is entering the room where Wonka is developing "fizzy-lifting drinks" Wonka says, "Bubbles, bubbles, every where, but not a drop to drink."
• In the 1986 B movie Never Too Young to Die, Velvet Von Ragner (Gene Simmons) gloats "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" as he explains his plan to poison the city's water supply.
• In the 1980 movie The Fog, the quote "like an albatross around the neck" can be heard on the record cassette in the lighthouse where Stevie Lane (Adrienne Barbeau) works. Just before that a wooden piece with the word "Dane" explodes when the quote "6 Must Die" appears magically written in it.
• In the film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel The Rum Diary, Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) is found reading and contemplating the poem.
• In the 2012 film "Ice Age 4" Sid the sloth bemoans the lack of drinking water whilst adrift on the ocean with "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink!"