When I finally saw this on TV recently, I wasn't expecting much, but it was even worse than I thought it would be.No redeeming features whatsoever.Even the special effects were bad.In the 1956 movie the whale had a genuine air of menace.Here it was just a big white lump moving through the ocean.One of the idiot features of the movie was that everyone addressed the narrator as "Ishmael".Both the book and the 1956 movie made that plain that that was a symbolic name, not his real one.Queequeeg in Huston's version is an impressive, dignified man.Here he is just a wild eyed lunatic.The novel is a morality play, and John Huston kept that flavor in his version.Nothing of that in this version. The actor who plays Starbuck is not even remotely as good as the one in the 1956 version(but that is generally true of the whole cast),and totally fails to convey the true motivation of the character.In the book, and in the 1956 movie, Starbuck says"Our mission in life is to provide oil for the lamps of the world.And as long as we perform that task to the best of our abilities,we are performing a service for mankind,and that is pleasing to God." And then he says that forsaking that to assist the Captain in personal vengeance is a perversion of that.But in this version Starbuck seems only concerned that they are losing money.There is a sort of driving spirit in the book, that is conveyed in the 1956 movie,that is totally absent in this,nothing but a bizarre hodgepodge.