The time I watched it is from 1993 to 1997.
There’s a ship sailing on some ocean. There’s a magical stone idol (maybe from some tribal people, like Aztec people) that depicts a human whose 2 eyes that can become red. When its eyes turn red, it will cause turmoil, like killing some people. People are so scared that they toss it into the ocean but cannot stop it from causing mayhem to the ship’s passengers. Maybe an American or an British or an Australian movie. Looks like a 1970s or 1980s one.
That sounds like a pretty close match to one of my guilty pleasures — the 1978 TV movie Cruise Into Terror. It was produced by Aaron Spelling (who gave us The Love Boat, Charlie’s Angels, and a lot more cheesy 70’s TV pleasures.) A lot of famous TV stars are cruising from the US to Mexico on board a small cargo ship. But this isn’t your grandmother’s Love Boat. Ray Miland plays a professor who is traveling to Mexico in the hope of proving his theory that the ancient Egyptians visited Mexico two thousand years ago. Well, darn if the ship doesn’t just cruise right over a pyramid submerged in the ocean. Some of the passengers dive down to the pyramid and recover treasures including a small sarcophagus about the size of a child. It has large red jewels for eyes. Unfortunately, the greedy passengers won’t heed the advice of the minister who warns them to not bring the sarcophagus on board. After all, he says, the Egyptians sailed half the way around the world to get rid of what they buried in that pyramid. Well, the minister (John Forsyth, voice of Charlie on Charlies Angels) knows what he is talking about. The sarcophagus contains THE SON OF SATAN! The passengers begin dropping like flies.
So, this movie doesn’t contain an idol, but the small sarcophagus resembles an idol. Its eyes are red jewels that glow a little bit. It is from the 1970’s. And it causes mayhem to the ship’s passengers. It could be the movie you are looking for.
In a very spooky coincidence, I just re-watched this movie a couple of weeks ago on youtube. There is a decent copy of the full movie there. It had a VHS release a long time ago, but so far no DVD or bluray release. I’ll post the youtube link in case you want to check it out and let us know if this is the movie you are looking for.
Thank you so much, Tim. I appreciate it. I did recall that they dived into the sea to find treasure. Through this, we can see that time is indeed a medicine to forget the past. A sarcophagus turns into an idol, lol. The atmosphere and setting confirm that this is exactly the movie I watched decades ago. And oh, the coincidence is also so strange; fortunately you just watched this movie just a few weeks ago, or else I am not sure I would have had such an answer so quickly!