The Ghost Ship

RKO had built an expensive ship set for their 1938 production Pacific Liner (1939). Val Lewton was given instructions to come up with a film that could use the still-existing set. According to Robert Wise, a longtime collaborator with Lewton, it was this set that gave Lewton the idea for the film. "He would find what we call a 'standing set,' and then tailor his script to the set, whatever it was. That's how he made The Ghost Ship. He walked onto a set and saw a tanker, then cooked up the idea for this ship with a murderous captain." One scholar has suggested that Lewton accepted the assignment in part because, as an amateur sailor himself, the ship captain's behavior mirrored Lewton's own views on how to manage a ship, but also because Lewton saw the plot as a way of criticizing his micro-managing superiors at RKO. The budget, as with all of Lewton's films, was set at $150,000.

One shot of the boat traveling toward camera shows the name of the boat on the bow is backwards. The backwards name reads Venture, indicating it's a shot reused from King Kong (1933) that has been horizontally flipped.

Edited from King Kong (1933)