Phantom Ship

This movie has recently been released as a cult classic for $1. Yes, ONE dollar. Didn't come in a standard DVD case, but a thick card-stock 'envelope'. It's packaged as 'Phantom Ship'. I couldn't pass that up and quickly added it to my collection...

The movie was of surprisingly good quality. Usually movies from this era (mid 30's) suffer from static and there is difficulty understanding the dialog at times because of the bad sound quality. Visually, the sets were extremely realistic and detailed. You could tell when the occasional stock footage was used, but it fit well with the movie.

The story is based on an possible answer to the mystery of the Mary Celeste. The Mary Celeste was a sailing ship loaded with 1,700 barrels of alcohol that left New York on November 7, 1872 bound for Genoa, Italy. On board were the captain, his wife, their young daughter, and a crew of eight. The ship was later found drifting at sea - no one on board.

The movie seems to deviate from the story in that the captain is single and has his fiancée with him. There is no daughter. One by one, people start to disappear as the crew realizes there is a murderer aboard the ship. The writer tried to build up a cast suspects.

Was it the crew member sent by the captain of another ship who had also proposed to the captains fiancée? When he sent that crew member on board, he told him to do whatever he needed to do...and maybe he could be a second mate someday.

Was it the sadistic second mate on the Mary Celeste? He seemed to love beating and torturing people.

Maybe it was one of the shanghaied (kidnapped) members of the crew. One of which threatened to kill the second mate and made it clear he was going to get even.

Maybe Bela Lugosi's character. A man who had been shanghaied years before on the Mary Celeste and wanted revenge for the brutality he had suffered.

One by one, people were killed. Each time the remaining crew would grow more paranoid and suspicious. I must confess that I was never quite sure who exactly was guilty until the very end. There were just too many possibilities. This made the movie unpredictable and enjoyable. The acting was superb throughout. The interaction between crew members and the atmosphere were extremely well done.

I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a scary mystery, any Bela Lugosi fan, or anyone who enjoys movies from the 30's.

In history the crew of the Mary Celeste disappeared and this film attempts to show a possible recreation. Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Anton Lorenzen, a mad crazed man seeking revenge against the crew of the Mary Celeste is wonderful. None of the crew can remember what Lorenzen looks like so he is able to join the new crew. One by one crew members are murdered or just disappear until one person remains. But when the floating ship is found there is no one aboard. An interesting tale to watch even if predictable.

I had always been interested in checking out this seafaring thriller due to Bela Lugosi's involvement; still, now I can't help feeling that the over-age star was miscast in the role of a hapless 'old man of the sea' who bears an Ahab-like grudge against the "Mary Celeste" and is also something of a religious fanatic (the inspiration for this was, perhaps, Boris Karloff's impressive turn in John Ford's desert adventure THE LOST PATROL [1934]). That said, his final descent into madness (uncommonly vicious for the time but, then, the film is based on a factual incident!) is fairly well handled.

Ultimately, however, the British-made picture fails to rise above its 'quota quickie' status - Lugosi himself fared much better with the later DARK EYES OF London (1939) - and can't honestly compare with the similar Val Lewton-produced THE GHOST SHIP (1943); moreover, it is fatally compromised by the director's baffling decision to keep much of the central action off-screen (either due to budgetary limitations or he must have been an admirer of Tod Browning)! Considering some of the choppy editing involved, though, I'm inclined to believe the film's official length as given by the IMDb - i.e. 80 minutes, rather than the 62-minute version I saw (culled from the Image DVD).

There's also the insipid - but mandatory - romantic interest to contend with here, to say nothing of various songs by the leading lady (with piano accompaniment) and an organ-playing sailor, which are a chore to sit through...but the latter musical instrument's come-uppance at the hands of the angry first mate does provide some unintended hilarity!

P.S. Though it hadn't been officially named as yet, the company that made this film is actually Hammer Films; as a matter of fact, I first came upon PHANTOM SHIP (under its original title of THE MYSTERY OF THE MARY CELESTE) via a still in an article about the famed British "House Of Horror" in an early 1980s periodical...

A crew set out to sea on the Mary Celeste, circa the 1870's, only to face foul weather, mysterious motives, and murder. The odds are stacked against them as all sorts of seafaring bad luck omens pop up, from 13 crew members, to a black cat onboard, to a woman (Shirley Grey) on the ship. Also starring Bela Lugosi as a crazed one-armed sailor and Arthur Margeston as the square-jawed captain

No one knows what occurred on the real Mary Celeste, which was found adrift with all crew missing. The storyline that the film concocts is silly and lurid, and only vaguely entertaining. Lugosi, who looks terrible, hams it up uncontrollably, and his accent is so thick that his voice is dubbed near the end when what he says is important. This was only the second film produced by Hammer, which 20 years later would become synonymous with British horror.

The Mary Celeste was a real ship that was found adrift in good condition, with its cargo intact, in the Atlantic with no one aboard and no record of what happened to them. It's one of histories great mysteries of the sea. This film is very loosely based on this event but it has many of the facts wrong. The film cannot be viewed as a historically correct movie about the real Mary Celeste's voyage. As an example, the captain gets married just before they sail. In reality the Captain was married for some time and had a child that was on the voyage. The child was absent from the movie. There are many more inaccuracies. The accuracy of the personalities of the ship's crew is also very questionable. The movie has taken huge liberties with the facts. Ignoring that this is supposed to take place on the Mary Celeste, this is still a pretty good drama/mystery. I was happily surprised to find that this is one of the very early films from Hammer studios. The atmosphere and settings were great and the characters interesting. Overall the acting is good. Bela Lugosi really stands out with a great dramatic performance and is excellent in his role. The quality of the film and sound are not the greatest but acceptable considering it's age. This USA version is what remains of an earlier and longer British version which I presume is lost but it's still a decent movie. Hammer studios, Bela Lugosi, 1935, isn't that enough to have you take a look at this movie?