Phantom Ship

Phantom Ship (AKA The Mystery of the Mary Celeste)
1936 - Guaranteed Films (Hammer Films)
Directed By Denison Clift



SYNOPSIS

In 1872, an American cargo ship, the Mary Celeste, was discovered derelict in North Atlantic with her full cargo... and no trace of her crew. This is a dramatization of what might have happened on the fateful voyage. One crew member after another either disappear or turn up dead until only one is left.





MY THOUGHTS


It's nice to see Bela Lugosi out of the horror genre for once. Phantom Ship is dark and ominous like a horror film, but is not.
Lugosi did his fair share of slumming in movies that wish they were b-level, like this one. He doesn't ham it up with a twinkle in his eye like in later garbage like Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (yes that's a real film.) Here he plays it straight and very dark, mysterious and creepy... a delight to watch.

The direction of the film leads a lot to be desired. Most of the action is offscreen. The captain and his bride-to-be are central characters with even more screen time than Lugosi. They just simply disappear from the film and mentioned to be missing and/or dead. This happens with most of the other deaths as well.
I'm not sure if this was done for budgetary or censorship reasons, but that along with some very choppy editing, makes for a poorly made film.

The script is also flat. In a typical crime show on television, the writers steer you into believing someone quite obvious committed the crime, then reveal it to be someone else you didn't expect. In Phantom Ship, the writers try to do this, but audience never has any doubt who's to blame. Maybe because the only familiar face here is Dracula.

It's ironic that the studio that became Hammer used Lugosi for one of it's earliest productions. Hammer would soon become THE British studio for horror films. Hammer propelled Christopher Lee to stardom in the same role that made Lugosi famous.