Phantom Ship



AKA: The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

Captain Benjamin Briggs, with his new wife in tow, sets off with a crew of 8 men on the Mary Celeste on what he assumes will be a routine voyage across the Atlantic to deliver a cargo hold full of alcohol. But unfortunately for him, the trip seems doomed from the start. Someone tries to kill him…twice. Another tries to assault his wife. And if that weren’t bad enough, one by one other crew members go missing, only to wind up dead. Clearly there is a killer afoot, and the remaining crew members are in a race to figure out who it is before they end up on the chopping block themselves.


Bang!

Phantom Ship is a British mystery/horror film from 1936, and is loosely based on the true maritime mystery of the Mary Celeste, a merchant brigantine that was discovered adrift and deserted near the Azores in December of 1872. Running only 62 minutes, the film is really only notable for a couple of things. The first is that this is only the second film produced by Hammer Productions (the first is a lost comedy from 1935 titled The Public Life of Henry the Ninth), and is probably one of the closest examples the company really got to doing a “horror” film until the genre blew up in the 1950s.

The second is that it stars Bela Lugosi in one of his very few dramatic roles (at least in English) before the poor guy got typecast to death into the horror genre. So this is one of your few times to see him sporting something other than a mad scientist’s coat, or a cape.


Though I guess if you squint the coat could look something like a cape.

And the last thing is that Phantom Ship is sadly not the original version of the movie. Ship is the American edit of the film, The Mystery of the Mary Celeste, which was released one year prior in 1935. A significant distinction, as the American edit cuts out approximately 18 minutes of footage. Said missing footage is, I have read, mostly comprised of scenes revolving around some of the court hearings surrounding what happened to the missing ship. But sadly no one can actually watch that full version, as the original has seemingly been lost to time, with only the American edit remaining. So unless we get lucky and the original film shows up somewhere, if you want to watch the movie you’ll have to settle for the shorter version of the first (and only?) film based on what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste.



And of course I say “based on”, because not only does the film take extreme liberties with the real life story (only Briggs and his wife retain their names here), but also because, even to this day, we simply don’t know what happened to the Mary Celeste or her crew, though multiple explanations have been bandied about over the years. Piracy was suggested, but rejected since nothing was taken. The possibility of insurance fraud was brought up, but that was dismissed due to lack of proof. The Attorney General overseeing the salvage hearings pointed to a stain found on a sword and decided that it pointed to murder (!), but that theory ended up being disproved (twas just rust, if I’m not mistaken). Hell, some people even proposed that ghosts or even a sea monster absconded with the crew.


Honestly, that probably would have made for a much more interesting story.

Point is, we still don’t know what happened, though the prevailing theory suggests that it has something to do with the cargo of alcohol on board, and the entire crew abandoned the ship because they thought there was some sort of immediate threat of the alcohol fumes either catching fire or outright exploding. But again, we don’t know. All we do know is that the entire crew, one lifeboat, and the captain’s navigational tools were missing. Beyond that we’ll never know what happened. Which is why this film made up its own plot and its own characters to tell the tale. Though they did incorporate some already pre-established theories into their overall plot.



And I gotta tell ya, of all the potential scenarios they had at their disposal, unfortunately they incorporated some of the more boring ones (no sea monster here, sorry) to form their story. They even add in a new angle involving a love triangle between Briggs, his new wife, and the Captain of the ship that eventually discovers the Mary Celeste. Which, while being painfully historically inaccurate (Briggs and his wife had already been married for years and had two children), might have been an interesting plot device if – and I highly emphasis IF – that particular threat, which involved the other Captain planting an assassin on the ship who was meant to kill Briggs, had actually been properly utilized in any way. Like, maybe by making the identity of the assassin a mystery in some way, thus making the viewer question who the killer is. But the movie doesn’t do that. And to make matters worse, that dude ends up being the first schmuck to die, making that whole plot-line a moot point anyway.


Killed by the old guy on day one. Boy did you suck at your job.

But disappointment is sort of the theme to this movie. It’s got quite a few good ideas rattling around in its story, they’re just all painfully underutilized or implemented. For instance, it’s revealed that the killer ultimately ends up killing people due to a mental break. But because there’s no build-up to this revelation, instead of having any sort of real impact the reveal just sort of…happens.

And now that I think about it, that might actually be a good tagline for this movie: It just sort of happens. The only death with any proper build-up whatsoever involves the one with the idiot assassin, and I already told you how THAT riveting scene went. With almost everyone else the film commits the mortal cinematic sin of killing people off screen. Hell, one guy dies so fast that you didn’t even know it happened until the Captain says “Oh, by the way, So-n-So died. We’ll have a burial at sea tomorrow morning.” Like, what? When did that happen? How did that happen!? I’m assuming he was thrown from the boat, because I think  90% of the characters end up either jumping or being thrown from the damn boat (it’s Killer Crocodile all over again). But who knows! We’re just told that he’s dead. That’s it. The end. I mean, I know that this film was made on the cheap, but damn. Talk about being insultingly anticlimactic. Perhaps part of this is due to being forced to watch the edited version of the film. Or perhaps the director was a fan of the classic horror trope of “what you imagine is worse than the reality.” But if it’s the latter it’s used here so much and so quickly that the trope loses any and all ‘umph’ it might have otherwise have had if said trope had been executed correctly.


Alas, we won’t miss you guy who died with no fanfare whatsoever.

Not that it really matters though, I suppose. Since more than half the cast wind up being so dull and lifeless that I can almost guarantee that you won’t be able to remember any of their names anyway. It also doesn’t help that no effort is made to make most of the men look or act differently to help differentiate any of them from one another. So with the exception of maybe four of them, with one of them being the only female character, they’re all so drab and interchangeable from one another that it’s damn near impossible to tell them apart.



And some of the editing? Oi. I don’t know if the film was originally like this, or if this is just due to the American cut, but some of this film is choppy as hell, and that’s not in any way a reference to the waves sloshing over the side of the boat. Some scenes end so abruptly it feels like they weren’t properly cut. And instead of fading, sometimes the background music cuts out so suddenly that it’s positively jarring. I’d love to be able to watch the original to see if this is the result of the edited version, or if editors at Hammer just needed a lot more practice.



All that’s not to say that the film totally sucks though. The acting is actually pretty decent, at least from the characters who manage to stick around for more than a couple of scenes. Lugosi, in particular, does a great job, and it’s nice to see him in something where he’s not trying to suck on some unsuspecting woman’s neck. And Edmund Willard, who plays First Mate Bilson, plays a right grand son of a bitch, who you lovingly want to punch in his ever scowling mug.



And the atmosphere is also pretty good considering the film’s limited means. The ship naturally feels cramped and dank and highly claustrophobic. They occasionally use the lighting to their advantage. And they even throw in some nice, dramatic shots from time to time, so the film still looks pretty nice, even though the movie itself isn’t in the best shape due to age and condition, occasionally displaying dark patches as well as pops and scratches.



Overall though, the Phantom Ship isn’t too bad. Choppy editing and non-existent death scenes aside, the film is a very serviceable mystery/thriller/horror film. It’s not ideal of course, especially since you already know how it’s going to end and will probably be able to pinpoint the killer fairly early on (there’s really only so many people it can be). But the acting is decent, it looks okay, and has some decent atmosphere. It’d be great if we still had the original film to compare this too, it being an early Hammer film and all, but… It is what it is. So if you’re curious about early Hammer, or are a Lugosi fan and want to see him play something other than a vampire, then this film might be of interest to you. But if you’re looking for a more intense mystery film from the early years of cinema, or just a movie that’s more historically accurate to the real-life events they purport to portray, then you can probably ignore this movie.

Phantom Ship is available on a variety of streaming services.

Phantom Ship is also available on DVD, either as a stand alone release, or as part of a collection (usually one dedicated to Bela Lugosi.)

Helpful Links: