PHANTOM SHIP – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

I grew up a monster kid in the 1960s. I tried to watch any movie with Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Lon Chaney or Peter Lorre, whether the movie was horror or not, I loved all these actors. But Bela Lugosi has always had a special place in my heart and I’ve made every effort to see all his films. Phantom ship was one title that has eluded me for years, until now.

Courtesy of Image Entertainment and Netflix I finally caught up with Phantom Ship, also known as The Mystery of The Mary Celeste. Was it worth the wait and worth seeing? Yes and no, depending on how you feel about Lugosi. This is one film that allowed Lugosi room to move and create a character not really related to horror movies and it show cases just how good an actor he really was. Watching it you wish the whole movie were good enough to really be a lost classic.

Phantom Ship is a “what if?” movie that tries to explain the Mary (or Marie) Celeste maritime mystery. A case that is still unsolved, and at this date likely never will be. The Mary Celeste was found adrift at sea with no one aboard on December 4, 1872, no evidence of foul play, all the cargo intact, no damage to the ship, nothing in the captain’s log pointing to a solution as to what happened. Even more creepy, food was on the stove, coffee was sitting in cups, everything looked as if the whole crew and passengers vanished into thin air, which is basically what happened.

Phantom Ship speculates that a murderer was on board and in the manner of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, one character after another is killed or vanishes. This is one movie I don’t want to give any spoilers on but Lugosi’s character is the last one you would suspect of being responsible.

Phantom Ship is one of Hammer Film’s first productions but I did not see their name in the credits. Also from postings on the web apparently this is not a complete print. The original film opened and closed with a courtroom scene, a maritime law investigation into what happened, which the film then presents a “solution” as to what may have occurred.

Lugosi is so good it breaks my heart to report the rest of the actors can’t keep up with him. I’ve seen lots of British movies from the 30s and 40s and I recognized very few of the other actors. Dennis Hoey was a regular in British movies of all kinds and Gibson Gowland, the now forgotten star of Eric Von Stroheim’s Greed has a small part. The other actors look like amateurs in any scene with Lugosi.

Bela plays a one armed but otherwise able bodied seaman who has seen better days and really needs a sea going billet. Bela does what we expect of professional actors, then and now, he builds a believable character in front of our eyes, someone who might actually exist in the real world and who appears, by turns, pathetic, heart breaking, heroic (yes I said heroic, Bela unexpectedly saves the only woman in the cast from rape and then behaves in a totally unexpected manner), exhausted, kind, forlorn and lonely and finally terrified and terrifying. It is a full bodied performance from one of the most underrated actors in history and what a shame the other players in Phantom Ship can never seem to get to his level. If they had it would be the lost classic it has occasionally been described as.

Partly filmed on a real sailing vessel Phantom Ship has the raw, primitive look of independent films from that era, think Mascot serials or Monogram Westerns, PRC mysteries. Some of the ship board scenes are studio bound with the back projection also common in that era. The sound quality is rough but understandable. At one point, apparently, the soundtrack was lost or damaged after Lugosi left the production. Somebody does a terrible Lugosi imitation in one scene that is over dubbed. Pitiful, I have heard 12 year old kids do a better Lugosi.

Part of the charm of Phantom Ship for me is the singing of authentic sailor’s sea chanties, some of which are rather bawdy. The movie goes into some detail about every day ship board life, having lived on a ship I found this fascinating. The movie only runs a little over an hour so it is not a grueling ordeal or a really bad movie, just a programmer picture common in that era.

Finally the main reason to see Phantom Ship, the only reason really, is good old Bela. To a lot of people Lugosi was some kind of joke, most film goers now only know of him through Tim Burton’s Ed Wood movie, if they know him at all. What a shame. Everyone knows he was hooked on morphine but most people don’t know why. He was a veteran of World War One. Being a loyal Hungarian he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was wounded, many veteran’s of that war came home hooked on opiate pain killers. Here was a man who won a place in the Hungarian National Theater at the age of 17 and often played to standing room only audiences. Even Karloff admitted that Bela had more stage experience and was one of the best actors he had ever worked with.

Phantom Ship is proof of Bela’s talent, in some scenes yes, he goes over the top, he was famous for that. In other scenes while the other actors scream and shout Bela sits quietly, regarding the other actors the way a rooster regards a king snake, and says nothing. Without moving a muscle or opening his mouth Bela commands the screen, owns the movie and puts the whole show in his hip pocket and walks away with it.
In 1958 Boris Karloff was honored on the show This Is Your Life, Ralph Edward’s series that honored performers of all kinds. These shows are on dvd I highly recommend them. Boris has a wonderful reunion with Jack Pierce, the makeup man for the Universal Frankenstein films. Boris pays tribute to Pierce by naming him the best makeup man in the world. Bela died in 1955, how sweet it would have been to hear that voice, from off camera saying “we made 6 pictures together Boris, I stole every scene we were in, but only because you let me!” What would Boris have said to, or about, Bela on live television? Could it have been a happy reunion? Bela would have still been working for Ed Wood, if at all, Boris stayed working right up until the end. We can only speculate, but finally here is a once lost Lugosi film that proves his talent. For Lugosi fans Phantom Ship is a must, and if you are not a Lugosi fan, why are you reading this?

Image dvd has no special features at all, only chapter access and a very primitive menu.