Part of the
pleasure in watching a Val Lewton horror film is in seeing how artfully he
chose to interpret the gawdy titles that RKO foisted on him. His fifth film as
their B-movie producer was The Ghost Ship,
released on Christmas Eve 1943. It was an apt time of year for a spectral tale,
but here he engineered a story whose connection to its name was the most
tenuous yet. Instead of manifesting external spook shocks, its haunting power
was internalised within its protagonist to the point where The Ghost Ship could be described as a tense nautical drama, yet
still delivers the chills and foreboding of a horror film.
Lewton
continued to use Mark Robson as director following The Seventh Victim which only came out four months before. The script
by Donald Henderson Clarke charts the choppy waters suffered by a ship whose
new Third Officer (Russell Wade) becomes embroiled in the sinister mind games
of its mentally unstable Captain (Richard Dix). Although the film did well in
cinemas, the screenplay was considered so similar to a play by Samuel R.
Golding and Norbert Faulkner that they sued Lewton in February 1944. The film
was subsequently pulled from release and shelved for over fifty years till it
came out as part of 2005’s superb DVD box set The Val Lewton Horror Collection (which I highly recommend).
On the
subject of influences, ironically The
Ghost Ship could be seen as an inspiration, intentional or otherwise, on a
number of seafaring mutiny movies that followed -discounting the historically
controversial accounts of the Mutiny on
the Bounty of 1789 and the various film versions already shot. The battle
of wills between (in)subordinate officer and ship’s Captain was later memorably
explored in the riveting courtroom drama The
Caine Mutiny Court Martial (staged in 1953 and first filmed in 1954) and
the dark comedy Mister Roberts (a
1948 play and 1955 film). The themes of duty, responsibility and mental illness
are ideal vehicles for morally complex dramas, not to mention fodder for grand scenery-chewing
central performances by the likes of Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney in the
aforementioned films respectively.
Whereas The Caine Mutiny Court Martial avoided
easy judgement of its isolated commanding officer’s decline, The Ghost Ship positions our sympathies
firmly with the younger man. Russell Wade is well cast as the clean-cut, gauche
Merriam who looks forward to beginning his post-training maiden voyage on the Altair.
No Lewton film would be complete without bad omens, provided in this case by a
blind peddler (Alec Craig, in a nod to his McCoy from the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty of all things).
Sightless he may be, but this sea-dog can foresee danger: “Only the old ones
know that there’s nothing but bad luck and bad blows at sea”. Not for nothing
does he book-end the film accompanying himself singing ‘Blow the Man Down’.
Wade played
the gallant soul whose voice and car assistance failed to save two female
victims from Lewton and Tourneur’s The
Leopard Man earlier that year. Here, his character’s innate goodness and
touching faith in humanity will become overtly tested in a call to challenge a
mounting evil on board ship. At first, he seems to bond with Captain Stone, a
relationship pinpointed as fulfilling his orphaned upbringing need for a father
figure. However, events soon disabuse him of seeking to deepen that friendship.
Many critics
have praised Richard Dix in the vital role of Stone, yet for me he is almost ruinously
wooden and awkward, all the more inexplicable as he was talented enough to receive
an Oscar nomination for Cimarron
(1931). He was famously known for acting in westerns (so much so that Mel
Brooks’ fans may recall him name-checked in an in-joke by David Huddleston during
1974’s Blazing Saddles “Remember when
Richard Dix came in here and tried to take over this town?”). In this film, he delivers his lines in a
manner that is distractingly ultra-relaxed to the point of disinterest, with
occasional suspicious slurring of words and a couple of moments where his
eyeline clearly wanders off-set. Whilst any suggestion of unproven booze or
cue-card reliance wouldn’t be fair, discovering Dix’s full-blown alcoholism at
the time after viewing The Ghost Ship
backs up evidence in his performance. You can see that editor John Lockert
clearly had to salvage what he could from some poor takes by sometimes cutting
away from him mid-line during scenes.
Still, there
is just enough natural poise within Dix to inhabit the most crucial aspect of Stone,
an increasing mania for the display and maintenance of authority. Early on,
this is disguised as a selective benevolence; he gently reprimands Merriam for
swatting a moth, telling him that the insect should be left alone as “Its
safety does not depend on you”. As we will soon uncover, the rolling Stone is a
sadist who reserves a deep-seated cruelty for those who are directly under his
control. “I have certain rights of risk over them…I have the right to do what I
want with the crew”, he disconcertingly tell this new member.
Merriam
tries to gather allies from among the crewmen,(amongst whom you can spot an
youthful Laurence Reservoir Dogs Tierney
as Louie). However, they are too afraid of the Captain to rock the proverbial
boat no matter what transpires. A rogue deck hook swings loose, destroying the
lifeboat and threatening the men (a nice example of Nicholas Musuraca’s lighting
casts a menacing shadow of it against the wall). One of the crewmen is crushed by
the anchor chains in the chain locker when his exit hatch is mysteriously closed
(by Stone, who blithely tells Merriam in confidence: “He was a trouble-maker”)
His friend
‘Sparks’ Winslow (Edmund Glover), the radio operator, gives him the cold
shoulder. Amongst the men there is one intriguing figure who stands alone and
unavoidably silent and that is Finn the Mute played by Skelton Knaggs whom we
last saw in menacing form aboard 1939’s utterly unseaworthy Torture Ship (see my review of
25/11/2017). His diminutive size and pock-marked visage suggest a malevolent
elf, yet under the watchful, literate eye of Lewton he is the vessel’s
Cassandra, narrating for our ears only his hushed inner monologue of awful
uncanny premonitions. He studies Merriam favourably and appears to be a
protector, though initially a passive one, observing his Captain’s impending
madness. “I know…and I will watch” he tell us.
The only
sense of an interior life for Stone is provided by his girlfriend Ellen, a
vivacious turn from I Walked with A
Zombie’s Ellen Barratt, who Merriam meets at a port. She urges him not to
end up like his lonely, emotionally remote commander otherwise “in the end it
will be only a ghost ship you’ll command”. Not only does this neatly tick off
the producer’s commitment to a title connection, but Ellen promises to
match-make him with her sister. Merriam could certainly use some good news as
the Shipping Agent (Boyd Davis) sets up an informal hearing in which the
crewmen officially freeze him out. They even cover up that Stone chickened out
of giving their Greek shipmate a radio-assisted appendectomy, leaving Merriam
to wield the scalpel without even a thank you.
Back on
board ship, slowly Merriam manages to prove that no Stone is homicidally
unturned. Sparks shows him a radiogram reply that Stone ordered him to send to
Ellen after she inquires after Merriam in concern – claiming that Merriam is
not aboard. Stone rouses Merriam the same night to send a message himself, this
time claiming his buddy was tragically lost overboard. Merriam goes ballistic,
or would do if Robson was able to have both the movie’s fights choreographed
convincingly. Our hero is confined to his cabin, tied and sedated.
Meanwhile
First Officer Bowns (The Seventh Victim’s
cult leader Mr Brun) also begins to suspect this is one Stone that may sink
them all. A soundbite from his private talk with his crewmates - “The boy is
right”- reverberates in Stone’s fevered brain. His cabin offers no sanctuary,
teasing him with his wall plaque ‘WHO DOES NOT HEED THE RUDDER SHALL MEET THE
ROCK’ – a double-edged aphorism that may justify his tyranny to himself and offer
an unheeded warning of his insane God complex. Finally, he snaps and heads off
to Merriam’s quarters to stab him with a carving knife in a sequence that at least
boosts the actor Dix into a state of belated animation. Suddenly we are in like
Finn, as the commentator turns proactive and grapples with Stone, fatally stabbing
him amid some very disjointed editing.
Finn then
leads us into a soothing epilogue where normality is restored. “The boy is safe
– and his belief in men and men’s emotional goodness is secure”. The line’s unsubtle
reassurance may have been intended to offset any inference that The Ghost Ship belied the decency and
bravery of war-time naval servicemen celebrated in such films as 1942’s In Which We Serve.
Although it
is more straightforward in some ways and less thematically layered, The Ghost Ship has a great, tense atmosphere
aided by Musuraca bathing the actors in a half-light throughout and underlined
by an effective music score from Roy Webb. Its greater simplicity than Lewton’s
previous films also works in its claustrophobic storytelling, demonstrating overall
that he could still pull off an admirable level of quality in spite of by RKO’s
low budgets and demanding time-scales.
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