First of all, I want to apologize for the plethora of clipped title cards I've been using for page images this year. I assure you that when the card appears clipped, I check other versions of the movie (when possible) to see if I can find a better screencap. If a card shows up with bits missing it's because I failed. Film preservation is pretty great, huh?
Benjamin Briggs and Toby Bilson are, respectively, the captain and first mate of the infamous Mary Celeste. We from the future know that in 1872, the Mary Celeste's crew mysteriously disappeared without a trace, but of course these men can't guess that. Briggs is having difficulty finding a crew due to the Celeste's bad name, but he's not averse to shangaiing sailors, despite the fact that he claims to be opposed to such--this will be one of many blatant lies Briggs tells throughout the movie. Word of this reaches a sailor named Anton Lorenzen (Bela Lugosi) who was once shanghaied himself--he practically begs to be let aboard the Mary Celeste for reasons that are assuredly not good. Meanwhile, Captain Briggs is about to marry his sweetheart Sarah, despite the fact that his friend Jim Morehead proposed to Sarah earlier in the day. Despite the fissure this creates between the men Briggs still has the gall to ask Jim to borrow one of his sailors. With this plot thread aboard alongside a seemingly vengeful Lorenzen, the fate of the crew, which now includes Briggs' wife Sarah, seems sealed for sure.
As it turns out--spoiler alert--Lorenzen is the killer. The ship he was shanghaiied aboard six years was the Mary Celeste (despite the fact that, in our world at least, the ship was called the Amazon in 1866 and had a completely different crew), and during that voyage he fell overboard and lost his arm to a shark. As such he wants to avenge himself on Bilson and everyone else aboard the Celeste. This "twist" is "preserved" by the fact that Lorenzen, as we see him throughout the rest of the movie, is a pious and sorrowful man, who weeps in remorse when he has to kill a crewman who tries to rape Sarah. The sincerity of this side to Lorenzen is one thing that makes the characters of this film surprisingly complicated.
I am of the opinion that Lorenzen's piety and empathy are an act, given how intense his hatred is towards Bilson in the end. (I'll touch on that more below because I have to analyze the acting in this, especially Bela's.) However, that doesn't meant that Lorenzen may have once been that sort of man, before his traumatizing, inhumane experiences, and he's drawing on his old character to disguise himself. Bela's best acting is when he tries to put pathos in the character--yes, it's cheesy, but it's leagues better than a lot of his costars. It doesn't really make sense, though, why Lorenzen would find seemingly sincere friendship with Sarah Briggs, only to delight in her murder later.
Then there's Captain Briggs. Briggs ought to be the movie's protagonist. He's dashing, and has a beautiful love interest to protect. However, all his supposed virtue is a lie. He forbids Bilson from kidnapping men to work for him, but immediately turns the other way when Bilson disobeys him in this. He serves maggoty bread to his crew and gets irate when someone questions the quality of such. It's unclear how much wool Bilson, the much more obviously corrupt figure, has pulled over Briggs' eyes, but Briggs deliberately censors information about the murders not only to his crew but to his wife, putting their lives in further danger and squaring him firmly in villain territory for me. Maybe not a willing villain per se, but action is more important than intent. This leaves us rooting for Lorenzen and his quest for vengeance, wherein he kills people who were friendly towards him. This movie has no heroes.
I am impressed with how grungy this is for a '30s horror movie, but it's made by Hammer who would go on to make the particularly gross Frankenstein series. It's relieving, despite the general cheapness of the production, to see a horror movie interested in capturing horror--not just scares but the atmosphere around such. They succeed by capturing the sense of hopelessness that only a grungy 19th Century trading vessel could supply.
I mean, there's also the acting. This is one of the hammiest '30s movies I've seen in a while, coming close to having a full cast of Ptomaine Petes. It's great when a movie opens with a man angrily yelling, in the full presence of a variety of dockhands, "Looks like we're gonna have ta shanghai this scum!!" Said man (Bilson) later gets a moment where he's picking out an alias for himself, and he makes a big deal about calling himself "Captain Abercrombie." But in both quality and lack thereof, Lugosi outperforms them all. His pathos, as I said, is actually very good, but at the end, when he and Bilson are the only survivors and the cards are all on the table, he, uh...well, there's a reason I love ol' Bela. "I didn't forget you...I didn't forget this ship...I HATE IT! And IIII...hate youuu..."
Don't get me wrong--it may sound like this movie is a lot better than it really is. It's still bargain basement, with the most pristine surviving prints looking rather like they were used for toilet paper. Ham does not equal good acting inherently, and there are enough failed premises and bad story notes to make us feel the production's cheapness. However, for purposes of trash-viewing, Phantom Ship is pretty damn great, especially with Lugosi in tow.
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