The Ghost Ship *** (1943, Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett) – Classic Movie Review 2036

The rarest of all producer Val Lewton’s films, this 1943 movie offers an odd and brooding tale of mysterious deaths aboard a ship under the command of dotty, power-crazed captain Richard Dix. The RKO studio had built an expensive ship set for their 1938 production Pacific Liner (1939) and Lewton was told to come up with a movie that could re-use the set and here it is.

Russell Wade plays young third officer Tom Merriam who signs on the freighter ship Altair under Captain Will Stone (Dix). But, after a couple strange deaths of crew members, it dawns on Tom Merriam that the captain is going mad and becoming a psychopathic nutter obsessed with authority. Unfortunately, Tom is the only crewman bright enough to figure out what’s wrong, so, when he tries to tell the others (Ben Bard‘s first officer Bowns and Edmund Glover‘s radioman ‘Sparks’ Winslow) and they all think he’s the crazy one.

Dix chills in his first film role as a villain, terrorising Wade memorably, and director Mark Robson runs a clean, tight ship. It’s another notable study in insanity from Lewton, but this time alas it doesn’t have his trademark of ghosts or supernatural horror, though there are his usual eerie and creepy chiller elements.

The movie was the subject of a legal dispute shortly after its theatrical release in December 1943 when Lewton was sued for plagiarism by Samuel R. Golding and Norbert Faulkner, who claimed that he had based the film’s script on their 1942 play The Man and His Shadow, which they had submitted to Lewton’s office. Lewton claimed that their manuscript was returned unread, but the court ruled against him and RKO in a decision upheld at appeal.

It’s curious that American screenwriter Donald Henderson Clarke’s screenplay was judged to have been plagiarised since it is very similar to the public domain Jack London novel The Sea Wolf and is based on a story by Austrian writer Leo Mittler.

The Ghost Ship’s cinema distribution was halted and the film withdrawn from circulation and it remained unavailable for viewing for the next 50 years. Consequently, it was not until the film’s copyright ended in the 1990s that The Ghost Ship was made available again for public viewing.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2036

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