Having been burned twice before, one would think I had learned to avoid the films of Amando de Ossorio, yet here I was again, watching 1974’s crummy The Ghost Galleon. This was the third film in his series of horror films featuring zombified Knights Templars from the 16th century.
I had become curious about watching this film after checking out the feature-length documentary on this series, which appeared as a bonus feature on Tombs of the Blind Dead, the first of this series. That was a film with many pleasantly memorable touches, even if the work overall was rather lacking in comparison to the output of better indie horror filmmakers.
What had my interest piqued was to find out how the plot would get those zombies on a literal ghost ship, and then how they would end up tormenting a group of mostly young people. The answer to the first question is we won’t ever really learn much, except for some batshit speculation from a professor (Carlos Lemos) whose credentials I seriously wanted to check. The answer to the second (how the people encounter the zombies), is even more baffling, as a cynical publicist (Jack Taylor) puts a couple of models (Blanca Estrada, Margarita Marino) on a tiny boat out on the ocean near a major shipping lane, in hopes that they will be discovered. This was all part of a publicity stunt, but I was never sure what was to be publicized. It’s like they only worked out this idea as far as “stage a stunt”.
The women and their boat soon go missing, and so the remainder of the cast takes a yacht to find them. In addition to the guys I already mentioned, there are two women on board (Maria Perschy and Barbara Rey). The latter is being taken against her will, lest she alert the authorities and blow this brilliant scheme Taylor has cooked up. Prior to boarding the yacht, they had her imprisoned in a dock warehouse where Manuel de Blas rapes her. What is the deal with Ossorio and him having women sexual violated in his films?
Once everybody is on the boat, it becomes closer to a live action version of Scooby Doo than the major studio films made of that property earlier this century. You basically have multiple Daphnes and a few Freds. Alas, there isn’t a talking dog, and I can’t work the rapey douchebag into this analogy. I’m not sure who the professor with the odd theories would be…maybe Shaggy?
God knows the vague theories Lemos comes up with suggest mental illness or consumption of large quantities of narcotics. I could barely follow his ramblings, but I doubt there’s any real insight to glean from them. When the yacht ends up in a mysterious mist, “it must be a strange dimension unknown to us all”. Taylor gives Lemos a hard time about how there could zombie knights of the crusades, and the professor replies: “I can explain to you. This isn’t real. It doesn’t exist.” As for how the knights ended up on this boat, the ship’s log supposedly has them on board for a return journey from the orient—which makes even less sense.
Not that anybody watches a film like this for the dialogue, but what is here is especially daft. I’m not sure if the lines in the original Spanish were bad, or if things got lost in translation, but I suspect a mix of both. Characters tend to talk in a way that feels a bit off, like something written by a not-very-advanced AI.
Surprisingly, this is a rather chaste film, and bereft of nudity. It doesn’t even have much gore. The only killing I can recall seeing on screen is a dismembering which, if excised, likely would have resulted in the film getting a PG rating (early 1970’s idea of PG, mind you).
The effects are rather lacking. Especially poor is the model of the ship, which is so tiny and unconvincing as to be kind of cute. It is at its most ridiculous when it is engulfed in flames, each of which is impossibly large in comparison to the boat.
Still, the set of the ghost ship is well-done and very atmospheric. Of course, that isn’t too difficult to do; otherwise, we wouldn’t have so many subpar gothic horror films with similarly aged-looking sets. Alas, with not much going on here, a largely empty boat covered in cobwebs and dust only reinforces how dull the whole affair is.
That’s a shame, because I feel there is promise in the idea of zombies on a ship. After all, the creatures may move slowly, but there’s only so much room to hide on a vessel, regardless of size.
If there’s any reason to see The Ghost Galleon, it is to see more of those zombie Knights Templar, which raised Tombs of the Blind Dead to the status of recommended. Alas, they don’t have their undead horses this time. One might think it would be ridiculous to have zombie horses on a ghost ship, but I feel criticizing that in a film this daft would be shooting zombie fish in a cobweb-covered barrel.
Dir: Amando de Ossorio
Starring almost the entire cast of a Spanish live-action Scooby Doo you never knew existed
Watched on Tubi