Ghost Galleon, The (1974)

aka El Buque Maldito, aka Horror of the Zombies, aka Ghost Ships of the Blind Dead

• Written and directed by Amando de Ossorio
• Starring
  • Maria Perschy
  • Jack Taylor
  • Barbara Rey
  • Carlos Lemos
  • Manuel de Blas

Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) did significant international business, especially considering the thrift with which is was made, and so it comes as no surprise that it spawned multiple sequels. The problem was that the story established in the first movie did not permit direct sequels that yet maintained the original sepulchral quiet atmosphere and emphasis on ominous tableau rather than action and adrenaline. The first sequel, Return of the Evil Dead (1973), was probably the best possible solution to the problem; instead of being a linear sequel to the first film, it instead took the mythology created for Tombs and instead gave us an “alternate” tale of the Blind Dead, one which exists independently of — and, to some degree, at odds with — the story presented in the first film.

But one can only tell so many mutually-exclusive tales of the small Spanish town of Bouzano so often. So The Ghost Galleon, the third film in the loose series, attempts to inject novelty in the premise by moving the undead Templars onto a boat. The concept is certainly sound, as a creaking derelict ship can offer just as disquieting an environment as the Templar ruins in the first two movies. But budget restrictions keep the galleon backdrop from achieving its full potential, and the change in setting severed the Blind Dead from the backstory which lends them so much of their power. Return may have a lesser sequel, but The Ghost Galleon is downright inferior.

Gotta show you the skin before we show you the bones.

I heartily acknowledge that it tries to get things off to a good start — with bikini models! (Downside: They don’t look too great.) They’re not just there to up the sex side of the sex’n'violence continuum, though. One of them, Noemi (Barbara Rey), is concerned that her roommate and fellow model, Kathy, hasn’t been home for several days, and she thinks agency director Lillian (Maria Perschy) knows something about it. After a session of badgering that showcases how much the dubbing actresses really weren’t trying, Lillian agrees to let her in on the secret if she meets her on the docks that evening.

The secret is this: Howard Tucker (Jack Taylor), the sporting goods magnate (no, really, that’s how he introduces himself — “I’m Howard Tucker, the sporting goods magnate”), has hired Kathy and another model, Lorena, to strand themselves in a two-person motorboat along the shipping routes of the Atlantic to be “found” by a passing ship. Why? It’s a publicity stunt! It doesn’t have to make sense, dammit!

They even contact Kathy (Blanca Estrada) and Lorena (Margarita Merino) by radio for their daily check-in on “Operation: Atlantic.” Status? No ships. In fact, they’ve been surrounded by fog since yesterday, so they’ve just been holding their position. Great publicity stunt, there. While they’re in radio contact, the two girls in the motorboat see something strange in the fog — a model galleon! Oh, wait, that’s supposed to be a real galleon, with shredded sails and salt-greyed wood. Through the miracle of bad editing, the galleon hits the motorboat (gently grazes it, really) with enough force that the motorboat starts taking on water — only a tiny amount, but enough that they won’t be able to make it back to shore on their own.

“Boooo…gahhhh…”

Lorena decides to go aboard to explore, Kathy decides to stay in the motorboat and fall asleep, and Tucker decides to make a bad decision worse by forcibly imprisoning Noemi in the ready-made cells beneath the warehouse on the dock (there are ready-made cells beneath warehouses on the dock?) because she threatens to go to the police and… I don’t know, give him publicity? Really, what’s the good possible outcome of this stunt? Tucker’s right-hand man Sergio (Manuel de Blas) undertakes the forcible confinement with great relish, at one point chasing her through the tunnels/corridors, and possibly even forcing himself upon her after he chokes her into submission. (I say “possibly” because the scene ends abruptly, as if no one remembered to shoot the rest of it. It makes me wonder why the abortive subplot was left in the movie at all.)

But hey, we didn’t sign on to this movie to see models run in heels down corridors, we signed on for the Blind Dead! And we… don’t quite get them yet. Lorena goes aboard the ship, in doing which she transitions from the location shoot of the motorboat to the indoor set of the galleon, and starts to explore in the mist. The next we know, in the middle of the night, she screams, but Kathy is asleep in the motorboat and can’t quite bring herself to wake up. The next day, though, she goes aboard the ship to find Lorena. It’s an atmospheric little set, but closeups do not serve it well, as the wood from which it’s constructed is fresh lumber that’s been painted gray. But I don’t think we’re supposed to notice that.

Kathy finds Lorena’s bag, and listens to her transistor radio for hours on end — not that we can really tell the passage of time on the ship, as it always appears like night on the set — until… Oh hey! Finally! Coffin-like boxes in the hold slowly creak open, and the dessicated forms that we’ve come to know as the undead Templars rise up and start shuffling after her…

Worst puppet show ever.

Meanwhile, Tucker has gone to the weather bureau, where a Professor Gruber (Carlos Lemos) claims that there is never a warm fog in that area of the Atlantic ever and tries to brush them off. His interest is piqued, though, with the mention of the galleon. He’s collected dozens of tales of sightings of a so-called “ghost ship” in the general area, but only by small craft, and whenever someone radios that they’re going to explore, they’re never heard from again. Gruber’s so excited by the topic, he volunteers to come along on the “rescue”expedition on Tucker’s yacht, along with Tucker, Gruber, Lillian and Noemi (because having a hostile crewmember along is such a great idea).

Lo and behold, the encounter the same foggy patch, so they take their launch from the yacht and approach the model galleon. It only takes a few minutes once they’re aboard for their launch to disappear in the fog (infernal forces, or did they simply forget to secure it?). It’s somewhere in here that Gruber announces that they must be in another dimension entirely. Why, yes, that’s the only explanation for the weather bureau being wrong about the bizarre fog! I expect the Channel 4 meteorologist to use that same excuse the next time his predictions go awry. It’s night when they get there, so after a cursory look around, they all bed down for the night. Because the boat’s soooo big, I guess, that they couldn’t take ten minutes to search it for the missing models. No, that will wait until morning. (Lillian goes to sleep on a bed that’s been unattended on this boat for centuries. Ew ew ew.) But Noemi gets up in the middle of the night with a lantern and goes to explore the hold, banging on locked doors and shouting, “Kathy! Are you in there?”

Ooh. Shouting. If there’s one thing that blinded undead Templars can’t stand, it’s shouting. And no one hears her frantic screams as the Blind Dead silently trap her and drag her back to their altar.

In the morning (not that you can tell — there’s only one light kit for the galleon set), casually noting in passing that Noemi is gone, they listen to what Gruber found in the ship’s log, which is something about devil-worshiping “sectarians” chartering this boat from the Far East or something. They must have nightly orgies of human sacrifice, drinking the blood of the living one by one just because they’re EE-vil! And, um, they have no way to get off the boat! (Not only that, they have no way to pass the day! Didn’t anyone even bring a pack of playing cards?)

Templars, dude. Not Klansmen.

Gruber’s translation of the ship’s log brings up one of the main problems with the movie: the chronology. The Templars were rather forcibly dissolved as an order of religious warriors in the 14th century, which is also roughly the timeframe for the blinding and execution of the devil-worshiping Templars in the first two Blind Dead movies. Here, though, they go out of their way to identify the ghost ship not only as a galleon, but as a 16th-century galleon — and not only that, but something Gruber reads from the log makes Lillian say that this must all have happened in the 18th century. (I’m not sure exactly how to follow that conversation; if I haven’t complained enough about the English translation of the script, let me just say this: It sucks.)

That, coupled with the fact that Gruber refers to the evil zombies as “sectarians” rather than Templars, divorces this movie from the mythology of the first two. The Blind Dead here sure look like the Blind Dead we’ve come to know and love, right down to the glimpsed ankh symbols on their chests, and they sure act like the Blind Dead, shuffling around silently with their dessicated hands outstretched. (They leave out the spectral horses this time, as they’re not much good on a boat.) But are the connected to the sect in Bouzano, Spain? What, again, were they doing on the boat? (Were they checking out their treasure on Oak Island?) Are they even blind? They act like the Blind Dead have in every other movie, but no one mentions the whole “blinded and executed” part of their mythology, and one has to wonder how a ship full of blinded Templars would have come to be out at sea in the first place. With as central as the backstory was to the atmosphere which almost singlehandedly provided the success of the first two movies, The Ghost Galleon is hobbled right out of the gate.

So anyone coming to this movie without having seen the first two simply sees zombies in cloaks shuffling around a vaguely spectral boat, with no explanation of how it all started; and anyone who knows the first two Blind Dead movies comes out of this one wondering how it can possibly fit into the same mythology (heck, the last scene of this one flatly contradicts the climax and resolution of Return of the Evil Dead) and being markedly disappointed that a premise with so much atmosphere about it can simply turn into a slow-moving generic horror, with a cadre of designated victims confined by fiat in an enclosed location with vaguely-motivated nasties.

Spared the sight of Templars in bikinis only because no one remembered the sunscreen.

De Ossorio does what he can with what he has, with emphasis given to the sound design as with the other Blind Dead movies; the creaking of the boat, the footsteps, the voices of the characters are all in contrast to the silence of the Templars (which is usually emphasized with the same music track as in the last two movies which sounds like a combination of Gregorian chant and Mongolian throat-singing). But it’s not enough to make up for the arbitrary plotting and the perfunctory characterization, neither of which can be blamed on the English translation.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0