Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Ghost Ship

Tueday, July 9, 2008

Another of the old RKO/Val Lewton horror movies. Not my favorite, but still worth my time. Gotta say that I've been impressed with all of these... you tend to think of old, low budget horror films in bad, laughable Ed Wood kinda terms. I mean, even these days low budgets sink a lot of horror movies because they try to tell a story too big or too special effects-filled for the amount of money they have. And add that to the 40's non-graphically-violent horror aesthetic, and it smells like a recipe for disaster. Yet these were all well made, thoughtfully designed movies that were smartly written not to need a larger budget.

A lot of the titles of these movies are misleading. Curse of the Cat People didn't have cat people (wasn't even a horror movie, actually), The Leopard Man has a leopard and a man but no leopard-man, and The Ghost Ship has no ghosts, no supernatural elements at all, and not even a literal, non-supernatural ghost ship. It does have a ship, though.

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