By JOE WINTERS

Ah, there’s nothing like an ocean voyage to get away from it all…to clear the cobwebs…to find love, exciting and new (sounds like a theme song).

Come a-board…we’re expect-ing you…

The mythic journeys represented on film in The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad (1958), The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad (1974) and Jason And The Argonauts (1963), among others, have shown us some spectacular sights. Ever since we learned to float, the sea has spawned stories to cause many a sleepless night for weary travelers.

Cursed to never find rest again, due to the blasphemies of her skipper, the legendary Flying Dutchman has for centuries been said to haunt the North Sea.

Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick was filmed several times, most notably with John Barrymore in 1930, and with Gregory Peck in 1956, each portraying the obsessed Captain Ahab in pursuit of the great white whale.

A real life mystery began on November 7, 1872, when the Mary Celeste set sail from New York with its newest Captain, his family and crew. It was later found adrift with no one on board. Arthur Conan Doyle, writing under a pseudonym, in 1894 published a fictional story about the "Marie Celeste" and from there the stories and speculations have run wild.

Maritime madness, myths, monsters and mysteries have managed to float a boatload of movies. An early talkie, The Intruder (1932), opens with a shipboard axe murder of a man on the run with stolen diamonds. The investigation is interrupted when the S. S. Intruder hits a submerged wreck and sinks. Lifeboat survivors get to an island where strange ape noises prompt a wisecracking dame to quip "Tarzan giving us the keys to the city."

There’s no telling where these voyages will end up or if the passengers will even end up alive. Terror Aboard (Paramount, 1933) opens with the discovery of an abandoned yacht and proceeds to tell via flashback how the guests met their grisly fates. Maximillian Kreig (John Halliday) receives word by telegraph that he’s been indicted for forgery and grand larceny.

Rather than face the music, Max reasons "a determined man in a desperate situation might destroy a boat and every living soul on board." With that, he calmly shoots the radioman. Next, while conducting the on-board investigation, Kreig tricks Mr. Cordoff into stabbing the husband of the woman with whom Cordoff had been having an affair. Later, Max discreetly shoves the woman in the freezer and locks her in.

At dinner, he poisons the chef with his own food. The maid finds the poison bottle and she’s tossed overboard. The Captain presents his suspicions to Kreig, who impales him on a desktop message holder! Next, Max tricks the despondent Cordoff into hanging himself. A frightened crew tries to escape in a lifeboat, but Kreig cuts the lowering ropes to ensure a speedier descent and demise.

Kreig then traps Lily (Shirley Grey) and Jim (Neil Hamilton) in the engine room and sets it on fire as the story comes full circle. A boarding party rescues the trapped couple and finds the ship’s steward (comic relief Charles Ruggles) drunk in a closet. Unbeknownst to all, Kreig jumps overboard to swim toward his deserted island destination. Unfortunately, the sharks have other plans.

Though not as juicy as Terror Aboard, the next year’s Mystery Liner (Monogram, 1934), directed by William Nigh, lives up to its title as foreign agents and others scramble for possession of an invention that can control ocean liners. Murder rears its ugly head more than once, along with a possible surprise as to who done it.

As mentioned earlier, the Mary Celeste incident sparked numerous stories, and on film The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste (1935), also known as The Phantom Ship, starred Bela Lugosi in an early effort from England’s Hammer Films. Bela gave a touching portrayal of a one-armed sailor out for revenge on a former shipmate. Other motives against other passengers become evident, and in the end the ship is found abandoned except for a black cat. The character played by Shirley Grey, who played one of the few survivors of Terror Aboard, is not so lucky this time.

Mr. Lugosi is up to more familiar tricks in Republic Pictures cliffhanger serial S.O.S. Coast Guard (1937). As the villainous Boroff (!), Bela threatens the world with disintegrating gas, while hero Ralph Byrd (more famous later as Dick Tracy) faces peril after peril to stop the bad guy.

More scientific shenanigans are on board the Torture Ship (1939) when a scientist (Irving Pichel) lures a disparate group of criminals with the promise of escape, only to subject them to experiments intended to rehabilitate their evil natures. Helped by an intriguing premise, a decent cast, and some nice surprises, it’s one of the later efforts of director Victor Halperin, but not in the same league with his earlier White Zombie.

Being away at sea month upon month can take its toll on about anyone. In producer Val Lewton’s and director Mark Robson’s The Ghost Ship (1943) there were no otherworldly intruders, only fixations brought on by authority and by a seemingly benevolent Captain (Richard Dix) intent on taking his authority to murderous extremes.

A different kind of Ghost Ship (1952) was haunted in the spectral sense by a murdered couple who enlist the aid of the current yacht owners (Hazel Court and Dermot Walsh) to solve the crime in this talky, though at times intriguing, yarn from England.

Wandering into uncharted waters can result in some creepy situations. From Japan, Matango (1963), known in the States as Attack Of The Mushroom People, involves a group of friends on a yacht trip. One storm later they’re on an island where the primary source of food is…that’s right…mushrooms. Once eaten, they consume their consumers. Director Ishiro Honda, who gave us Godzilla, The Mysterians and more, here fashions an eerie indictment on modern civilization.

Hammer Films’ The Lost Continent (1968) offers personal dramas and a Captain (Eric Porter) transporting explosives on his un-insurable ship in order to retire comfortably. Most of the passengers are basically good people put to the test when they wind up in the Sargasso Sea’s graveyard of ships near an island of madmen and other bizarre creatures.

An episode of the great 1974 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker featured an episode entitled "The Werewolf" with that week’s guest monster (played in human form by Eric Braeden) wreaking havoc aboard a pleasure cruise.

Resuming our voyage on the big screen we encounter El Buque Maldito (1975), also known as The Ghost Galleon or Ghost Ships Of The Blind Dead (among other titles), the third in Spanish director Amando de Ossorio’s series of four films about the vampiric Knights Templar. This time they’re out to sea for an atmospheric cruise through time and space, and taking time out to repel boarders. The knights may be sightless, but their hearing is as good as ever, so don’t make a sound and you might survive the trip.

Science and seawater combine for Shock Waves (1977). Here, grizzled captain John Carradine’s broken down boat goes off course and gives tourists more than they paid for when they wash up on the island of a fugitive Nazi (Peter Cushing) and his zombie U-boat survivors.

1980 saw the launch of at least two haunted ships on the big screen. First, and best, was John Carpenter’s The Fog with its rotted pirates returning to put the damper on a coastal town’s celebration.

A lesser 1980 excursion, Death Ship, saw shipwreck survivors board an abandoned freighter where unseen Nazi ghosts beset them determined to possess George Kennedy. Unless you want to count the ways a ship can kill people, prepare to be bored.

By the end of the decade we didn’t need ghosts to kill us or drive us crazy. In Dead Calm (1989) one deranged dude (Billy Zane) is all it takes to first slaughter his traveling companions and then set his sights on another yacht with Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill aboard. Suspense and claustrophobia combine for an effective thriller.

And finally, when salvagers board the Ghost Ship (2002, and not a remake of those previously titled), they encounter vengeful spirits and a Satanic plot in a technically polished, but by-the-numbers hybrid of The Shining meets Beyond The Poseidon Adventure.

Whatever floats your boat, and even if you don’t know your aft from your starboard, chances are you have your own favorite Ship of Ghouls. But if you’d care to board any of our fearsome fleet for a Carnage Cruise, may we suggest you bring along several lifesavers.