Among the many fright flicks that Bela Lugosi starred in, some just seem to pass under the average classic horror fan's radar.  Mostly, this is because some of those flicks aren't worth the fan's time.  But a few are and this following Lugosi vehicle is one of them.   It's based on a real "Unsolved Mystery" and it showcases Lugosi in a juicy character part, one in which he still manages to retain his title as a Master of Menace.  In fact, you could say that in this film...

By JOE WINTERS

In 1860, the ship "Amazon" was launched in Nova Scotia. Following about ten years of various owners and accidents, the ship was repaired and renamed "Mary Celeste."

On November 7, 1872 she set sail from New York, bound for Genoa, Italy. Before she made port, the Mary Celeste was found abandoned. The Captain, his wife, their two-year old daughter, and the crew were all missing.

In the years that followed, theories ranging from pirates to giant squids to raging storms and even the fabled lost continent of Atlantis would occupy the minds of mystery buffs, at least until Jack the Ripper came along. In 1884 future Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, under a pseudonym, published the story, "J. Habakuk Jepson’s Statement." The tale blended actual events of the Mary Celeste with fiction.

The public interest was re-kindled, and ever since, the mystery of the Mary Celeste would not go away. In 1935 "Dracula" himself, Bela Lugosi, invaded England for real to star in The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste (AKA Phantom Ship).

Captain Benjamin Briggs (Arthur Margetson) needs a crew to help transport a cargo of alcohol on the Mary Celeste from New York Harbor to Genoa, Italy. Meanwhile, Briggs proposes marriage to the lovely Sarah (Shirley Grey). She accepts, but now they must break the news to Jim Morehead (Clifford McLaglen) who had already asked Sarah to marry him.

At a nearby tavern, a gray-haired, one-armed sailor (Bela Lugosi) wearily orders a whiskey, downs it and appears unable to pay the ten cents. He re-introduces himself as Anton Lorenzen to bar owner Jack Samson (Graham Soutten) who can’t believe how his old seafaring pal has aged. Not so long ago a "fine, high-kicking buck," Lorenzen had since been shanghaied (violently forced) into duty aboard ship.

Shortly, Briggs offers Samson five dollars a head to round up a crew. Samson is not above twisting a few arms to gain the recruits needed. Anton, however, and with hate in his eyes, enthusiastically volunteers when he hears that Toby Bilson (Edmund Willard) is to be first mate. Lorenzen reports for duty under the name "Gottlieb."

Morehead appears to reconcile with Briggs concerning Sarah, and provides the Captain with one more crewman, Volkerk Grot (Herbert Cameron). Morehead secretly pays Grot thirty-eight dollars and a promise to be second mate on Morehead’s own next voyage. Morehead suggests to Grot that something might happen to Briggs, who might not reach Genoa alive.

"What might happen?" asks Grot. "You think that over" is the reply.

The Mary Celeste is underway as angry, shanghaied sailor Katz (Gunner Moir) is beaten into line by Bilson. Meanwhile, Grot points out "the rotten, stinking food" to Captain Briggs, who promptly orders Bilson to "flog some decency" into the man. Already suspecting something at the back of Grot’s mind, Briggs is soon almost killed by Grot, an attempt thwarted when the cook Duggan (George Mozart) kills Grot.

Gottlieb has taken a fancy to a black cat (quite a change from Bela’s attitude toward a similar feline in a certain Universal shocker the year before). When Bilson starts to throw the animal overboard, Gottlieb intervenes. The fight is interrupted by an oncoming hurricane!

Gottlieb shortly assures the frightened Sarah that "there’s one who watches over us." And when lusty crewman Tom Goodschard (Dennis Hoey) tries to rape Sarah, Gottlieb cuts him down with the Captain’s sword, and then immediately and tearfully relents at having killed his fellow man (even though Tom was a scum). At this time, Captain Briggs announces that Charlie Kaye (Terence de Marney) had also been killed, but by a boom crashing on him during the storm.

During Charlie’s funeral at sea, Gottlieb reads Bible verse and afterward privately tells Sarah "when this ship sailed, Death sailed on her." As if that weren’t obvious enough by now, it’s even more so when ‘Sailor’ Hoffman (Ben Weldon) is found dead at the wheel with a knife in him. Next, someone takes a shot at Briggs through a cabin porthole, prompting the Captain to confront what’s left of the frightened crew.

The next day, Gottlieb shows Briggs the derby bowler of cook Duggan, who was murdered in his own galley. Next, the body of Andy Gilling (Gibson Gowland) is found hanging. This is all too much for Tooley (Johnny Schofield) who panics, climbs the rigging and falls to his death.

Finally, Gottlieb relates to Sarah about death ships and how he was shanghaied six years ago, flogged by the first mate, thrown in a hold filled with rats, and later dragged through the sea where a shark took his arm.

Soon, crewman Harbens (Edgar Pierce) is missing. Captain Briggs and Sarah are the next to disappear. And then there were three: Bilson, Gottlieb, and Katz. The latter, convinced that Gottlieb is innocent, goes to kill Bilson who shoots first and sends Katz overboard. Satisfied that the mystery is over, Bilson announces plans to sell the cargo, loot the cash box and the men’s sea chests and split the take with Gottlieb, who makes his own announcement (in the deliberately paced Bela Lugosi manner). I’m not Gottlieb. I am Anton Lorenzen."

With that, he pulls a pistol on the already stunned Bilson and relates the tale of six years ago. "Now again the Mary Celeste, and again Mr. Bilson the mate! It wasn’t Katz killed them. I put them overboard for the sharks. Briggs tried to get away on a raft with his pretty bride, but I got him. I got her, too. And now--you." The shot is fired, Bilson is thrown overboard, and Lorenzen’s revenge is complete.

Why he took so many others out can be chalked up to insanity, and while laughing madly, Lorenzen is struck by an unattended boom. In a daze and looking for the man he just killed, Lorenzen goes overboard. And then there were none.

Later it is Captain Tom Morehead who sights the deserted Mary Celeste and, along with some of his crewman, boards the ship, later cashing in on the salvage to the tune of 1700 pounds sterling. With a silent hint of satisfaction, all Morehead can think of is Briggs and "Her" dead.

The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste was only the second film from the newly formed Hammer Film Productions Limited. Chairman William Hinds was a jeweler, theatrical agent and, under the stage name Will Hammer had been half of the comedy duo "Hammer and Smith." The studio, however, soon turned toward distribution as Exclusive Films before returning to production in the late 1940s and their greatest fame in the 50s and beyond as "the studio that dripped blood."

American-born director/screenwriter Denison Clift, along with co-writer Charles Larkworthy, took the murder thriller/body count approach to The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste. Clift had directed films in the States since 1917 and then in Great Britain, as well. This was his final directorial effort. He had also written a number of Broadway plays. Clift retired from screenwriting by the late 1930s and died in 1961.

For the film’s American release, the original opening and closing sequences set in a maritime courtroom were cut from the original 80 minute running time. In the States, The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste would be known as Phantom Ship, and, at 62 minutes, seems to be the only surviving version.

Besides Bela, the cast included Shirley Grey as the only woman on board. She starred a couple years earlier in Paramount’s Terror Aboard, a fun murder yarn set on a modern day yacht and with a body count comparable to the more somber Phantom Ship. For more high seas hi jinx, check out the article, "Horror Ahoy," in the awesome archives of HORROR-WOOD.

Arthur Margetson would appear in the Boris Karloff murder melodrama Juggernaut (1936) and would round out his short career on screen in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (Universal, 1943) starring Basil Rathbone. Margetson enjoyed further success on the Broadway stage before he died in 1951.

Dennis Hoey, who played horny Tom, became more familiar and more likeable as pigheaded Inspector Lestrade in Universal’s Holmes films. Gibson Gowland had starred in Erich Von Stroheim’s chilling epic Greed (1924). He also appeared in The Phantom Of The Opera (1925), The Mysterious Island (1929), The Secret Of The Loch (1935), and briefly in The Ape (1940), The Wolf Man (1941) and The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1945). Gunner Moir was the Empire’s former heavyweight boxing champion. Terence de Marney had a long career in character parts. Some 30 years after The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste, he played the elderly manservant to elderly Boris Karloff in Die, Monster, Die! (1965).

At the time of starring in The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste, Bela Lugosi was riding a tide of popularity. On the heels of Universal’s The Black Cat (1934), he appeared in a half-dozen films in 1935, including The Mysterious Mr. Wong at Monogram, Mark Of The Vampire at MGM, Best Man Wins at Columbia, The Raven at Universal, the never-popular Murder By Television for low-budget Imperial-Cameo Pictures, and The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste.

For this film, Bela submerged his own good looks to play a character we feel great sympathy for. A thoughtful and mostly low-key performance, yet not without some effective Lugosi flourishes, it was the type of role he wouldn’t get many chances to play again. And by his admission, Bela was paid better by the British than he had been by American studios.

After a slump in the horror biz he returned to England later in the decade to star in The Dark Eyes Of London (released in America as The Human Monster), part of the new boom in horror spearheaded in part by Bela himself with Son Of Frankenstein (Universal, 1939). It would be over a decade before Lugosi would return to England once more, for some stage work as Dracula, and consequently to co-star in Old Mother Riley Meets The Vampire (1952).

The DVD version of Phantom Ship by Image Entertainment is taken from the original 35mm nitrate export negative and a new 35mm sound master positive. After years of distribution on small home video labels on VHS tapes, Phantom Ship now can be viewed in its best shape since the original release.

The Mary Celeste was played by the "Q" ship Mary B. Mitchell, which had achieved fame of her own as a U-Boat sinking decoy in World War I. As for the Mary Celeste herself, what really happened during that fateful voyage in 1872 will most likely remain a mystery. And indeed, for those who truly love a mystery, sometimes it’s better that way.

Thanks, Joe.   Certainly, one of the things that makes The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste/ Phantom Ship still interesting today is the fact that it did attempt to offer one explanation for a real-life mystery that is still no closer to a solution than the "Jack The Ripper" slayings.  The film provides a nice role for Lugosi, who is allowed to stretch his (bat) wings a bit and show what a good character actor he could be if given even half a chance.  While classic horror fans may find it a bit slow and lacking in true terror thrills, it is worth a look (you could call it an "Old Dark Ship" kind of flick) for anyone who is a fan of Bela Lugosi.

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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