There's something deceased in here . . .

Ghost Ship
Review written by: Alex Sandell

Ghost Ship's opening scene is so good that it may convince you that you're about to witness the greatest horror movie ever put on the silver screen.  It is so pleasantly repugnant in its over-the-top violence, and so comedically excessive in its scintillating slaughter, that it demands you like the show, no matter what happens next.  Unfortunately, nothing that follows touches upon the gleeful gruesomeness found in the first few tantalizing minutes of film.  The rest of the picture definitely has its choice moments, but coming after the marvelously macabre introduction, they feel like the celluloid equivalent of playing with yourself in the closet immediately after taking part in a massive orgy with every individual you've ever had the hots for.  But masturbation can be fun, right kids?  And it's Halloween, so let’s cut the overgrown children at Dark Castle Entertainment some slack, shall we?

Dark Castle Entertainment is a production house that was put together back in 1999 by Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, when they decided that what the world really needed was a handful of low-budget remakes based on a handful of low-budget William Castle gimmick films which were released back in the 1950s and 1960s.  This Castle conjuration could also have something to do with the fact that both Zemeckis and Silver are horror hounds, and needed something scary to produce after their seminal Tales from the Crypt series had run its course on HBO, and in two inferior theatrical films.  So, from the Crypt Keeper to Castle they went, and the world is all the better for it, sort of. 

William Castle was a poor man's Alfred Hitchcock, with a few rich ideas.  One of the most opulent of these ideas was to distribute ghost goggles to audience members attending his film, 13 Ghosts.  These goggles ostensibly allowed the gullible audience members to "see" the thirteen ghosts featured in the movie . . . if they dared to put the things on and take a look.  Of course you could see the ghosts just fine without the ghastly cardboard goggles, but with everybody wearing them, who was gonna notice?  I'm sure that story alone reveals to you how powerful this genius filmmaker was when he was at his most inspired, and I'm convinced that you can now more fully understand and appreciate Zemeckis's and Silver's noble goal of bringing back to life the work of this nearly forgotten director of hackneyed horror flicks and disposable eyewear, for a whole new generation to cherish.

The first Dark Castle Entertainment production was released in 1999, based on a 1958 William Castle film; both were titled, House on Haunted Hill.  Zemeckis and Silver released a modernized (IE - it had gore and showed titties) version of Hill to disastrous reviews from critics worldwide, and my mom, who called it, "the worst movie ever" and complained to the manager of the theater for letting people under 17 into the auditorium to view the picture.  Although snooty critics, and my high-strung mom, panned the remake, much like they did the original, the film turned in a tidy profit, and work was started on the second Dark Castle flick, which was a remake of Castle's archetypal, 13 Ghosts.  While the 2001 film never strayed far from its source material, it did opt to trade in the ghost goggles for ghost gore and ghost titties.  Now, only one year later, we have the third Dark Castle Entertainment picture, Ghost Ship, which isn't even based on a William Castle film, but does contain both gore and titties.  At this point, you have to wonder why so many female ghosts walk around with their shirts off.  Ghost Ship is directed by the same guy (Steve Beck) that was behind the camera for 2001's Thir13en Ghosts, so there's sort of a William Castle connection, in a six degrees of separation kind of way.

If you've seen either of the other Dark Castle Entertainment films, you pretty much know what to expect with Ghost Ship.  Although the strobe lights featured so prominently in House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts are noticeably absent (epileptics, your day has arrived!), all of the other key ingredients are here.  A group of people who are more characterizations of characters from superior films than they are their own unique characters are stuck together in a confined area hoping to get rich off of some barely hidden treasure.  There's the typical heroine, this time played by Julianna Margulies, acting overly Ripley-ish as she calmly walks past floating, bloated and decomposing corpses, only to start screaming like a child over a few rats she encounters moments later (I think this was a poorly done play on Indiana Jones's fear of snakes).  There's the greedy prick that's ready and willing to stab his shipmates in the back, if the need arises.  Of course they didn't leave out the horny guy who decides he's not cheating on his fiancée if he gets it on with a ghost, being that the ghost is dead, and all.  The gang's all here, and we probably wouldn't even care if they were played by cardboard cutouts, as long as they died an amusingly dreadful death, immediately after their body doubles writhe their way through a scene of lust and seduction that would please even Hugh Hefner.

Like both Dark Castle Entertainment pictures before it, Ghost Ship delivers when it comes to cool killings.  I won't spoil any of them for you causality vampires out there, but they make for good Saturday evening entertainment, if you're into that sort of thing.  There are also a few attempted chills, but nothing really gets under your skin.  Some little kid ghost keeps telling Julianna's character that she should leave the ship, immediately.  Of course the ominous warnings, bleeding bullet holes and other assorted goodies don't even faze the macho Margulies.  All of the people aboard the ship appear to be pretty ambivalent toward the danger they're facing, but like in all Dark Castle Entertainment pictures, they're sort of stuck with nowhere else to go, so at least you don't pull all of your hair out over their indifference toward things that go splash in the night.

What may have you pulling out a good amount of hair are the slow moments in the film.  When a movie runs less than 90 minutes, you'd expect it to be fairly fast moving, but Ghost Ship has a lot of unnecessary lag time when screenwriter, Mark Hanlon, tries to establish a plot which, while more coherent than the last "ghost of the week" flick, The Ring, is never tied up in a satisfying manner, and leaves you feeling slightly ripped-off.  Watching generic characters explaining events we've already witnessed seems not only futile, but frustrating.  I hate to break it to you, Hollywood, but when it comes to films like Ghost Ship, the audience is miles ahead of ya.

Despite the lousy plot, poor character development, and bland exposition, this third entry in the Dark Castle series of films should keep you entertained.  Hopefully the next one they put out can live up to the promise this one had in that marvelously macabre opening scene I mentioned so many paragraphs ago.  Even if it doesn't, I have to admit that, as long as they keep pumping out the cheese from Dark Castle's schlocky shock shop, I'll be there, nachos in hand, waiting to be overwhelmed with cheddar.  Every so often it's nice to see a film revel in what it is, rather than trying to cover up a chunk of crap with nice smelling perfume so that it can call itself deodorant.  Ghost Ship is far from a classic, but it would make William Castle proud, and that's sort of the point, isn't it? 

On a scale of 1-10?

6

Agree? Disagree? Feeling bored and wanna write a letter that you'll probably never get a response to?  Email me at alex@juicycerebellum.com