The Ghost Galleon Review

‘The Ghost Galleon’ (1974) is the third movie in Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series and almost stands up to the previous entries. I reviewed the first movie, ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’ last May (read that review here) and so was glad to have the opportunity to watch this third installment.

In ‘Horror of the Zombies’ (as this movie is called on various public domain DVD’s) the basic story is a publicity stunt lands two bikini clad models out in the middle of the ocean “stranded” in a boat. The thought is that they would be found by another ship and the rescuing would make headlines. But instead of being found by someone capable of starting this mediafire they are stumbled upon by an ancient galleon carrying the undead Knights Templar. After being struck by the galleon and surrounded by an impenetrable fog the ladies make their way on board this seemingly empty ship in order to try to get some answers.

After the duo is not heard from for quite some time, their employers and friends go out in search of them using their last known coordinates as a guide. They find favorable waters and no boat nor galleon, that is until a strange fog starts to encroach upon them. The rest of the story pretty much tells itself.

Like the first Blind Dead movie, the undead in ‘The Ghost Galleon’ are probably some of the most amazing looking zombies around, albeit as slow as frozen molasses when it comes to their movement speed. When they are onscreen Amando does something that only works in a few films…there is no danger music, no sound at all except from what you see on screen. Dead silence interrupted by floor boards creaking, screams and groans, footfalls shuffling and nothing else. There are definitely some eerie scenes in this movie because of it and I loved every one of them, they are what make the movie.

But for its pro’s, it has some con’s too. For one it’s dubbed (at least the version that I watched). As filmed, ‘The Ghost Galleon’ is a Spanish film and so it is dubbed in English, and some of the female voices used are a bit too masculine to match the women on screen. Also there are more than a few scenes that have a good amount of overacting.

The biggest con is a strong point for me for why I like this film but one that I think the majority of horror fans won’t get into. The buildup is slow as is the pace. It’s 33 minutes into the film before you catch a glimpse of the first undead and it takes an additional 2 or 3 minutes before he manages to drag his slow moving carcass out of his coffin and get moving. I enjoy that style of cinematography, where the action and gore is not a strongpoint but replaced with tension and creepiness (not that I don’t enjoy a good dismemberment either, don’t get me wrong). One scene where the Knights are attacking Barbara Rey’s character takes way too many minutes for what little it contains, which is that the Knights drag her down into the bowels of the ship. It ‘feels’ like ten minutes for something so simple when there are five Knights all working together and what a normal zombie would have had finished in thirty seconds. You either enjoy that type of scene or not and this movie has a lot of them.

Blanca Estrada probably gives the best performance here as Kathy, one of the two missing models, as well as Carlos Lemos, a Professor who’s interested in the mysterious galleon and its legend. With no main star to speak of, each character has to hold its own and most fail at it.

In the end this movie does not compare all that well to ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’ and if it had come out first, I probably would not have rushed to see the others. However, riding on the coattails of the previous films and containing the awesome undead Knights Templar, silly plot or no silly plot, this movie garners at least a single viewing. It is embedded below for those willing.

Tombs of the Blind Dead Review

It is not unlike me to watch a subtitled foreign film. In fact, one of my favorite films ever is Run Lola Run, a German film subtitled in English (the English dub version is just horrible and ruins the movie, skip if you can) starring Franka Potente.

It can be hard to find a good foreign horror film at times when the mood for one hits; they are either before my time or just never show up in top 10 lists of foreign films anywhere for me to come across. That being said, I was very glad to come across the Spanish language Blind Dead tetralogy just by chance.

The first installment of this series is entitled ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’, written and directed by Amando de Ossorio in 1971. Originally called ‘La Noche del terror ciego’(‘The Night of the Blind Terror’), this film focuses on the Knights Templar (only referred to as Knights of the East in the film, yet they wear the Templar uniform), a real-life order who were charged with witchcraft and executed. They were left hanging on the gallows so birds could peck out their eyes and their corpses eventually return to life when anyone dares venture into their abandoned village and monastery of Berzano after dark.

The plot is that Virginia, Betty, and Roger decide to take a vacation by train. Enroute, Virginia, sensing interest between Betty, her long time best friend, and Roger, her boyfriend, and having seen a village outside the train window, jumps off the moving train to have some time alone. She attempts to spend the night in the village, only to have the knights awaken and come after her, killing her. Later, Betty and Roger, after arriving at their destination, rent some horses to go back to the village to try tofind Virginia. Like the knights, Virginia’s corpse soon starts walking as well, out on the hunt of humans.

As the story continues, Betty and Roger go to a librarian to learn of the knights, finding out at the librarians brother, Pedro, is a smuggler in the area of Berzano. It is thought that Pedro could be using the knight legend to cover his activities, hiding from prying eyes. After going to see him, Betty and Roger manage to convince him to go with them to Berzano, to spend the night there in hope of finding out what happened to Virginia. Soon, the church bells sound and the knights awaken once again, closing in.

The knights look very much like out of a Tolkien novel, arms outstretched, slow to walk, but able to ride ghostly horses. Even Virginia walks at a slow pace. These are not your fast moving primal zombies (the director didn’t even like them being referred to as zombies, but rather that they resembled mummies). Blind, they hunt by sound and can follow anything making noise, including heartbeats. The wonderful soundtrack is by Antón García Abril, showcasing well placed screams, groans, creepy music, and Templar chanting to do wonders to add to the atmosphere of the abandoned village from a long time ago. The ghostly horses footsteps are shown in slow motion and have a nice echo to them in the still air. The Spanish women and countryside also add to the visual appeal of the movie.

Most of the time the subtitles stand out and are easy to read, I counted only a handful of scenes where this was not the case, where the background color blended in with the subtitle color washing them out. That aside, however, subtitles also means that non-native speakers miss a lot of the nuances of the actors expressions and body language while they are speaking on screen. Despite this, María Elena Arpón (Virginia) and José Thelman (Pedro) come across as very charismatic, they have a good screen presence, and are memorable characters. Francisco Sanz as Prof. Candel (the librarian) is well cast, his look is the stereotypical scholarly type role with the glasses and peppered hair and goatee, and he’s instrumental in explaining the background story of the knights to both Betty and Roger as well as the viewers.

If terror build up (as opposed to in your face destruction and gore) and nice cinematography interest you, this is definitely a film worthy of a viewing or two, if not a place on your shelf. Eurohorror at its finest.