”They exist on the flesh of the young and beautiful’
The Ghost Galleon is a 1974 Spanish horror film in which the living dead Knights Templar hunt for fresh human victims. In the US, the film was released by Sam Sherman’s Independent-International as Horror of the Zombies.
Written and directed by Amando de Ossorio (Tombs of the Blind Dead, Night of the Seagulls, Demon Witch Child).
The movie stars Maria Perschy, Jack Taylor, Bárbara Rey, Carlos Lemos, Manuel de Blas, Blanca Estrada and Margarita Merino.
Plot:
A pair of swimsuit models are out in a boat to stage a publicity stunt by appearing to be stranded. They discover a mysterious galleon shrouded in mist and board it.
When contact is lost, the wealthy and unscrupulous businessman who sent them out decides to mount his own rescue mission and abducts one of the models’ friends. The abducted girl makes an unsuccessful escape attempt. The businessman and his secretary recruit an eccentric scholar to assist them in their search for the missing models and their boat.
Unfortunately, the phantom galleon carries the coffins of the Knights Templar, eyeless living dead beings who hunt humans by sound…
Our review:
The Blind Dead are back and this time, they’re on a boat! Yes, you read that correctly. The decaying and blind Knight Templar are back and they’re just as evil and bloodthirsty as they were in both Tombs of the Blind Dead and Return of the Evil Dead. However, this time, they’re on a boat. What are they doing on a boat? They’re guarding some sort of satanic treasure chest and they’re killing and eating anyone who makes the mistake of boarding their boat.
That means that this is the first Blind Dead film to not feature any scenes of the Blind Dead riding their horses in slow motion. That may not sound like much but the absence of those horses is felt. The Blind Dead on horses is a metaphor for everything from political tyranny to religious oppression. The Blind Dead on a boat are still scary but now they’re also vaguely silly.
And yet, the Blind Dead on a boat is not the silliest part of the film! The Ghost Galleon starts out with two models lost at sea. Apparently, they were hired by a businessman and aspiring politician named Howard Tucker (Jack Taylor). Howard is a boat manufacturer and he felt it would be great publicity if the models took one of his boats out into the ocean and pretended to get stranded. Apparently, Howard felt that this would convince the public that they could live for weeks in one of his speedboats if they needed to… No, I’m not making that up. That’s the plot of the damn film.
Anyway — the models get stranded for real but suddenly, here comes a big, dark, old-timey galleon. It’s just floating out in the middle of the ocean and it appears to be surrounded by a very thick fog. Naturally, the models decide to leave their boat for the galleon because why stay somewhere vaguely safe when you can get on a big, scary, evil-looking galleon?
Now the models are missing and Howard needs to get his boat back. So, he and his evil henchman get yet another model to sail out to the middle of the ocean with them. Also accompanying them is a historian/scientist guy, who is mostly there because the film will later need him to fill in the backstory of the Blind Dead…
Now, I know that it probably sounds like I’m being supercritical of the third Blind Dead film but actually, it kind of works. The key is not to worry about logic, consistency, or anything you learned about at a screenwriting workshop. Instead, simply accept The Ghost Galleon as being the equivalent of a filmed nightmare. For everything that the film lacks in logic, it makes up for in atmosphere (let’s just say that the fog machine gets quite a workout). And while it may not make much sense for them to be on a boat, the Blind Dead are just as scary, evil, and merciless as ever.
Add to that, the film has a great ending. I won’t spoil it here but I will say that the film’s final shot makes up for a lot of what you have to sit through to reach it.
The Ghost Galleon should not be the first Blind Dead film that you see. But if you’ve seen Tombs of the Blind Dead and Return of the Evil Dead, you should also see The Ghost Galleon. If nothing else, it proves the de Ossorio could get results with even the most ludicrous of premises.
Lisa Marie Bowman, guest reviewer via Through the Shattered Lens
Other reviews:
“This movie is like being in a trance. A trance that has a flaming ship in a bathtub for a special effect, which is perhaps one of the finest trances to find oneself. The Blind Dead themselves are wonderful as always…” B&S About Movies
” …with no plot to bolster the spine-tingling visuals or add anything that even remotely resembles emotional impact, the resulting film is a wee bit of a letdown. As dreadful as it is, the combination of terrible acting, guffawing dialogue, shoddy direction and all-round laziness actually elevates The Ghost Galleon into the sublime realms of ‘so bad, it’s good.’” Behind the Couch
” …it had a really cool, creepy concept but Ossorio doesn’t seem to know how to flesh it out to be an interesting horror film. His poor plotting, slow pace, sloppy editing, bad effects and shitty characters makes this film more of a target for the B-movie crowd looking for a film to make fun of instead of a Euro-horror crowd looking for some atmospheric suspense and scares.” ★ Blood Brothers
“Aside from a few moments of inspired creepiness in this atmosphere heavy, but monetarily light horror movie, Ossorio’s direction is adrift with nowhere to go; and dominated by a sluggish pace that makes the Blind Dead look like running zombies in comparison.” Cool @ss Cinema
“The entire first half plays out as a wonderfully suspenseful set piece in which the Blind Dead gradually make themselves known, whilst he even manages a nice little twist at the film’s closing even as he fluffs the ending. Indeed, The Ghost Galleon may not be the best example of a Blind Dead movie, but it’s by no means a major disappointment.” The Digital Fix
“The Ghost Galleon is a very nicely shot film, and the sequences on the ship are a nice fit with Amando de Ossorio’s taste for the eerie and atmospheric. The Templars themselves look great, although the miniature effects are ridiculous, looking almost as if the ship had been yanked out of a box of Fruity Pebbles and dropped in a bathtub.” DVD Talk
“While it does retain a robust sense of spectral atmosphere and dread, the third entry has little else to keep its shoddy galleon afloat. Tired, lame formulaic sequences fail to put sails in the only occasionally interesting story but de Ossorio fleetingly conjures a few short moments of the magic we know he’s capable of. Overall though, a disappointment.” Eat My Brains
“And at the very end Ossorio rallies with a marvellous scene of the Templars emerging from the sea and advancing across a Costa Blanca beach in silent pursuit of our oblivious heroes. It’s too little too late, however, for El buque maldito is hamstrung, not only by utterly pathetic model shots of the titular ship, but also a lethargic lack of incident that kills viewer involvement stone dead.” Jonathan Rigby, Euro Gothic
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” …the script is very weak, full of horrible dialogue, and the acting is mostly terrible (though it’s good to bear in mind these faults may be the result of the translation and dubbing). The slow-moving zombies themselves are still pretty creepy, but they were much better used in the other three movies. For my money, this is the weakest of the series.” Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings
“This isn’t one of the best Blind Dead films, not even close. It’s barely a mediocre bit of cinema, honestly. A two out of five star affair. Yet, as previously mentioned, it has some enjoyable moments in between the languid pacing and a lot of bad acting, some good practical effects and weird images.” Father Son Holy Gore
“Ghost Galleon, despite the cool title, is a major step down in budget, production, and imagination. That the vaunted vessel is a small model is laughably obvious.” Mike “McBeardo” McFadden, Heavy Metal Movies
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“The scenes with the Knights Templar rising have a certain dead of midnight gloom to them as we watch the zombies slowly inexorably shuffling through the ship. On the other hand, the set-up does not use the Knights Templar to their best, nor with the effectiveness they had in Tombs of the Blind Dead. The film is mostly notable for having inspired other films.” ★★ Moria
“Cheap, but as usual very bloody and effective – and the scene when she’s chased is the longest and slowest ever filmed, but it looks great and she makes fine job looking scared shitless! The movie is saved by the stunning last scene, when… I’m not gonna tell you, but it looks great and powerful.” Ninja Dixon
“Unfortunately, the budget has been severely slashed this time around and while de Ossorio does his best to work around this hindrance with a ton of murky fog and dark photography, the ‘gigantic’ Ghost Galleon proves to be little more than a model ship in a bathtub. Gone is the frantic pacing from Return of the Evil Dead, replacing the action with more slow-plodding horde-like tension much like in the original, Tombs of the Blind Dead.” Oh, the Horror!
“The production quality went really downhill, the lighting with fog looks atrocious, I feel like I watching a Scooby Doo mystery…with slow pacing and death scenes that take ages to start. Yes, it is about the same level of grisly kills but it just felt forced. Yes, somehow we’re supposed to forget Tucker’s henchman clearly attacked Noemi prior to this rescue attempt.” Rotten Reelz
“The sightless ghouls are conspicuous by their absence for much of the running time, only rising from their caskets on a few occasions to despatch screaming models before re-grouping for a too-little-too-late final attack. The galleon itself does make for a suitably spooky location…” The Spinning Image
“It never truly feels like we’re on a boat, sadly. The image is too dark and the set design is minimal. It is our brain that completes what it doesn’t see. At least, the actors are convincing enough and work their magic. What we want from this flick we get when all is said and done, but we must be patient.” 2 out of 4, Tales of Terror
“The first hour is somewhat slow, with the running time including posing sessions with the models and a rather incongruous scene in which the megalomaniacal magnate holds the model’s roommate hostage in a dungeon-like chamber … The atmospheric scenes aboard the decrepit galleon (long shots of which obviously are of a model ship, unfortunately) are genuinely creepy…” TV Guide
” …although the essential ingredients of de Ossorio’s tried recipe are present, … here they aren’t as well exploited as the first two movies.” Peter Dendle, Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide
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