Customer Reviews

The Ghost Galleon

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

By 1974 Amando de Ossario's Blind Dead films seemed to be in a rut. The release of The Ghost Galleon (Horror of the Zombies in America) did nothing to help the series'eventual demise. What started out as a fairly interesting concept had collapsed under its own weight.

The Blind Dead Knight's Templar are back but now they exist in another dimension upon a forever floating ghost ship. The plotting is fairly non-existent. Two models are set adrift on a boat in the major shipping channel by sports equipment tycoon Howard Tucker (Jack Taylor) as a publicity stunt to draw attention to his new water craft. The two girls drift into a mysterious fog and see an ancient floating galleon. This galleon promptly crashes into them. One of the models (Margarita Merino, in an uncredited role) boards the ship rather than stay in her own boat. That night screams are heard and she is never seen again. Her model partner Kathy (Blanca Estrada) follows her friend onto the galleon finding that the Blind Dead are on board who rapidly turn her into zombie dinner.

Thrown into the mix are a would be rescue squad led by Tucker. The group also includes Nomei (Barbara Rey) with whom Kathy may have been having a lesbian affair, Kathy and Nomei's employer Lillian (Maria Perschy), a seemingly lost Professor, and Sergei, Tucker's henchman bodyguard. What follows is fairly predictable with the zombies killing off each one of the rescuers as the film progresses.

The Blue Underground disc features both Spanish and English audio. On this film I opted for the English. The picture quality is very good considering the source material. The viewer should be aware that much of the film is dark and very foggy so clarity is a major issue.

The story as I alluded to is pretty bland. The acting is adequate for a B movie of this type. Performances are generally wooden. The model work is very dated. If you watch carefully at the end of the film you will easily notice problems with the scale of the ship as compared to the ocean it is floating in. On the horror level the film is fairly non gory and except for one or two instances of blood there is no offensive violence. Unlike the first two films the nudity in this outing is nonexistent.

This is worth a viewing for the Ossario completest but is generally not worth seeking out otherwise. The disc also contains the original theatrical trailer, promotional materials for its American release as Horror of the Zombies, and a stills gallery.

`The Ghost Galleon' released in '74 is writer/director Amando de Ossorio's third installment in the "Blind Dead" series. In my estimation this film holds the dubious distinction of being the worst of the four films. The action is excruciatingly slow, the women not as attractive and the storyline adds nothing to what has been done in the two previous films. Also bothersome was the idea of placing the slow-moving corpses about a ship, it just didn't work for me.

Of course the genius about making sequels is the fact that you already have established an audience that will by the film whether they like it or not. Who wants something missing from the collection?

While the ship model was trash the rest of the movie was good. What do you expect for a man directing this with hardly any budget

I FIRST SAW AN EDITED(WHY?)PRINT OF THIS FILM ON TV ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO & FOUND IT INTERESTING & DIFFERENT. I COULD TELL IT WAS MADE ON A VERY LOW BUDGET,(TOY MODEL FOR SHIP BURNING)& ACTING WAS POOR AT TIMES TOO, BUT THE ZOMBIES WERE VERY CREEPY & SCARY. MARIA'S SCENE OF BEING DRAGED DOWN INTO THE HATCH SCREAMING & THEN EATEN MAKES THIS FILM WORTH WATCHING? THESE TEMPLARS ARE AMONG THE BEST EVER PUT ON FILM, BUT OFCOURSE, THE GIRLS WERE PUT ON THE "Ghost Galleon" TO BE 'FOOD' FOR THE ZOMBIES. BEING BLIND & SLOW AS THEY WERE DIDN'T PREVENT THEM FROM CATCHING & DEVOURING MOST OF THE FEMALE CAST MEMBERS, WHO WERE ALWAYS 'FALLING DOWN & CAN'T GET UP'. IT'S NOT OFTEN THAT YOU SEE A HORROR FILM THAT'S ALSO FUNNY & SCARY. SO, SOME SAY THIS FILM ISN'T HORROR BUT IS JUST HORRIBLE? I FOUND IT MOSTLY SCARY BUT ALSO STUPID & FUNNY AT TIMES! DOUBT IT WILL EVER BE CLASSIFIED AS A COMEDY??? HAVN'T SEEN THE DVD VERSION YET, SO THIS IS FOR THE VHS VIDEO ONLY.

I actually loved this movie,i thought it was creative and eerie.Ignore the other reviews who are probrably saw and mainstream horror fans.I won't give away the plot which has obviously been bashed by the negative reviews.but this movie is defintely for those who like 70's horror and a simple plot that does not need nudity blood and gore to be scary.defintely rare and hard to find,i highly recommend..................

This is the third in the Spanish "Blind Dead" series from Amando de Ossorio. This film has been released under a huge number of names, including "Horror of the Zombies", "The Blind Dead 3", "Ghost Ships of the Blind Dead", "Zombie Flesh Eater", and "El Buque Maldito".

The acting is fairly wooden (the dubbing doesn't help, of course), the premise is completely ludicrous, but the worst feature of the film is the pacing. Basically it comes down to this: an evil rich guy puts two swimsuit models in a boat for them to fake being stranded as a publicity stunt. I don't know how great this stunt could have possibly been in the mind of the filmmakers, but they treat it like it's as important as nuclear launch codes. The girls (of course) get lost in a mysterious fog, where a ghost ship intercepts them. The logical thing for them to do is to explore it, whereupon they promptly discover that it is full of lugubrious zombies which move so slowly that the girls could easily outrun them, but don't.

The rest of the protagonists including the egomaniacal idiot who came up with the harebrained scheme (Howard Tucker), a peculiar doctor of some sort (Professor Grüber), and a model who is actually also a hostage show up at the ghost ship to rescue the girls. Professor Grüber immediately reveals "I'm certain that we're immersed in another dimension, completely uncommon to us all." The backstory is then revealed to have something to do with the "Templars" being banished by the Pope in the sixteenth century, so they now dwell on this ship with their treasure where they are subject to black magic rituals.

The cast gets thinned out one by one amongst lots of tramping around the creaky old ship. They decide to throw the zombies into the sea and then swim to a nearby island, although Professor Grüber, a nonswimmer, gets to remain on the ship which has now spontaneously combusted due to the red glowing eyes of a skull with horns.

I gave the film a second star for the conclusion on the island, which, while predictable, was still quite well done and creepy. I won't reveal the resolution in case you haven't guessed how it ends, but it was definitely the highlight of the movie.

I was disappointed in "The Ghost Galleon" because of both conception and execution. The film could have been a much more workable and plausible feature if Amando de Ossorio has given the characters more legitimate reasons for interacting the way they did and more reasonable premises for being in the situations they found themselves in. The pacing killed the suspense and reduced the film to the dustbin of zombie movie history. If you are a zombie fanatic, you may want to take a look at this one, otherwise, there are many more, and better, choices available to you.

So you're a swimsuit model stranded out in the ocean on a publicity stunt, when a fog rolls in... and with it a large ancient looking pirate ship. What do you do? Climb aboard of course, with no weapons and only your swimsuit and purse to protect you.

I could go into the plot here, but their really isn't much of one. Two models on a publicity stunt at sea end up Zombie fodder and then a rescue group of completely irritating, non-sensical people follow to find them. They of course come across the Zombie ship as well. Then we get to hear about 10 minutes straight of a scientist explaining alternate dimentions and the Templar Knights.

Of course this is low budget, and of course the acting and scripting are so bad you want to shriek. But where what could have been and excellent B-movie fails, is in it's speed. If your actors are this bad, then get to the monsters quickly. If you don't have a plot then spend more time showing monsters... this movie is excruciatingly slow. And then the Zombies... of course we expect them to look like rubber (it IS a B-Movie after all), but a galapagos tortise could have outrun them. Certainly they are blind and follow their pray by sound... but the death scenes run WAY too long as the victims stumble around the ship and the Zombies shuffle after them... well not shuffle, that implies some sort of speed... these more just sort of stand there and wait until the stupid people run back into them again. We of course have the obligitory "Oh my shoe is stuck" which does in one of the little ladies... but wow... the death scenes are terrible. And the gore is so minimal that even the gorehounds won't enjoy this one.

The sad thing is that I really wanted to like this movie, but the poor pacing kept what should have been a wonderful B-Movie from being anything but a letdown. If you are looking for a movie to sleep through, then this is your ticket.

This is the third in the Spanish "Blind Dead" series from Amando de Ossorio. This film has been released under a huge number of names, including "The Ghost Galleon", "The Blind Dead 3", "Ghost Ships of the Blind Dead", "Zombie Flesh Eater", and "El Buque Maldito".

The acting is fairly wooden (the dubbing doesn't help, of course), the premise is completely ludicrous, but the worst feature of the film is the pacing. Basically it comes down to this: an evil rich guy puts two swimsuit models in a boat for them to fake being stranded as a publicity stunt. I don't know how great this stunt could have possibly been in the mind of the filmmakers, but they treat it like it's as important as nuclear launch codes. The girls (of course) get lost in a mysterious fog, where a ghost ship intercepts them. The logical thing for them to do is to explore it, whereupon they promptly discover that it is full of lugubrious zombies which move so slowly that the girls could easily outrun them, but don't.

The rest of the protagonists including the egomaniacal idiot who came up with the harebrained scheme (Howard Tucker), a peculiar doctor of some sort (Professor Grüber), and a model who is actually also a hostage show up at the ghost ship to rescue the girls. Professor Grüber immediately reveals "I'm certain that we're immersed in another dimension, completely uncommon to us all." The backstory is then revealed to have something to do with the "Templars" being banished by the Pope in the sixteenth century, so they now dwell on this ship with their treasure where they are subject to black magic rituals.

The cast gets thinned out one by one amongst lots of tramping around the creaky old ship. They decide to throw the zombies into the sea and then swim to a nearby island, although Professor Grüber, a nonswimmer, gets to remain on the ship which has now spontaneously combusted due to the red glowing eyes of a skull with horns.

I gave the film a second star for the conclusion on the island, which, while predictable, was still quite well done and creepy. I won't reveal the resolution in case you haven't guessed how it ends, but it was definitely the highlight of the movie.

I was disappointed in "Horror of the Zombies" because of both conception and execution. The film could have been a much more workable and plausible feature if Amando de Ossorio has given the characters more legitimate reasons for interacting the way they did and more reasonable premises for being in the situations they found themselves in. The pacing killed the suspense and reduced the film to the dustbin of zombie movie history. If you are a zombie fanatic, you may want to take a look at this one, otherwise, there are many more, and better, choices available to you.

Well besides it was alittle slow pace I think it was pretty good. Also I think it was pretty cool that they were going for something different in this one. All in all not a bad zombie flick. Just don't exspect tons of gore and good acting but other then that it's just plan fun.

In what many fans consider the most surprising of the four films in the series, Maria Perschy (Castle Of Fu Manchu) and Jack Taylor (Eugenie) star in writer/director Amando de Ossorio's chilling tale about a boatload of stranded swimsuit models who discover a mysterious ghost ship. But this phantom galleon carries the coffins of the satanic Templar, eyeless zombies who hunt humans by sound. Even if these frightened lovelies can survive their own forbidden desires, will they escape the insatiable hunger of the BLIND DEAD?