The City of Hope brings salvation to the Dulcina, which has become a floating morgue on the high seas, a ghost ship haunted by bad intentions. Director Paul Sloane and DP Harry Fischbeck deliver a utilitarian and rather mundane film about a mass murderer, eschewing thrills and mystery for tepid vaudeville humor, though it is a rather brutal and sordid affair. It’s melodrama with a high body count!
The opening scenes are quick and exciting as ghostly lights materialize in the thick fog, as a seemingly abandoned ship careens out of control and almost crashes into the excited crew. Soon, a member of the boarding party is mysteriously clubbed to death, a woman’s lifeless frozen body is discovered on the deck (in 102-degree heat!), another man is found hanged in his cabin, and smoke and fire billow from the boiler room. We get a narratively ambiguous shot of a strange man jumping into the sea (obviously not someone from the boarding crew) and then a partially burnt teletype is found. The story then match-cuts (and jump-cuts) from the teletype, present tense to the past, and we see a well-dressed man reading the now intact message: a man who is obviously the intended recipient of the arrest warrant! The first act builds a modicum of suspense a’ la Mary Celeste, then gives us the explanations for each gruesome discovery before expiring. Turns out, the man reading the note is Maximilian Krieg (John Halliday), owner of the yacht, who is wanted for fraud and facing a lengthy prison sentence. Pushed to wits end, he begins to methodically murder the crew so he and his fiancé Lili (Shirley Grey) can hide away on an isolated atoll. But Lili isn’t so keen on Max anyway, so when her pilot paramour Jim (Neil Hamilton) and his kitten show up, sparks literally fly. In the best Pre-Code WTF? fashion, Jim crashes his plane in the middle of the ocean just to be picked up by Max’s ship! We get emotional violence on multiple levels as a married man is cuckolded by the piano player (Jack La Rue) which leads to the mistress's frozen demise, his neck stretching big sleep, and thus begins a gaggle of gruesomeness. The radioman is shot through the heart (his uniform thick with gushing blood!), the chef is poisoned, the maid tossed overboard and finally the entire crew introduced to Davey Jones’ Locker in one fell swoop. Wow, this may have the second highest body count after James Whale’s THE INVISIBLE MAN!
The film’s short run time is a benefit since Sloane fails to build suspense, and Fischbeck’s photography really adds nothing to the drama. This could have been an unforgettable thriller, revealing Krieg as a remorseless killer feigning innocence as passengers disappear one by one, but the script gets mired with insubstantial humor from Charlie Ruggles which breaks the tension. Is this meant to be a farce or ferocity, humor or humours? This balancing act is deftly handled in another Pre-Code classic MURDERS IN THE ZOO but here it all falls flat. The premise is so much better than the result. At least Max gets his comeuppance and the mysterious figure jumping into the brine is finally explained, and he becomes chum for Chondrichthyes.
Final Grade: (C)