Linbeymusol
Wonderful character development!
EssenceStory
Well Deserved Praise
Manthast
Absolutely amazing
WillSushyMedia
This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.
IceboxMovies
The last 15 minutes are interesting, when the criminals take over the ship and become the new villains, but the rest of the film is pretty shoddy and can hardly be called a legit adaptation of "A Thousand Deaths". The filmmakers' first mistake was changing the relationship from a father killing and resurrecting his own son to... an uncle merely performing obscure experiments on his nephew. No real tension there. For whatever reason, the filmmakers care more about the nephew falling in love with a woman onboard than they do his complicated relationship with his uncle (something that is never really explored). Personally, I think that including female characters in this film was a mistake. The story is meant to be very Freudian and Oedpial, in the sense that a son is terrified by his domineering father; London allegedly wrote the story as a revenge fantasy about William Chaney, an astrologer who was probably his real father but forever denied it. Regrettably, no trace of that amusing autobiographical context is present in this film. London's original story was concise and simplified: a son is frustrated from being killed and brought back to life by his father over and over again. By comparison, this film is difficult to follow because there are too many characters and way too many individual stories being crammed into the 50-minute running time. Here and there, you can sense the screenwriters struggling to keep some of London's original dialogue in their convoluted script. "A chance one must take" = "Take the chances, since the affairs of men were full of such."The mad scientist's deathbed scene (which is not in the original story) could have worked better in the film had it not been so glossed-over. Seems like the nephew hardly cares.Ending was corny. We have no reason to care that the nephew fell in love.I kind of feel sorry for the orchestra that was hired to compose the music, considering that the music isn't memorable for a second. Seems like a big waste of talent.Of course, not every adaptation can be faithful, and sometimes even the loose adaptations still make for great films. What works against this film is that, aside from being profoundly unfaithful to London, it is also a crushing bore.
MartinHafer
When I see the phrase "great cast", I think GONE WITH THE WIND or TWELVE ANGRY MEN, not a film whose lead is Lyle Talbot (the same guy who starred in a few decent films in the 30s but also PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and a lot of other turkeys). So, while I liked reading the other reviews, I was perplexed by the great cast comments. This was not a great cast--just a bunch of no-names from a Poverty Row studio.As many point out, the first 10 minutes or so of the film is missing. This is true of the public domain copies and 50 pack copies from Mill Creek Entertainment. Additionally, since this is its pedigree, captioning and a high quality print are also absent.The film begins in the middle of a discussion a group of crooks are having about trying to escape from the boat. It's obvious something is missing here, but it's easy enough to discern that a bunch of crooks were somehow lured aboard a mad doctor's boat and he's doing diabolical experiments on them! While this certainly isn't nice, at least he had the decency to pick some people who weren't particularly pillars of society! As for the film, it's really hard to judge the quality of it with a chunk missing. I can say that the ending and Talbot's scheme to get the bad guys to surrender was pretty clever, though. So overall, it's probably one to skip since even with the missing chunk in place (which it isn't), it's still not a great movie by any stretch.
Michael_Elliott
Torture Ship (1939) ** (out of 4) A mad doctor puts criminals aboard his ship so that he can do strange experiments on them trying to figure out what's wrong. This film was directed by Victor Halperin who previously made White Zombie, Supernatural and Revolt of the Zombies. Overall the film isn't too bad but there's really not too much action or horror in the film's short 50-minute running time. Lyle Talbot plays the hero and he always brings some "B" movie charm to a film but that's about it. Mixing the horror, sci-fi and gangster genres together should have worked better. Based on a story by Jack London.
Dukey Flyswatter
Recently got one of those Mill Creek 50 pack of horror and mystery PD movies (Tales Of Terror) because there were about 25 of these programmers I had not yet seen.I was already aware from experience that the quality on most of these is less than desirable but some can't be had anywhere else or were not worth paying ten bucks for alone.In this case I was taken royally as this print is missing the first 8 minutes or so leaving one to guess the rest. Fortunately the plot is simple and you can pick it up easily but you'll still be burning at the Faux Pas. Don't know if Alpha's print of this is the same way but in any case this is one to avoid.