The Ghost Galleon
| The Ghost Galleon | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Amando de Ossorio |
| Produced by | J. L. Bermudez de Castro |
| Written by | Amando de Ossorio |
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| Music by | Antón García Abril |
| Cinematography | Raúl Artigot |
| Edited by | Petra de Nieva |
| Distributed by | Belén Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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106 minutes |
| Country | Spain |
| Language | Spanish |
The Ghost Galleon (El Buque maldito, U.S. VHS title Horror of the Zombies, U.S. television title Ship of Zombies) (1974) is a Spanish horror film written and directed by Amando de Ossorio and starring Jack Taylor. It is also known as Horror of the Zombies, a title frequently found on public domain DVD copies.
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.
The phantom galleon carries the coffins of the Knights Templar, eyeless mummies who hunt humans by sound. The two models are killed before the rescue party arrives. The rescue party also board the galleon, then discover their ship has vanished. The abducted girl is captured and dragged into the depths of the ship to be dismembered and eaten, while the rest of the group is locked in an unnatural sleep. The survivors struggle to repel and combat the spectral knights with what little knowledge they have of them.
The film has been released multiple times on DVD over the years. It was first released on DVD on Dec 3, 2002 by BCI. Blue Underground later released a Limited Edition version of the film on September 27, 2005; Anchor Bay Entertainment would release another version of the film later that same year. The film was last released on DVD by Desert Island Films on August 1, 2012.
TV Guide awarded the film 1 / 4 stars criticizing the pacing of the first hour of the film as being too slow, yet praised the film's atmosphere and ending. Writing in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle said that the "although the essential ingredients of de Ossorio's tried recipe are present, ... here they aren't as well exploited as the first two movies." Glenn Kay, who wrote Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide, called it the worst of the series. Reviewing the Blue Underground DVD, Adam Tyner wrote, "The Ghost Galleon is still a drastic improvement over The Return of the Evil Dead, and deeply flawed though it may be, the movie holds some sort of bizarre, inexplicable charm."
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