A De Ossorio Horror: The Ghost Galleon (1974)

Amando de Ossorio was busy guy during the first half of the ‘70s. He was involved in a franchise of horror flicks that made use of the Templar legend. And if you’re not too familiar with said legend, it goes something like this:

Greedy knights, at one time tied to the Catholic Church become so powerful that the cohort threatens the power structure in Rome. As a result of this, the Templars – who resided in various locales over the expanse of Europe – are exterminated in a single, premeditated swoop. The only problem, as it turns out, is the fact that the since the knights were in cahoots with the devil, they didn’t die properly. Over the ensuing centuries, in inexplicably disparate places, the Templars return to murder some buxom women.

The first two entries in the “Blind Dead” series, which is how the four films have come to be referred to as a whole, Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) and Return of the Blind Dead (1973) make use of pretty normal settings for the horror genre. Each is set on land – and even if there’s an abandoned town involved, it comes off as a place that one might drive past. For this third film, shot in 1974, de Ossorio decided to set his flick on the high seas. It wasn’t a bad idea, to be sure. But the reasons how and why the characters arrive at the “Ghost Galleon” is pretty vague.

The film’s narrative begins with models posing and a subsequent discussion between one of those flawless beauties and the woman in charge of the shoot. It seems that a model has gone missing – but that point is quickly obscured by two other models floundering around in a motor boat in the pitch black.

After literally running into the mysterious ship that’s appeared out of nowhere, the girls decide it’s a good idea to get aboard and roam around since the vessel seems to be empty. That’s obviously a mistake, but since each bikini clad girl seems ripe for killing, it helps out those incessant Templars.

After some folks ashore figure out – kinda – what’s going on, a specialist on Templar lore is called in. And while he’s rather annoying, the book worm isn’t the most troublesome aspect of the movie.

In earlier entries of the “Blind Dead” series, the Templars rode around on horses, albeit in slow motion. It was an eerie way for de Ossorio to portray the knights as ghostly figures. On the boat, though, there’s no equine assistance, leaving the knights to walk so overwhelmingly slow that most of the flick seems to be taken over by their movements. It gets to the point that as a viewer, one might even want to fast forward through some of the scenes that are supposed to create a tension, but wind up just taking up the film’s run time.

Most folks find The Ghost Galleon to be the low point in filmic series. That’s obviously debatable, but it doesn’t seem that any of these four films achieves anything that remarkable. 3 down, 1 to go.