Poverty Row Tries Horror (Or Something)

Here we go…

When I picked my movie for Kristen’s latest Spooky Classic Movie Blogathon, I thought Torture Ship sounded suitably menacing. I went into it knowing absolutely nothing about the movie except that it was released in 1939 and was about a ship where criminals were tortured. It should have been at least a little scary, right? Something on the line of The Mystery of the Wax Museum with scream queen Fay Wray, right?

Funny thing, though: When I started watching the movie on Tubi, the first bit that popped up is “Producers Pictures Corporation,” and I thought, “Oh dang. I’m back on Poverty Row.”

Great.

For those who might not be familiar with Poverty Row or are new to Taking Up Room (because we’ve spent a little time on Poverty Row), Poverty Row was, obviously, the low-budget part of Hollywood, and even then there were degrees. There was the riffraff studio, Columbia, which had less money but turned out very impressive pictures, which is ironic because it was considered a punishment for a star to be loaned out to Columbia. There was also RKO, which was along the same lines as Columbia except that they had Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Oh, and Citizen Kane.

Then there was the lowest-of-the-low-budget Poverty Row. As in, the actors wore their own clothes, there were no extras or much of a score, and theatrics such as breaking a chair over someone’s head were kept to a minimum if allowed at all because replacing damaged goods was expensive. If there was a car chase, cars would careen down a country road or a city side street for a bit before pulling sedately off to the side, preferably at a vacant lot, and the actors would get out and either start throwing punches at each other or get nabbed by the police.

These movies were shot very quickly, generally ran for less than an hour, and many of them were filmed with the burgeoning TV industry in mind. They might get a nod or two in the industry papers and maybe a couple of reviews, but very little publicity.

Guess where Torture Ship lands?

It opens on a yacht, where the various criminals are all sitting around wondering when it’s going to be their turn to go meet the good doctor, who’s doing heaven knows what to them. Why these guys are all kept in one room is odd, but we’re going to chalk it up to Budgetary Constraints.

Naturally, they start fighting, and naturally, one of them gets hauled off. So what is Dr. Herbert Stander (Irving Pichel) up to? He’s injecting a serum into the pituitary glands of these hardened criminals hoping that if these guys can get some good endorphins flying, they won’t be criminals anymore.

It’s an equal opportunity experiment. Sheila Bramley (Mary Slavish) is another criminal on the yacht, and the first time we see her, she’s pointing a gun at Joan (Julie Bishop), who’s also on the yacht for some reason, but we’ll get to that. Sheila gets the serum and lays comatose for most of the movie because the serum has to have time to take.

In the meantime, Dr. Stander figures he can’t really tell if his serum works unless he tries it on someone with no criminal record. Enter Joan, and the doctor’s own nephew, Bill (Lyle Talbot), who also happens to be Joan’s fiance. It begs the question: How did Dr. Stander sell Bill and Joan on coming on the yacht in the first place? A closed environment at sea with a bunch of hardened criminals in tow? Sounds wonderful. So romantic.

Torture Ship is based on a Jack London short story, “A Thousand Deaths,” but only slightly. The original London story would have been much more feasible because it has fewer characters and more deft storytelling, but the filmmakers decided to go in a different direction.

It’s weak. It’s so, so weak. And it doesn’t have to be. I don’t know why it wasn’t done like a one-act play, with everyone sitting around wondering when their turn is going to come and speculating about what would happen or reminiscing about their lives thusfar. And maybe seeing previous victims come back all different. There are possibilities with a story like this, even on a microscopic budget, especially with a plot taken from a Jack London short story.

As it is, we get an extremely confusing, extremely messy three-reeler that doesn’t do much of anything but send these characters into different rooms that look to be anywhere but a swanky yacht. Unless they’re outside, which they seldom are, we can’t even tell they’re at sea. Water tanks add to the budget, of course.

It’s also hard to tell which side these characters really play for. Some of them act completely normal and sometimes they act like hoodlums. Even Bill has a creepy Frankenstein’s monster-type moment when he lunges at a sleeping Joan on the couch in the doctor’s cabin, which naturally confuses her to no end.

None of it is scary.  Not in the slightest.

Critics largely seemed to think that the less said about the film, the better, many of them recommending that Torture Ship only appear as part of a double bill.

The first paragraph of the review in Motion Picture Herald, for instance, read more like a trade announcement: “”Torture Ship,” first production of Producers Pictures Corporation will inaugurate the newly formed company’s series of thrill-action melodramas. Already nationally advertised the picture will be given further institutional exploitation upon and after its release date…”

Showman’s Trade Review advised theater owners to hang medical articles about endrocrine glands in the lobby, but they didn’t seem to care too much for Torture Ship, either:

The story of this is weird and about half way into itself gets very much involved. But the production is good judging by independent standards and this can be classed as one of the better States Righters. The performances of the cast are about average and direction has been careful except for too evident dragging in of comedy by the heels. One can almost feel that after a time the producers felt the strain of drama had been too great so they said, “Now’s the time for a comedy scene.”

The Exhibitor got downright vague: “Producer has, apparently, a register of good actorial material, the ability to come close to the bull’s-eye in its field, and the stride is really hit, it should fill a void in the relatively inexpensive, yet entertaining, picture field.”

Regardless of what the critics thought, Torture Ship was enough to get Producers Pictures Corporation in the production door, although they rebranded as Producers Releasing Corporation after four films. PRC wasn’t around for all that long, either, though, going belly-up in 1947.

Like a lot of Poverty Row films, Torture Ship found new life on the small screen as early as 1953, and later, of course, migrated to streaming services like Tubi and Amazon Prime, where it can be discovered by unsuspecting movie fans. And probably played in the background.

Coming up in November (click on the images for more information):

For more Spooky Classics, please see Kristen at Hoofers and Honeys. Thanks for bringing this back, Kristen–it was a blast! Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you on Tuesday for another review…

---

Torture Ship is available on DVD from Amazon. It is also available to stream on Tubi.

~Purchases made via Amazon Affiliate links found on this site help support Taking Up Room at no extra cost to you.~

If you’re enjoying what you see on Taking Up Room, please subscribe to my Substack page, where you’ll find both free and paid subscriber-only reviews of mostly new and newish movies, documentaries, and shows. I publish every Wednesday and Saturday. You can also subscribe to my Club 15 Tier, which gives you at least one extra Taking Up Room post every month for a small fee.