Terror Aboard

A steamship comes across an abandoned yacht. When crew members board it, they find all onboard murdered. The remainder of the picture is mostly a flashback on what transpired up to the present. I'll bet you think this would be an exciting murder mystery, huh?

Well, no. The story is related in a bloodless (no pun intended) manner that it is devoid of excitement. It is a story without tension or suspense, a poorly done production in which several notable back-bench supporting actors are wasted in undeveloped roles. It is billed as a mystery but is more of a melodrama, and a mediocre one to boot.

The murderer is known right away and is played by John Halliday. He does the best he can in a creepy, soft-spoken performance. He dispatches everyone on board in ways ranging from implausible to downright laughable. The methods he uses are the only interesting moments to consider in this sub-par entry from Paramount.

But the presence that really sinks the picture is the normally dependable Charlie Ruggles, out of his element here in a comic relief role. Any scene containing incipient feelings of anxiety or apprehension are quickly erased by his annoying presence. The mood created by his antics was all wrong for this picture. In sum, this was a very disappointing and misspent 69 minutes.

I read somewhere that this was like a Friday the 13th film for the 1930s - that may be an understatement. After the first half hour, it's murder the rest of the way! Yippee!! And not to spoil anything, the villains' comeuppance is not enough in my opinion. If anyone ever deserved it, he should have been quartered with each quarter being sent to the four corners of the earth and then quartered again.

John Halliday plays a completely 100% monstrous man named Max, who for no explained reason becomes one of the great serial killers in history. People get shot, stabbed, poisoned, drowned, frozen to death, bludgeoned and much, much more for all you death fans out there. This is all supposed to occur because he was supposed to be indicted for grand larceny?? At least Lugosi would have fun doing this!! Halliday is a robot, endlessly repeating, "Oh, what a tragedy" in a mild feign surprise after each death.

The real downer of this film may actually be that there is no life to these people before he kills them. All that really happens is Halliday killing people with no conscience whatsoever. The copy I saw was not very clear, but I imagine the cinematography was quite good. There are some terrific silhouette shots, meaningful camera moves and some disturbing shots of death. The plot is an excellent idea, particularly with the "Mary Celeste" ghost ship, and it's 'Beau Geste'-like opening sequence. This is definitely the grimmest 30s horror movie - Charlie Ruggles' comic relief is actually welcome!!! 5/10

I liked "Terror Abroad" a lot. This is one of the best thrillers I've seen from that time period. It was so unlike most of the crime movies of that time in which there was a murder, or even multiple murders, as those were usually crime dramas. This was not a crime drama. This was a crime thriller, bordering on horror.

One of the main reasons I liked "Terror Abroad" is that the antagonist in this movie was a bona fide killer. He wasn't someone who threatened to kill or someone who went through great plans to kill, he was someone who simply killed anyone, and everyone who got in his way.

Maximilian Kreig (John Halliday, who looked a lot like Paul Lukas) was the owner of a yacht and he was sailing in the Pacific Ocean on his way to the island of Samoa with a total of around 20 people counting guests and crew. When his communications officer or communications person received a telegram stating that Maximillian was to be arrested, Max killed his communications guy then destroyed the communications equipment so that no message could get in or out. From there he went into self preservation mode, which meant he had to eliminate any, and everyone who would suspect him of being a killer and/or suspect him of being in trouble with the law--which leads me to a question.

Why is it back then that people were so "brave" that they'd confront someone they believe is a killer? The situation usually goes down like this:

Protagonist or innocent person finds evidence that bad guy is the killer. Bad guy doesn't know innocent person has found evidence. Innocent person confronts bad guy saying something like, "I know you're the killer!" or throws all kinds of aspersions. Now bad guy has to kill innocent person to keep them quiet.

A couple of Maximillian's murders were like that, but he piled up the bodies in a myriad ways. He was responsible for the death of no less than a dozen people. Most he killed with his own hands. Others he put in a situation which would result in death. One he manipulated into killing another and then he manipulated the same person to commit suicide. At the rate Maximillian was going he was creating a ghost ship.

Of note in the movie was Charles Ruggles, the comic relief. I felt like the movie was so heavy and dark for 1933 that they added Charles Ruggles to insert some levity. Also in the movie were Shirley Grey, Neil Hamilton, Jack La Rue, and Leila Bennett, the Zasu Pitts clone.

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A ship at sea finds it is on a collision course with a large luxury yacht. The captain and crew try to hail the yacht to get it to change its course, but it does not respond. Realizing that there is something wrong over there, the ship's crew take a small boat over to the yacht and find it abandoned. They find a couple of bodies including that of a woman dressed in formal evening attire who has frozen to death in a tropical climate.

The visiting captain finds the top half of a telegram that has been ripped in half that indicates someone aboard the ship has been indicted by a grand jury. At that point the film flashes back to the actual reception of that telegram. The person who received this telegram - could be a member of the crew, could be a guest - realizes that he/she is facing a long prison term and there is no place to run. This person then decides that the best way to proceed is to kill everyone on board with some lost in the deep and some found on the ship, then jump from the ship and swim to a nearby island that only he/she and one other person - now dead - knows about that has friendly natives, plenty of food and water, and best of all, never has visitors from civilization. The perpetrator will then be numbered among the dead lost in the deep and, with no witnesses to say otherwise, will be free to live a life of ease in a tropical paradise.

The question is - how do you kill over a dozen people without any of them catching on as to who is to blame before you are done? The answer is you have to use a variety of methods including getting some of the passengers to kill each other by playing off certain hostilities and jealousies to which you are privy, convincing still others to commit suicide, and coming up with novel ways that don't leave fingerprints and witnesses to get the others, all the while playing on the panic and superstitions of the shrinking numbers of survivors so that it appears it is all the work of some kind of supernatural sea-bound ghost or perhaps a maniac stowaway that nobody knows about.

Does the murderer's plan work? It's a possibility...this is still the precode era and unjust endings were allowed. Watch and find out.

I found this film to be well paced with clever even Hitchcock-like reasoning by the murderer. I'd almost call the murderer likable - he/she is that clever. As for Charles Ruggles who I usually find either very humorous or annoying in these early supporting Paramount roles, I found him quite good here as his levity helped break up the constant tension of wondering who was going to get it next. Highly recommended.

A passing ship finds a yacht adrift. Captain Stanley Fields leads a rescue party and sends a man on board. When they follow, they find no one alive, and the corpse of a woman who has frozen to death in the tropics. We then flash back a few days, when the yacht's owner, John Halliday, has just received a radiogram that he has been indicted. His guests are involved intrigues of a sexual nature, and the crew is growing desperate.... except for superstitious steward Charley Ruggles, who's sporting a lower-east-side accent.

It's a competently made, though not terribly excellent little movie, with a cast of largely supporting actors, including Veree Teasdale, Neil Hamilton, and Bobby Dunn as a cross-eyed sailor, just the thing to fill out a movie program.