The Hate Ship

Aboard a yacht, a Russian nobleman argues with one of his guests, and threatens to expose him. The camera cuts to his other guests. There is a gunshot. The nobleman, it is announced, has shot himself. Now, some time later, we are told there is a party, with no one permitted to bring company. Eventually, one of the guests is shot, with no one present to do the shooting. As he lies in his cabin, perhaps recovering, an investigation occurs which quickly reveals how, if not who nor why.

No mystery there, so far as I was concerned. This very early British International Pictures soundie has most most of the problems of its brethren that year: an immobile camera and dialogue delivered in a stilted, stagey fashion. Sam Simmonds's rapid editing covers the immobile camerawork, but nothing helps the performances, nor the obvious script.

Jameson Thomas is excellent as the villainous Vernon Wolfe. Wolfe plots a clever murder to get his hands on the murdered man's vast estate, including a stupendous yacht. Fast forward to the future and Wolfe is a financial adviser. He handles the assets of a wealthy young man, who has become suspicious of Wolfe's business practises. In fact the man is sure Wolfe is stealing from his account.

Wolfe invites the young man to his yacht for a weekend of fun, but the man is cautious and has a friend (Jack Raine) accompany him, masquerading as his valet. Soon it is revealed that Wolfe intends to murder the young man to gain full control of his estate. But Raine is on hand to thwart any attacks. Also Wolfe has his own problems as he has made many enemies in his life and one of them has boarded the yacht with the intention of murdering him.

This stiff (attempted) murder mystery must be one of the earliest British talkies, and the best thing you can say about it is that at least the sound is fairly well-recorded. The film has zero style, suspense or interest - it doesn't even have the interest of spotting future stars before they "made it big" because the cast (and director) are completely unknown. Supposedly it takes place on a ship, but mostly you'll just see two or three rooms. There is some minor cleverness to the method in which the (attempted) murder is conducted. Best line: "I've just escaped from a couple of fairies!". *1/2 out of 4.

This film was made at Elstree studios in 1929.It is intriguing to think that on the next stage Hitchcock could have been filming "Blackmail".Everything about this film shows it up to be an early talkie.There is virtually no editing ,very little camera movement and stagy acting.In fact you might just get eye strain watching this film.Clearly due to the problems with editing sound film the film was effectively edited in the camera.So you have a shot of 3 people in front of the camera.The person on the left hand side of the frame speaks.The camera then pans to the actor in the centre who speaks his line and then over to the actor on the right of frame.This process is repeated.It gets very monotonous.The story has a reasonably novel idea for the murder and the ship stands in for the usual stately home.Anyway if you are a fan of early talkies you will want to see this otherwise it is probably not of interest.