Memorable Moments in Horror: Ghost Ship
by Marc Patterson
Everyone remembers those truly “holy shit” moments in film. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a sucker punch, a left hook, a shocking moment you didn’t see coming in a million years.
I don’t know about you, but I very much remember the first time I ever watched Ghost Ship. There’s nothing inordinately memorable about the film as a whole, but the first five and a half minutes of the film will never be forgotten by those who have seen it. It’s a perfectly executed set-up, delivery, and punch-line. And frame by frame it works.
You go into the film with a natural sense for what it is about. It’s a ghost story on the high seas. Okay. Cool. But the film starts knocking the viewer around from the opening frame.
For a horror flick/ghost story the opening frames are incredibly subdued and unsuspecting. As the camera sweeps in through an bubbly title sequence and emerges above the water a stately looking boat comes into view. The music is a light ballroom jazz fit for the likes of Sinatra. A gorgeous singer serenades the crowd. Not that I need to prompt you to, but look at the lettering… pink… retro… innocent… Already we’ve been hit with a bit of a left hook.
The camera sweeps over the boat showing a scene straight out of a Jack Vettriano painting. A deck full of party-goers dressed to the nine’s is dancing the evening away. A young girl takes up a dance with the captain of the ship.
The set up is more than effectual. Mere moments into the film and we are lulled into an entrancing slumber. Not that we’re sleeping, but Steve Beck has certainly put us under the spell of the film, and while we should know better, we don’t. We are sold.
Then the camera does something interesting and unsuspecting. It shifts to a wire coil on the deck. The camera pans back to the girl before it moves back to show us where that wire leads, and our jaw slowly begins to drop. This set up is starting to come into focus and time slows down as we can’t quite believe what we think we’re about to see.
One thing I particularly love about this second shot (below) of our young girl dancing with the captain is how this shot is a perfectly framed set up within the larger set up of the whole scene. Take note, as the payoff will come full circle moments later.
And then it happens… We follow the wire to the point of what will be, in mere seconds, the end as it rips through the crowd hacking folks limb from limb before it emerges at the other end of the dance floor soaked in blood.
At this point the camera sweeps through the crowd. Everything seems normal, but slightly off kilter. The crowd isn’t full of grue and bits of gory nasty as we might expect. They themselves are looking around and wondering what just happened. Still Beck toys with us, making us question what really happened. This is an excellent example of an extremely well timed delivery that pulls every ounce of suspense out of the scene.
The camera pans to blood stained rigging. Despite the confused look on the faces in the crowd something grisly has indeed happened. Wait for it… wait for it…
And then it begins. A slow forming pool of blood at the feet of perfectly polished shoes. A smoldering cigarette held gently in the fingers. The blood stained ripped shirt hints at the carnage just seconds away…
And then Beck pours on the gore like it’s going out of style. It’s at this moment we gasp aloud, shocked, impressed, horrified all at once. It’s a beautiful payoff for a well set-up scene.
I particularly love this shot of the severed arm reaching up at the camera as if to cry out for help before it collapses in a heap of blood and body parts. Of course, this is also part of the charm of this scene. Some folks are halved, while others are missing arms as if they were lopped off with a machete. There’s not a lot of logic or continuity here, but in the first pass we’re too in awe to question it. Nonetheless, it’s very effectual stuff.
And now we get a full view of the carnage from above. Again, another great shot in a superb sequence. I love how the captain and the young girl are left standing surrounded by dead bodies. It’s a juxtaposition in equal measure to the contrast of the whole scene.
And why are these two left standing? Well, Beck has one more trick to play. Remember that shot I talked about earlier, and how it was so perfectly framed? Take a look below, as the camera switches to the young girls point of view.
She screams. The sole survivor of this freak accident because she was short enough to not get on this grisly ride. In fact this is another technical error as she was indeed tall enough to have her head lopped off. But she will serve as a plot device to the film proper, so we need to her stick around for now.
And that’s it folks. The camera pans away to the sea to take one last look at the gorgeous ocean vessel before the film transitions into the modern day where we’ll pick the story up with our ghost hunters as they board the ship many years later. I’ve dug up a YouTube clip of the entire scene for you to view below. I think you’ll agree. It’s one of those rare and memorable scenes that in spite of the film, will stick in the mind of horror fans for years to come from now.
Watch the whole scene below…
