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Did you people see the same film I saw?

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

An insane scientist, Dr. Herbert Stander (Irving Pichel), who has been indicted by the grand jury for his theories about curing criminal behavior with experiments on endocrine glands, charters a luxury yacht in "White Zombie" director Victor Halperin's "Torture Ship" and assembles a variety of hoodlums with promises that he can transform into law abiding citizens. Furthermore, Stander has arranged for his nephew, Annapolis graduate Lieutenant Bob Bennett (Lyle Talbot), who has just returned from a world cruise, to act as the captain of the yacht. Although it isn't a tenth as sinister as "White Zombie," "Torture Ship" plies audacious waters as our tragic protagonist ruminates about his unclear future. "If making a criminal mind is normal, then I will be indicted," Stander assures a group of reporters in the courthouse. When his medical assistant Dirk (Anthony Averill) urges the good doctor to contest the indictment, Stander observes with irony, "Fight ignorance? Prejudice? Hypocrisy? That won't do any good." Despite the dire risk of being imprisoned, Stander decides to carry on with his experiments. He has his assistant wire his nephew to join him. He wants Bob because Bob knows how to take orders. "I wanted you on this voyage because you are my nephew and you can take an order without question." Bob starts to notice some unusual things. A mate named Briggs (Stanley Blystone) who came with the yacht has a questionable past. "There's something I must tell you uncle," Bennett informs his relative, "Briggs was tried for killing an officer. He wasn't convicted but he lost his license." Stander dismisses Bennett's objection to Briggs serving as the mate. The scientist considers Briggs a "good man." "Everybody makes a mistake," he says in his defense of Briggs. Cutthroat Harry 'The Carver' Bogard (Russell Hopton), machine gun slayer Jesse Bixel (Skelton Knaggs), homicidal John Ritter (Wheeler Oakman), Blue-beard killer Ezra Matthews (Leander De Cordova) Poisoner Mary Slavish (Sheila Bromley) who dispatched nearly twenty victims to collect on their insurance, Mary's ignorant accomplice Joan Martel (Julie Bishop) who protests his innocence, and an anarchist who explodes bombs constitute the criminals brought aboard the yacht. During the process of recruiting these unsavory characters, Stander promises to reward them, "And in return for helping me with my experiments, I will give you safe passage to another country." Initially, Stander encounters a setback with his procedure and decides that he cannot pursue his original theory by testing on criminals. He explains that he must change his procedure. "As you know, I have obtained in this synthetically the active ingredients in the endocrine gland governing criminality." He complains about trying to duplicate nature's work in the test tube. Instead, he decides to experiment on his nephew. "I must let nature do the work for me in the body of a normal person. At one point when he is about to inject Bennett, Stander allows himself to be distracted and Bennett switches the portion in the hypodermic with distilled water and then behaves as if he were under the influence of the drug. Bennett falls in love with Joan. Swedish Stewart Ole Olson (Eddie Holden) provides primary comic relief with his crazy accent that mauls words for the sake of humor. "Torture Ship" qualifies as a good thriller, with atmospheric black & white cinematography that doesn't wear out its welcome. The cast is top-notch and believable.

The last 15 minutes are interesting, when the criminals take over the ship and become the new villains, but the rest of the film is pretty shoddy and can hardly be called a legit adaptation of "A Thousand Deaths". The filmmakers' first mistake was changing the relationship from a father killing and resurrecting his own son to... an uncle merely performing obscure experiments on his nephew. No real tension there. For whatever reason, the filmmakers care more about the nephew falling in love with a woman onboard than they do his complicated relationship with his uncle (something that is never really explored). Personally, I think that including female characters in this film was a mistake. The story is meant to be very Freudian and Oedpial, in the sense that a son is terrified by his domineering father; London allegedly wrote the story as a revenge fantasy about William Chaney, an astrologer who was probably his real father but forever denied it. Regrettably, no trace of that amusing autobiographical context is present in this film. London's original story was concise and simplified: a son is frustrated from being killed and brought back to life by his father over and over again. By comparison, this film is difficult to follow because there are too many characters and way too many individual stories being crammed into the 50-minute running time. Here and there, you can sense the screenwriters struggling to keep some of London's original dialogue in their convoluted script. "A chance one must take" = "Take the chances, since the affairs of men were full of such."The mad scientist's deathbed scene (which is not in the original story) could have worked better in the film had it not been so glossed-over. Seems like the nephew hardly cares.Ending was corny. We have no reason to care that the nephew fell in love.I kind of feel sorry for the orchestra that was hired to compose the music, considering that the music isn't memorable for a second. Seems like a big waste of talent.Of course, not every adaptation can be faithful, and sometimes even the loose adaptations still make for great films. What works against this film is that, aside from being profoundly unfaithful to London, it is also a crushing bore.

A screen adaptation of "A Thousand Deaths," the first story sold by iconic American writer Jack London in 1899, was the choice of producer Ben Judell to launch his newly-formed Producer's Releasing Corporation. London would go on to a prolific, albeit abbreviated, career before dying from a myriad of diseases at age 40, and his name lent prestige to the launching of the fledgling PRC studio. Although Judell shrewdly exploited the film's connection with London, it remains one of the least faithful film versions of the author's work.This screen adaptation only superficially resembles its literary source, and the now retitled "Torture Ship" is a barely seaworthy vessel. However, its interesting cast keeps the ship afloat long enough to keep it from foundering. Influenced by MGM's Leo, Judell chose a tiger as the logo for the maiden voyage of his fledgling company, but looking at this film as well as the studio's other output during its brief history, a feral alley cat might have been more apropos.Noted scientist Dr. Herbert Stanton is indicted by the authorities when he tries to prove his theory that psychopathic criminal behavior is a treatable disease that can be cured by endocrine injections. In order to prove his hypothesis and flee prosecution, the discredited doctor hires a yacht and fills it with career criminals and serial killers (with such colorful names as "Poison Mary" and "Harry the Carver") and sails into the Pacific's international waters to freely experiment on his boatload of guinea pigs. Unfortunately for the doctor his sociopathic patients object and mutiny against the crew and his assistants (who wear sparkling white hospital coats instead of the more practical and waterproof sou'westers and pea jackets.) Both sides struggle for power inside PRC's cramped sets, and the bodies literally pile up on PRC's cramped sound stages until justice and true love ultimately triumph.Along with Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and others, Jack London is classified in the "Naturalistic" school of writing. They were influenced by such 19th Century figures as Freud, Darwin, and especially Emile Zola. Little of the original story and its intent remain. The Freudian implications of the doctor's son becoming a guinea pig is mitigated by changing the character to his nephew. Although the setting may initially strike the casual observer as reminiscent of London's "The Sea Wolf," this 1899 work doesn't fit into the canon of the author's other short stories like "To Build a Fire," and "Love of Life." Its science fiction aspects more closely resemble H. G. Wells' "The Island of Dr. Moreau," and the character of the sincere but slightly demented Dr. Stander seems to presage the roles played by Boris Karloff in his Columbia 'B' films.It is the ship's cast keep the the film interesting. Irving Pichel as Dr. Stanton adds an air of legitimacy to the proceedings and plays his mad doctor role in a straightforward manner as the type of dedicated but misguided scientist George Zucco would portray in later PRC releases. Pichel was an underused talent best known for his role in "Dracula's Daughter" and his sensitive voice-over narration in John Ford's "How Green Was My Valley." Pichel was also a workmanlike director as evidenced in "Destination Moon" in 1950, but unfortunately he was blacklisted during the HUAC period and, like Dr. Stanton, was forced to flee the country to avoid prison.Gargoyle-like Skelton Knaggs, a poor man's Dwight Frye and arguably one of the screen's homeliest actors, drank himself to death in his early 40's as did author London. Knaggs contributes a welcome bizarre presence as Cockney career criminal Jesse Bixel, whose coke bottle glasses add a grotesque other-worldliness to the proceedings. "House of Dracula," "The Ghost Ship," and "Terror by Night," are among his most memorable credits. Lyle Talbot, who plays the ship's chief officer and Stanton's nephew, started his career very promisingly at Warner Brothers in the early 30s but moved to B films and soldiered on for some five decades in lesser roles in low budget film and TV, reaching his cinematic nadir in Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space."Wheeler Oakman, the de facto leader of Dr. Stanton's criminals, was a villain's villain in hundreds of Hollywood films from 1912 to 1948 playing lowly henchmen as well as crime bosses in both big studio and Poverty Row productions. Despite Oakman's mustachioed, sinister appearance, he was once married to beautiful silent screen star Priscilla Dean.Sheilah Bromley was a promising ingénue only a few years earlier, playing opposite a youthful John Wayne several times under the name Sheila Manners, but by 1939, her features had hardened, and here she was cast as "Poison" Mary Slavish.Jacqueline Wells (later known as Julie Bishop) is one of the 30s most enduring minor stars, most noticeably as the female lead in 1934's "The Black Cat." She played opposite Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne in the 40s, and co-starred with Bob Cummings in the situation comedy "My Hero" in the 1950s."Torture Ship" was one of the last directorial voyages helmed by Victor Halperin. After making the highly successful low budget independent "White Zombie: in 1932, he was recruited by major studio Paramount for "Superatural" with Carole Lombard and Randolph Scott. Unfortunately the film didn't create a stir, and he went back to Poverty Row's Gower Gulch. Some of his disturbing extreme closeups of the drugged guinea pigs on "Torture Ship" are lifted from similarly effective shots that he used of the zombies in "White Zombie." Despite this self- plagiarism, "Torture Ship" never becomes a patch on the 1932 classic.CAVEAT EMPTOR: The film is in public domain and copies have various run times ranging from 48 to 63 minutes. Many are severely truncated and begin "in medias res" with the criminals already aboard the ship and plotting revolt against Stander and the crew.

When I see the phrase "great cast", I think GONE WITH THE WIND or TWELVE ANGRY MEN, not a film whose lead is Lyle Talbot (the same guy who starred in a few decent films in the 30s but also PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and a lot of other turkeys). So, while I liked reading the other reviews, I was perplexed by the great cast comments. This was not a great cast--just a bunch of no-names from a Poverty Row studio.As many point out, the first 10 minutes or so of the film is missing. This is true of the public domain copies and 50 pack copies from Mill Creek Entertainment. Additionally, since this is its pedigree, captioning and a high quality print are also absent.The film begins in the middle of a discussion a group of crooks are having about trying to escape from the boat. It's obvious something is missing here, but it's easy enough to discern that a bunch of crooks were somehow lured aboard a mad doctor's boat and he's doing diabolical experiments on them! While this certainly isn't nice, at least he had the decency to pick some people who weren't particularly pillars of society! As for the film, it's really hard to judge the quality of it with a chunk missing. I can say that the ending and Talbot's scheme to get the bad guys to surrender was pretty clever, though. So overall, it's probably one to skip since even with the missing chunk in place (which it isn't), it's still not a great movie by any stretch.