El Buque Maldito

Original 1974 movie poster.

Today I'll talk about the movie I watched last Saturday afternoon. Deciding which movie to watch is not always an easy task, specially when you're looking for movies that were made ages ago and were sunk into obscurity due to its B-Movie category.

El Buque Maldito, a film directed by Spanish Amando de Ossorio seemed to be the right choice since on the DVD sleeve I read "rated R" my kind of movie I thought. At first I thought it was some Italian film poorly dubbed into English, but while researching on the web I found out the movie was never originally called Horror of the Zombies, The Ghost Galleon and/or Ship of Zombies because it was a Spanish horror wannabe movie. Considering Blanca Estrada's prescence I thought it must come with a few sexploitation scenes, since Blanca Estrada was a part of the Spanish spoken exploitation movie genre, I seemed to have found the reason why the movie was rated R, but oh boy I was so wrong!

Blanca Estrada being a professional.

Looks are deceiving.

I also noticed that this film is part II on a five or six movie piece about the dead knights templar also shot and produced in Spain, but according to most of the Cinema freaks websites this film is the weakest of the whole series, and having not seen the remaining films of the story I can not make any comparison whatsoever, but seeing this film as a horror standalone flick made during the golden years of exploitation I kind of agree with the saga experts.

Blanca Estrada as Kathy.

Here they could have added some exploitation.

Maria Perschy, the entrepreneur.

Are you there zombie?

So, basically the story is about a model agency looking for a couple of lost  at sea supermodels who came across a thick fog and a giant abandoned spanish Galleon. Once the model agency heroes are set to rescue the lost models they also come across the thick fog and of course, the abandoned galleon.

This is where the movie becomes a pain, the beginning of the film looks quite promising, two hot supermodels trapped on a ghost ship walking around with tiny bikinis and looking for the ship's crew unsuccesfully. Girl number one dissapears in the very few moments she's onboard, a pity that we see no blood or attacks of any kind, nor we get to see some nude scenes or  a la sexploitation moments, I mean come on movie director! you got Blanca Estevez & Barbara Rey on the cast! they were both famous for being nude on magazines, movies & TV! A pity, a real pity.

We eat women flesh!

We're good swimmers.

Bade Retro Satanus!

knock, knock who's there?

I'm having breakfast on my room today.

Dinner's ready.

The film has good special effects, though they're not the greatest they really make you believe you're roaming on a Galleon and that you're being followed by a dead crew willing to make you their main course. The story suffers from the lack of budget, cause every dime was spent on the Galleon interiors, so every scene on the film is set only onboard, no exteriors nor different sets of any kind and that's make it a boring movie, people running around all the time on an ancient ship seems interesting for a while but not for a whole movie, besides once we get to see the ship burn down we don't know if we have to laugh or cry because a baby  could tell how fake  the toy ship is.

The plot line is also weak. Based on silly science (as most films back in the day) this Galleon and its dead crew come from another dimension to terrorize those who meet their way with the strange interdimensional fog, however we never get to see any further explanations on this theory, nor scenes were our onboard heroes cross from one dimension to another, in fact the only reference is made by the actor who plays this navigation science researcher, who also happens to have some knowledge on occult matters.

The movie lasts about an hour and a half and boy that's just too much.

Barbara Rey.

a Gun will do you no good son.

The final scene where these dead knights templar emerge from the seashore to finish the only two survivors from the boring film is probably the only interesting thing of the whole film, although it wasn't polished it felt a bit unexpected for such a pain in the arse.

As usual here's to movie trailer to finish today's entry. Probably later I'd be posting another movie review hopefully about a greater flick.

Now, if you really have the guts you can watch the entire movie right here: