Geek Double Feature: Ghost Ship & Death Ship

February 6, 2019

Very often when you’re enjoying a film for the first time, you reach your buttery finger to the corner of your lip and wonder, “Haven’t I seen this before?” The short answer is: You have. Film tropes are limited edition collectibles found at the concession stand. It’s just matter of how you arrange them and consume them. Pro tip: Pour Raisinets into your popcorn bucket and gently jiggle it. You can thank me later.

This suggested Geek Double Feature is the first in an intended series. Because good content is so rare these days [note to self: use sarcastic font in this sentence], you should spend your time watching movies you’ve already seen. Realistically, you can never see everything available to watch, so why even try? Sit back, and take it all in with a new approach. Pair a movie you’ve already seen with another movie you’ve likely never seen, and gently jiggle it. You can thank me later.

The Geek Double Feature is designed for participation. Sometimes, it will be obvious what the films have in common. It’s easy to pair originals and remakes, prequels and sequels, plots with similar plots, and themes with related themes. Sometimes, even when it looks like an obvious pairing, you’ll need to dig deep to understand why two films would make sense to watch back-to-back. In most cases, the order matters. The experience should tickle your brain and have you searching for Easter eggs long rotten in their hiding places. You should find connections no one else has discovered.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it: Watch Death Ship (1980) and Ghost Ship (2002). Make some popcorn, poke fun at how much they share outside the obvious, and enjoy!

Watch Death Ship first. It’s a good warm-up, and you’ll probably find your self bored if you do it the other way around. Death Ship is an eighties movie with a seventees feel. It opens at night on a ship, and there’s a party happening. Come to think of it, Ghost Ship is an aughties movie with a nineties feel. It opens on a ship, and there’s a party happening.

Related Article: 6 Modern Ghost Movies that Deliver the Scares

Without knowing the end result, I would have loved to attend either of these parties. If they happened on the same night, though, I’d pick the masquerade party on the cruise ship that plays porn disco and serves hard liquor. I’m all about Italian lounge singers and classic formal dress, but I have more costumes than suits in my closet. Besides, I don’t want to damage my costume, and we all know what happens at the beginning of Ghost Ship, right? No? Only about the best opening and unlikely multiple death scene in the history of cinema. If you haven’t seen it, look at it as a reward for enduring the slow story telling of Death Ship. Trust me, though. It’s worth the build up. Get used to the pancake batter blood in Death Ship’s soft core gore, and then graduate to the corn syrup blood scenes of Ghost Ship. You will watch the opening spectacle over and over. Really, that scene could be its own triple feature. I can almost guarantee you’ll watch it three times, minimum.

George Kennedy vs Gabriel Byrne: If these two ship captains were battling it out, George Kennedy’s Captain Ashland would embarrass Captain Murphy. Though they are both bewitched by their respected haunted ships, and they both pick fights with women onboard, only Kennedy manages to send his victim to Davy Jones’s Locker. Byrne’s character barely has success overtaking his female sparring partner before someone else interferes. To be fair, Julianna Margulies is kick ass. As a final girl, she’s well cast. I hope she’ll do more horror or sci-fi. Captain Ashland’s uniform is untidy and full of wrinkles (raspberries to the props and costume department). Maybe they can do a crossover movie with a CGI George Kennedy where he asks Julianna Margulies’ Epps character to iron his uniform in his deepest, most sexist voice possible; and she just pings him in the noggin with a Hamilton Beach, sending him overboard.

What to look for in both films: Besides the obvious in dramatically-posed corpses, people going overboard, and ships accelerating on their own, you’ll find some fun connections. Some are tropes, some are failings, and at least one is a creative reach. To understand that, you’ll have to really look closely at the less obvious film.

Look for these shared parallels: