THE BLOOD SHIP
Columbia Pictures (1927) Dir. George B. Seitz
67 min. / B&W / 1.33:1 / 1080p / DTS-HD 2.0
Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn wanted desperately to be a “minor” major studio rather than a “major” minor that was known for comedy shorts and low-budget B movies, and he eventually was successful in that task, but man, could his studio turn out fun and exciting fare for the bottom end of a double feature. A glance at their releases during the silent era such exploitative titles as Yesterday’s Wife, The Foolish Virgin, and When the Wife’s Away, plus a series of exciting potboilers like The Blood Ship, a picture that they thought so highly of that only four years later they remade it as a talkie, same director, and called it the more provocative Shanghaied Love.
Walter James is the brutal captain of the Golden Bough merchant ship; the term “sadistic” scarcely begins to cover THIS guy, who with his equally psychotic first mate Fred Kohler enjoys shanghaiing crewmen, terrorizing and murdering them, and then driving the survivors off at the next port sans pay but lucky to have unflayed skin. He picks up a reluctant new crew in San Francisco, including a waiter and a local clergyman, plus two volunteers: Hobart Bosworth as a former seaman with the cap’n, bent on revenge, and Richard Arlen, who only has eyes for the cap’n’s daughter, lovely Jacqueline Logan (Mary Magdeline in Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings). There’s a lot more to everybody’s relationships but who are we to spoil surprises?
The Blood Ship was missing its final reel, lost to the ravages of time, for decades; one was located and the film re-premiered in 2007. The Blu-ray is beautiful and offers a gorgeous tinted print. Here in the Balcony, we have no real preference between organ, piano, or full orchestral score for silent films; it depends on the film. Donald Sosin’s newly composed piano score for this one seems appropriate and adds to the old-timey melodrama feel of it – let us not forget that director Seitz began his career with legendary serials including The Exploits of Elaine, Hurricane Hutch, and The Iron Claw (not to mention moving over to MGM in the sound era and directing Tarzan Escapes and the Andy Hardy films prior to his death in 1944).
A couple of supporting actors deserve mention; popular British comic foil Syd Crossley is the hapless saloon worker pressed into high seas duty, and Blue Washington is the Black seaman with a heart of gold (Blue was a professional baseball player whose son, Kenny Washington, would be a standout athlete at UCLA and for the Los Angeles Rams).
The Columbia/Sony Blu-ray releases have always been a hodgepodge of genres and eras but any release of a silent film restoration is highly welcome and this particular film is a terrific addition to any classic film collection.
