The Mystery of the Marie Celeste
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[edit] The Mystery Of Mary Celeste (1935)
The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (a.k.a. The Phantom Ship) is with the production year 1935 one of the early films from Hammer Film Productions. Leading actor is Bela Lugosi. The action is the basis the history of the Marie Celeste (actually Mary Celeste). The ship was floating found 1872 without crew before Portugal in the sea. The film tries for a rather unspectacular explanation of the events around the well-known spirit ship, without supernatural occurrences.
[edit] Plot
Captain Briggs (Arthur Margetson) and Captain Morehead (Clifford McLaglen) are best friends. Capt. Morehead is in love with Sarah (Shirley Grey). He brings Briggs to New York to meet her. Briggs himself falls in love with her. Sarah also falls in love with Briggs. Both men propose her the same day. Sarah chooses Briggs. Sarah and Briggs open their marriage plans to Morehead and he gets furious with jealousy. He's also mad with Briggs for going behind his back. But Briggs acts like a backstabber and tells him that he will mary Sarah even if that means the end of their friendship.
As the couple plans to sail, the husband - Briggs is short on crew. He asks Morehead to forgive him and help. Morehead agrees and sends a man, but not to help, but to do something to the ship. Briggs also recruits some other men, including Anton Lorenzen (Bela Lugosi) who is a sailor who has suffered a lot and is about to break down.
As the sail begins, the crew realizes that there is a murderer among them who is killing them off one by one. Meanwhile a crewmember tries to rape Sarah, but Lorenzen saves her by killing the man. But then he cries like baby because he can't stand the pain of killing a man.
Soon, everybody dies except 1st mate Wilson, Lorenzen and a crew member. They decide that one of them is a killer and they will soon find out.
The crewmember realizes that Lorenzen could not kill, he was too soft, so he runs after Wilson. Wilson shoots him. Wilson, then celebrates with Lorenzen on becoming the sole Captain of Ship and makes plan for future. Lorenzen gets mad and Tells that is's he who was shanghaid before 6 years, on the same ship. And he was doing all this to get revenge. Then he kills Wilson and throws him in sea. But suddenly after killing him he act as if he was a split personality and runs everywhere on ship in hope to find Wilson. In his madness he jumps off the ship.
The ship sails with the wind and reaches the harbor. Everybody's amazed on finding totally empty abandoned ship! The scene goes black!
After this, a scene is shown in which Morehead is handing money to his man saying that I am thinking about Briggs and his Wife, Dead!
