A sadistic captain stole his ship, his wife, AND his daughter. Sea karma's a brutal mistress.
A disgraced sea captain signs on as a crewman on a cargo ship. He discovers that the vessel is captained by the very man who stole his ship, a sadistic brute who also took the former captain's wife and daughter. The ship's crew is composed mostly of sailors who were shanghai'ed aboard and are kept in line by the brutal captain and his even more fearsome first mate. The captain and one of his fellow crewmen--who has fallen in love with the man's daughter, who now belongs to the brutal captain--try to unite the crew to end the brutal reign of the captain and his henchman. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2007.
Acting
Hobart Bosworth's weathered desperation, Fred Kohler's terrifying henchman
Practical Effects
Real ship settings that reek of authentic maritime misery
Production
Seitz's claustrophobic below-deck compositions
Director
George B. Seitz
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Hobart Bosworth was 64 playing the broken Jim Newman, a former sea captain himself who knew this world intimately.
The 2007 restoration by Academy Film Archive rescued this from near-oblivion; it's one of the few surviving documents of Pre-Code maritime cruelty before the Hays Code sanitized such material.
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