mark.waltz Good intentions are the pathway to hell, and in the case of doctor Irving Pichel, he's on his way there with a one-way ticket. Certainly, the idea of experimenting on the criminal mind in an effort to change their ways seems on the surface like a good idea, but his methods really lead to madness-both his and his victims. Gathered together on a ship, Pichel has no idea that his so-called patients are determined to stop him, convinced that his experiments will leave them without memory and possibly crippled for life. The fact that vile law busters end up being the innocent here is certainly not leading the audience to sympathize with any of the characters, even if there are a few women aboard. Pichel's nephew (Lyle Talbot) happens to be the lieutenant steering the ship and ends up working with a few of the criminals to stage a mutiny. Convoluted and non-sensical, this becomes just so absurdly ridiculous that the audience just might end up wishing it over sooner than it is. Ultimately, the entire mess is so cartoonish that the only real torture is for the viewer to get through it.

zardoz-13 An insane scientist, Dr. Herbert Stander (Irving Pichel), who has been indicted by the grand jury for his theories about curing criminal behavior with experiments on endocrine glands, charters a luxury yacht in "White Zombie" director Victor Halperin's "Torture Ship" and assembles a variety of hoodlums with promises that he can transform into law abiding citizens. Furthermore, Stander has arranged for his nephew, Annapolis graduate Lieutenant Bob Bennett (Lyle Talbot), who has just returned from a world cruise, to act as the captain of the yacht. Although it isn't a tenth as sinister as "White Zombie," "Torture Ship" plies audacious waters as our tragic protagonist ruminates about his unclear future. "If making a criminal mind is normal, then I will be indicted," Stander assures a group of reporters in the courthouse. When his medical assistant Dirk (Anthony Averill) urges the good doctor to contest the indictment, Stander observes with irony, "Fight ignorance? Prejudice? Hypocrisy? That won't do any good." Despite the dire risk of being imprisoned, Stander decides to carry on with his experiments. He has his assistant wire his nephew to join him. He wants Bob because Bob knows how to take orders. "I wanted you on this voyage because you are my nephew and you can take an order without question." Bob starts to notice some unusual things. A mate named Briggs (Stanley Blystone) who came with the yacht has a questionable past. "There's something I must tell you uncle," Bennett informs his relative, "Briggs was tried for killing an officer. He wasn't convicted but he lost his license." Stander dismisses Bennett's objection to Briggs serving as the mate. The scientist considers Briggs a "good man." "Everybody makes a mistake," he says in his defense of Briggs. Cutthroat Harry 'The Carver' Bogard (Russell Hopton), machine gun slayer Jesse Bixel (Skelton Knaggs), homicidal John Ritter (Wheeler Oakman), Blue-beard killer Ezra Matthews (Leander De Cordova) Poisoner Mary Slavish (Sheila Bromley) who dispatched nearly twenty victims to collect on their insurance, Mary's ignorant accomplice Joan Martel (Julie Bishop) who protests his innocence, and an anarchist who explodes bombs constitute the criminals brought aboard the yacht. During the process of recruiting these unsavory characters, Stander promises to reward them, "And in return for helping me with my experiments, I will give you safe passage to another country." Initially, Stander encounters a setback with his procedure and decides that he cannot pursue his original theory by testing on criminals. He explains that he must change his procedure. "As you know, I have obtained in this synthetically the active ingredients in the endocrine gland governing criminality." He complains about trying to duplicate nature's work in the test tube. Instead, he decides to experiment on his nephew. "I must let nature do the work for me in the body of a normal person. At one point when he is about to inject Bennett, Stander allows himself to be distracted and Bennett switches the portion in the hypodermic with distilled water and then behaves as if he were under the influence of the drug. Bennett falls in love with Joan. Swedish Stewart Ole Olson (Eddie Holden) provides primary comic relief with his crazy accent that mauls words for the sake of humor. "Torture Ship" qualifies as a good thriller, with atmospheric black & white cinematography that doesn't wear out its welcome. The cast is top-notch and believable.

IceboxMovies The last 15 minutes are interesting, when the criminals take over the ship and become the new villains, but the rest of the film is pretty shoddy and can hardly be called a legit adaptation of "A Thousand Deaths". The filmmakers' first mistake was changing the relationship from a father killing and resurrecting his own son to... an uncle merely performing obscure experiments on his nephew. No real tension there. For whatever reason, the filmmakers care more about the nephew falling in love with a woman onboard than they do his complicated relationship with his uncle (something that is never really explored). Personally, I think that including female characters in this film was a mistake. The story is meant to be very Freudian and Oedpial, in the sense that a son is terrified by his domineering father; London allegedly wrote the story as a revenge fantasy about William Chaney, an astrologer who was probably his real father but forever denied it. Regrettably, no trace of that amusing autobiographical context is present in this film. London's original story was concise and simplified: a son is frustrated from being killed and brought back to life by his father over and over again. By comparison, this film is difficult to follow because there are too many characters and way too many individual stories being crammed into the 50-minute running time. Here and there, you can sense the screenwriters struggling to keep some of London's original dialogue in their convoluted script. "A chance one must take" = "Take the chances, since the affairs of men were full of such."The mad scientist's deathbed scene (which is not in the original story) could have worked better in the film had it not been so glossed-over. Seems like the nephew hardly cares.Ending was corny. We have no reason to care that the nephew fell in love.I kind of feel sorry for the orchestra that was hired to compose the music, considering that the music isn't memorable for a second. Seems like a big waste of talent.Of course, not every adaptation can be faithful, and sometimes even the loose adaptations still make for great films. What works against this film is that, aside from being profoundly unfaithful to London, it is also a crushing bore.

MovieResearch The Alpha Video release seems to be fairly complete with the entire story intact (except for some splicy sections in what was probably a 16mm television print: The story does make sense in this version which has the entire explanation of why the criminals are on the ship in the first place and what the doctor's motivations are.It is mysterious that the film runs about 63 minutes when the main IMDb description has it released at 57 minutes. That's probably incorrect and doesn't represent the original theatrical release, but rather some random individual's timing from a DVD or VHS tape that wasn't complete in the first place.