The Ghost Galleon (1974) and The Night of the Seagulls (1975) Double Feature Review

If, for any reason, you’re curious to see some low-budget Spanish zombie flicks from the 70’s, I have a bit of advice. Skip both these movies. Amando de Ossorio made four movies in the first half of the seventies known as the Blind Dead series. Each of the movies involves the reanimated corpses of Templar Knights that rise from their tombs to terrorize busty Spanish floosies. Sounds like fun, right? The first half of the series, consisting of Tombs of the Blind Dead and Return of the Evil Dead, was a riot. Cheap filmmaking, bad dubbing, horrible acting, and amazing looking zombies. The appeal of the first two did not carry over to these two, though.



When Ossorio went to film The Ghost Galleon he must have thought to himself, “Hmm, we already made two whole movies with these undead knights… Now what do we do? I know! Let’s put them on a boat.” And that is pretty much how the movie goes. Not much of a plot to speak of, just undead zombie knights on a boat. There’s a convoluted story involving some Spanish floosies that make their way onto the boat without knowing what’s in store. That way there’s victims to scream and boobs to be exposed. This movie was so bad I couldn’t stay awake during it. I would wake up for a moment, see some slow moving robed zombies with swords, hear Mark talking shit about it all, then crash back out. I guarantee I didn’t miss much; I scanned through the end just to be sure.

The Night of the Seagulls was actually a fraction of a percent more entertaining than The Ghost Galleon. An infinitesimal fraction of a percent. The filmmaking and story telling in both movies are equally horrible, but The Night of the Seagulls had more naked boobs. Besides that there wasn’t a single redeeming quality. Watching it, Mark Rogers and I had to revert to MST3K mode just to retain what little part of our sanity still remains. It’s painfully obvious that Ossorio’s creative spark had gone out long before these two flicks, but he churned them out anyway to make that money. For shame, Amando.