The Ghost Ship (1943)
To hear tell the origin of The Ghost Ship was like most of Val Lewton's movies where he was tasked with developing it around titles or sets. In this case it was the latter, as RKO still had a ship set left over from their 1939 romantic action film Pacific Liner . Lewton came up with the idea of a sadistic, homicidal captain and had writers Donald Henderson Clarke and Leo Mittler flesh out the details. As always he was handed a tight budget, but he once again managed to pull off an exciting, noirish film with the help of director Mark Robson. Tom Merriam (Russell Wade) is the new third officer on the U.S.S. Altair , a merchant ship traveling from the U.S. to Mexico. At first he is impressed by Captain Will Stone (Richard Dix), who puts a lot of pride on running a tight and clean ship, though he is warned to not get too wrapped up in the captain's cult of personality by radio operator Sparks (Edmund Glover). However, a number of events begin to cause Merriam to question Di