Review of Terror Aboard

The owner of a huge boat is sent a telegram that reads "Your companies are bankrupt. The Bankrupt Police will arrest you in any country." The owner (played by John Halliday) decides that the only way to escape from the authorities is to take his boat to an uncharted island. But first he has to kill all the passengers aboard -- and he nearly does! Waitaminit.... the Bankrupt Police? What the heck is that?! Is there also a Mortgage Foreclosure Police? Well, anyway, this is actually a fairly good suspense tale with a 'Beau Geste'-like opening sequence of the seemingly abandoned boat. Then we get a long flashback showing what led up to the ship being left nearly abandoned. Ruggles is the weak and unnecessary comic relief (and almost as bad as he was in another grisly Paramount film from 1933 titled 'Murders in The Zoo.') The most striking element of this film is the unusually gruesome methods Halliday uses to dispatch his victims (including a freezer, a letter spike, etc.) Definitely not your run-of-the-mill thriller from this time period, cinematically. Worth a look.