Not As Bad as the Rep
13 June 2009
Hell Ship Mutiny (1957)

** (out of 4)

A Captain (Jon Hall) travels to a tropical island to see some friends when he learns that three bad men (led by John Carradine) are holding the natives hostage. Hall's team are able to take them over and on the boat back to the main land they escape and take Hall hostage. This here has been a film I've been meaning to watch for over fifteen years but could never locate it on video and I didn't even realize until a week ago that budget label Alpha had released it on DVD. This was a Republic film so it's doubtful the Alpha release is too official but at least it's finally out there. The movie wasn't as bad as I had heard and even though it's not that good I'd still recommend it to fans of Carradine and Peter Lorre who has a brief role at the end of the film. The production values are incredibly low and that takes away quite a bit. It appears very little thought went into anything and it's rather shocking to see Carradine and Lorre in the film. Both men certainly did low budget movies but this one here is pretty low and it was surprising that the producers got both of them. Perhaps their salaries ate away at the rest of the film? Either way, both men are a lot of fun and especially Carradine as the bad guy. Hall plays everything pretty much by the numbers but he isn't too bad. With a running time of 66-minutes there's really nothing too boring here as long as you know what you're getting into.
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