If the rest of "Ghost Ship" were as good as its opening ten minutes, this would be a horror movie to die for.
The year is 1962, and there's a party on the main deck of ocean liner Antonia Graza, complete with brass band and a beautiful Italian singer.
Everyone's dancing, even the ship's captain. And then something unexpected happens - we're not saying what - that leaves the dancers in bits. Literally.
For director Steve Beck, still desperate to prove that the lacklustre thrills of "Thir13en Ghosts" weren't entirely his fault, this sequence must have been a dream come true (he repeats it halfway into the movie, just for the heck of it).
But since there's nothing else in Mark Hanlon and John Pogue's script to match this jaw-dropping opening, "Ghost Ship" gets thrown off balance and never returns to an even keel.
When the Antonia Graza drifts into international waters in the present day, a salvage team headed by Murphy (Gabriel Byrne) and Epps (Julianna Margulies) goes out to meet it.
What they discover is more than just a ghostly vessel - it's a ship of lost souls wanting to take them down to Davey Jones' locker.
Obsessed with the money, the salvagers are too busy counting the cash to sound the SOS. Until it's too late...
If only they'd managed to raise the alarm - then we'd have been spared the sight of Margulies playing tough; Byrne hamming it up like he was still on the set of "End of Days"; and a cast of no-name actors wandering off to silly deaths.
The unintentionally funniest of these is when the ghost of that sexy Italian singer returns to lure one poor sap to a grisly end with the offer of some ectoplasmic nookie.
Where are all the icebergs when you need one?
Ghost Ship (2003)
