Slave Ship (1937)

Am I Missing Something?

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I'm agreeing with the reviewer who said that William Faulkner who wrote the adapted story for the screen on which Slave Ship is based envisioned a commentary on the brutality of slavery. But I'm sure Darryl Zanuck thinking of those southern markets turned this into an adventure yarn. Later on post World War II it was 20th Century Fox that was the most daring in terms of social commentary, but not now.Warner Baxter and Wallace Beery are captain and first mate and best friends and they happen to be in the slave trading business, a business that is both illegal and declining due to British patrol vessels. Truth be told Baxter himself is sick of the misery in which he traffics. When he starts courting and marries Elizabeth Allan he decides to get out of the business.Sad to say Beery doesn't want to do that. As he correctly points out in this illegal business you don't have a crew, you sail with partners and he proves it. The rest of the story concerns Baxter and his attempt to gain back his ship and also win Allan back as well.Around this time Souls At Sea over at Paramount and MGM's Stand Up And Fight also dealt with the slave trade and slavery, Souls At Sea being the better film. Still both are better than Slave Ship though it is still a good adventure story.Interesting that Darryl Zanuck also must have paid a pretty penny to Louis B. Mayer for MGM contractees Wallace Beery and Mickey Rooney who were two of his most reliable box office performers. Rooney plays the ship's cabin boy and his role is far cry from Andy Hardy. A great tribute to his talents.Good action adventure yarn and some of the scenes involving the slaves are brutal and haunting. But this could have been a lot more.

WARNER BAXTER is a Yankee sea captain who goes to church on Sundays and shyly courts pretty Elizabeth Allen as time permits. His cargo happens to be slaves purchased in West Africa for sale in America. In this movie, slaves are purchased matter-of-factly from Black Africans, get some brutal treatment on board (but not much), and the crew is happy with their work and waay dirty too. None of the slaves are portrayed as brilliant or courageous. Trouble comes when throwing the "evidence" overboard becomes an issue between the captain and the crew. Since this film was made 60 years ago, it's blessedly free of the Political Correctness spin job which sunk "Amistead." It simply never occurred to Hollywood back then to re-write history to conform to wacky leftist viewpoints which distort facts. Obviously Hollywood today is in a tizzy over the "slavery issue" and thus dozens of films like this one and such as Walt Disney's wonderful "Song of the South" --- a film depicting only former slaves --- are kept out of sight. Hush!

William Faulkner must have envisioned "Slave Ship" as a dark commentary on the curse of slavery(the "cursed ship" element is abandoned early on) and the studio tried to turn it into a typical adventure yarn. The results are strangely tasteless, unsettling, and facinating.This is a bad movie, but one I highly recommend. The movie seems to be saying "these people veiwed things in a different way, but the best of them rose above slavery." We feel almost as much distance to movie makers, as Wallace Berry is mostly viewed as a roughish but likeable scoundrel; though we learn early on he is a genocidal mass murderer.Though only seen in short glimpses, the inhumanity of slavery is fairly well expressed. It's the fairly casual context of subject that is allmost chilling. But see it for yourself and decide.

SLAVE SHIPAspect ratio: 1.37:1Sound format: Mono(Black and white)Any film which opens with an unbilled Lon Chaney Jr. being crushed to death during the launching of a ship can't be all bad! And, indeed, Tay Garnett's SLAVE SHIP gets off to a cracking start with a hellish vision of the slave trade along the West African coast in 1860. Sadly, the long middle section is bogged down by muted dramatics and a number of soggy romantic interludes (Warner Baxter and Elizabeth Allan provide the offending drippery), but the rousing climax makes up for some of the longueurs. George Sanders turns up, horribly miscast, in one of his pre-stardom roles as a villainous sea-dog.