The tale of the Mary Celeste is one of the most infamous and eerie ocean tales ever. It's a story ripe for retelling and amazingly there's only been one film ever made about it which was 83 years ago by Hammer productions. I'd love to see a new take on the story.
On the 5th of December 1872 the Mary Celeste was enroute to Genoa from New York City when she was found floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, just off the Azores. The crew of the Canadian ship Dei Gratia spotted her stalled in the water and decided to board her only to find a very unsettling scene altogether. The ship was completely empty, not a sinner on board. There were very little signs of disturbance apart from one stain that may have been blood but no missing cargo, nothing to suggest the ship had come under attack or that the crew onboard had come to any harm. It was in a slightly disheveled state with some odd marks on the hull and a lifeboat was missing but other than that the whole situation was a perplexing one. Personal belongings lay in the rooms of their owners, important provisions sat in larders including barrels of oil and alcohol, things that would never have been left behind had the crew evacuated to another ship or had they been raided. The ship's log was found and the last entry and position had been 9 days before. But shipping experts of the time say there was no way an unmanned ship could have made it from there to were it was found. It just was not possible. To top it all off none of the reported crew onboard was ever seen again.
What happened?? Who the hell knows. And this makes it a story that bulges with cinematic possibility. There are so many directions a film about the Mary Celeste could take. Was another ship involved? Was it an inside job? Did everyone on board lose the plot due to alcohol fumes rising from the hold below decks which was an actual hypothesis. Did one person kill them all?? You could have a tension packed film inspired by Agatha Christie's 10 Little Indian's. People being picked off one by one by someone unknown, everyone suspicious of each other, the enemy within. It's a story that's been done before in films like The Thing and D-Tox and TV shows like The X-Files but the maritime setting could make it unique.
Other theories put forth over the years are freak nature events. Waterspouts, sea beasts, giant waves, seaquakes, a rogue iceberg that sent the crew running for the lifeboat. This could turn the story into a disaster movie. Everyone loves a disaster movie. Master And Commander meets Twister maybe? A 19th century take on The Posideon Adventure? One theory was the ship was attacked by a giant squid who plucked the crew members off the ship one by one. This one came about because the marks on the hull could feasibly have come from suckers on tentacles. Ridiculously far fetched but it could make for a good scary monster movie.
Other theories were even more outlandish. Alien abductions for one! Remember the end of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind when we saw people returning off the alien ship who had been missing for decades. This could be an origin story for some of those people. 19th century sailors in space. Haha imagine it. Another bonkers theory was one about the sailors somehow stumbling across the lost city of Atlantis. That's a ready made movie right there. 19th New York sailors in a mythical city. Who wouldn't want to watch that?
The possibilities with this are endless. It's too interesting of a story to let lie. It's a licence to go wild with the only story constraints being the writer's imagination and of course the few facts we have. I hope we see some story about it onscreen someday, be it horror, thriller, psychological drama, whatever.
One suggestion though. Jason Statham as the boat's captain. Then you're on a winner.
No comments:
Post a Comment