Cruise ship Capt. Ashland (George Kennedy, The Naked Gun series) stands a mere three days from retirement, so you know what that means: There will be no woodworking and around-the-house puttering in his future. Not when there’s a Death Ship on the horizon!

Void of passengers but supposedly steered by ghosts, the rusty ship deliberately puts itself in harm’s way of Ashland’s party boat, ensuring a collision. The accident occurs via stock footage from at least two sources — one a third-rate Titanic TV-movie — that don’t come close to matching up with one another. The handful of survivors includes Ashland; his replacement, Marshall (Richard Crenna, Leviathan); Marshall’s wife and two kids, one of whom precociously possesses a small bladder; the band leader (Saul Rubinek, True Romance); an old lady; and a hot woman so someone can take a shower in blood later, after they all board the mysterious vessel.

See, as the title would have it, the Death Ship has a mind of its own, and has one thing on its mind: death, natch. It wastes no time in proceeding to knock off the cast members, because that’s what Nazis would do. (Oh, sorry — spoiler: The ship belonged to Nazis.)

Largely a television director, Alvin Rakoff (1979’s City on Fire) doesn’t bother with subtlety, hitting viewers on the head over and over with the Nazi angle. (We get it, Al!) When he lets up, he’s able to get some effective scenes out of his characters’ demise, particularly those that play upon the universal fears of drowning and seeing one’s face become covered in an ugly crust.

Having an old pro like Kennedy in command helps when the plot veers into turns the script makes no real effort to explain. Death Ship is a lot like Ghost Ship, the 2002 Dark Castle Entetainment picture that stole this film’s terrific poster art, but without the studio gloss — in other words, one of those cheap, haunted-house spookfests that works in spite of itself. —Rod Lott

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Having recently located her thriving mannequin-manufacturing biz to Lisbon, Betty (Lone Fleming, 1977’s It Happened at Nightmare Inn) reunites with Virginia (María Elena Arpón, The House That Screamed), her roomie from boarding school. Virginia’s square-jawed boyfriend, Roger (César Burner, Green Inferno), immediately suggests the three of them take a train trip to the countryside.

En route, Virginia gets jealous of a growing flirtation between her beau and her BFF, so she leaps off the choo-choo. Instead of walking the tracks back to the station like a normal person, however, she heads off perpendicular to them, through spacious fields to the ruins of Berzano, a medieval town now abandoned for good reason: Because up from its cemetery pop the ghosts of the Knights Templar, depicted here as skeletons in soot-covered hooded robes. (Where the risen knights keep their horses goes unaddressed.)

Yes, Virginia, there is a supernatural force of evil awakened! You’ve disturbed the Tombs of the Blind Dead! The first in writer/director Amando de Ossorio’s four-film series, the Spanish Tombs comes unearthed with a twist on the ol’ zombie conceit: On account of having their eyes pecked out by crows in the 13th century, these guys can’t see a lick; with a thirst for blood, they track their victims by sound, from dire screams to a quickened heartbeat.

Even though the Blind Dead move like semi-frozen molasses, they are terrifying characters. The way their bones pop through graves and shuffle through the maze-like ruins is a dirt-cheap effect, yet highly effective, encouraging viewer cries of “Run, bitch, run!” as they close in on their clueless prey. Other than an ugly rape scene, de Ossorio demonstrates keen instincts on what works, right down to an ending that proves more disturbing by letting your mind fill in its blanks. —Rod Lott

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