The Haunted Sea

Near the Yucatan Peninsula, Captain Ramsey's freighter finds the ship "Hades" drifting in the ocean, showing no apparent sign of life on board. Ramsey and his crew explore the Hades, while they are being observed by an unseen entity. In the cargo hold, they discover an ancient Aztec treasure, which gives second mate Medina flashbacks to a violent ritual. They also learn from the diary of the Hades' captain, Jameson, that the artefacts were retrieved from Montezuma's temple. Two of Ramsey's men, Delgado and Lane, attempt to plunder some of the treasure, but Delgado becomes possessed as a result. He transforms into a reptilian monster, mauls Lane to death, and sets about killing the rest of the crew. In the kitchen, Medina discovers Jameson, traumatized but alive. The Hades' captain hints that he, too, fell under the treasure's evil influence and, while possessed, turned against his crew mates. To escape his predicament, he flees and commits suicide. Eventually, human presence on the Hades is whittled down to just Johnson and first mate Bergren. They rig the cursed ship with explosives. The monster kills Bergren, and Johnson jumps overboard just as the Hades is blown apart. She's rescued by the freighter, but is revealed to be possessed herself. ==Cast==

The film was pitched internally as "Alien on water" and had the working title of Ghost Ship. It was eventually rebranded as Haunted Sea, a loose callback to the vintage Corman film Creature from the Haunted Sea. It was originally intended for inclusion in the television anthology Roger Corman Presents, which included several reimaginings of the B-movie mogul's classics, but had a troubled production. Glamour photographer-turned-director Dan Golden, who was responsible for two prior Presents installments, was brought onboard after another helmer departed the project. He was hesitant due to the script's poor quality. Corman allowed Golden to work on it with his usual story editor Frances Dole, but insisted the shoot start within ten days as planned. Filming took place in December 1996. That date coincided with a state of flux at Corman's studios, following the ousting of several staff members by the producer, which did not help matters. ==Release==

While the film was supposed to premiere on Showtime as part of the Roger Corman Presents collection, the channel's executives deemed its quality unacceptable and rejected it. The Haunted Sea therefore debuted on a VHS from Corman's own New Horizons Home Video on November 17, 1997. It eventually made its U.S. television debut on August 5, 1998, on The Movie Channel, a sister channel of Showtime. New Horizons re-issued The Haunted Sea on DVD on July 20, 2004. ==Reception==

Writing for News Publications' TV Guide and Motion Picture Annual, Michael Gingold awarded the film one and a half star on a scale of one to five, and dismissed it as "a slackly directed pastiche of genre cliches, stock footage, and dialogue like 'It was like a nightmare, only I wasn't sleeping'", whose creature was reused from a prior film "with an especially new bogus head attached". Charles Tatum of eFilmCritic gave the film a single star on a scale of one to five, writing that the special effects "suck", the direction is "pretty bland, something to be expected when you are limited to three sets and reels of 1960s [sic] Mexico travelogue footage", and "not a whole lot makes sense". Ballantine Books' Video Movie Guide gave the film two stars on a scale of one to five, and summed up the film as "silliness on the high seas". ''VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever'', a Thomson Gale reference book, rated it a two on a scale of zero to four. ==References==