Rating: 3/5
Hooptober 6.0 | 9/32 | film whose year ends in ‘6’ 3/6 | decades 3/6 | 1940s
CW // Murder, Misogyny, Assault
Old legends — strange tales — never die in the lonely swamp land. Villages and hamlets lie remote and almost forgotten. Small ferryboats glide between the shores, and the ferryman is a very important person. Day and night, he is at the command of his passengers. On his little barge ride the good and the evil; the friendly and the hostile; the superstitious and the enlightened; the living and sometimes — the dead.
Three men pull themselves across the swamp water along the toe-rope. They produce a fourth man, dead and only wearing swim briefs. They carry the dead man into the town. Bill Craig — drowned, found in the swamp near the ferry. A collection of vines and weeds wrap around Bill’s neck, acting as the natural noose that strangled the life out of him.
Bill Craig is the latest in a series of choking-related accidents resulting in death. Bill Jenkins was thrown from his horse and choked to death by the reins. Shelton was hanged by the pulley rope that hung in his hayloft. Henry Craig, strangled by his fishnet.
Years ago, after a murder, the townspeople accused the ferryman, Douglas. Douglas tried to convince the town that he was innocent, but the people acted swiftly and sentenced him to death by hanging. As Douglas hanged, he uttered a curse: that his spirit would return to strangle his hangmen and all of their descendants.
Maria, Douglas’s granddaughter, arrives in town to become the new ferryman. All is well until she falls in love with Chris Sanders. The trouble is, Chris is a descendant of one hangman. Can Maria save her beau from her grandfather’s malicious spirit?
The movie edges between Southern Gothic and melodrama. It doesn’t do either well. But the story is compelling. Also, Rosemary La Planche’s charm goes a long way.
While the special effects aren’t exactly groundbreaking, they’re still effective. Despite its relatively small size, the set intricately renders a convincing swamp for the story.
I wish more horror movies were an hour like this one. It’s the perfect length for these smaller stories.