Girls in love... BEWARE!!!
Well, this is a sort of adorable little movie.
A ferryman in some remote swamp-town (we actually have those down here) has been hanged for a murder he did not commit. Before he breathes his last, he curses the townspeople who have falsely convicted him that they and their progeny will all die by his hand. When the next generation, who have moved away, return to the town, their very lives are in peril!
I say this is adorable because the story is very old-fashioned, like a short story from the early 1900s you read somewhere when you were a kid or a teenager, the movie leans heavily into atmosphere on a very low budget, and there's a ridiculous romance that very quickly becomes the center of the story.
I agree that the movie had lots of foggy charm. I was reminded of the graveyard in the overlooked
Return Of The Vampire or the one at the beginning of
Ghost Of Frankenstein for the sense that everyone just walks around waist-deep in fog in these movies.
Hound Of The Baskervilles style, ya know. I'm always in for that ****.
I also really liked that the real hero of this movie is a young woman, Maria, who is strong of mind and body without that having to be some kind of thing. As the new ferryman... ferrywoman... ferryperson... she's just a tough cookie, without being treated by script or camera as "the tough girl". It is ultimately she that steps up to face this curse. She also pulls a mean ferry. I respect her over-hand grip.
That's advanced ferry-pulling, right there.
I got an absolute hoot out of the ferry. Regardless of who is pulling the ferry-rope or how hard, that ferry just moves right along at a perfectly steady pace... almost as if it were rolling along on wheels underneath all that fog.
I was less in love with the romance. I initially thought it was a totally unnecessary distraction put in to pad the run-time and meet studio demands, but they work it thoroughly into the story to the degree that the story wouldn't work without it. And I worried that Maria's love-sickness for the new boy in town (actually the son of a town elder who's been gone to the city like her) would reduce her but the fact that she falls madly, desperately in love with Chris the day that they meet, and him her, to the degree of a marriage proposal within a few minutes of screen-time, does not diminish her spirit. She just continues to roll that ferry across the swamp. Just roll it right across.
The fog, the rolling ferry, the ghost that's just a dude...
...all that sort of thing just charms the pants off me in old B-movies. This film is a trifle but it's a charming trifle and I'm glad you guys recommended it to me.
PS - I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the young man, Chris, who is the love of Maria's life after like five minutes, is played by none other than legendary filmmaker, Blake Edwards. You're welcome.