| The Isle of Lost Ships | |
| Director: | Irvin Willat |
| Producer: | Richard A. Rowland |
| Starring: | Jason Robards Sr. Virginia Valli Noah Beery Sr. |
| Music: | Cecil Copping Alois Reiser |
| Cinematography: | Sol Polito |
| Editing: | John Rawlins |
| Studio: | First National Pictures |
| Distributor: | Warner Bros. |
| Runtime: | 9 reels; 7,576 |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | Sound (All-Talking) English |
The Isle of Lost Ships is an all-talking 1929 sound film. The picture was produced by Richard A. Rowland and distributed by Warner Bros. Irvin Willat was the director with Jason Robards Sr., Virginia Valli and Noah Beery Sr. in the leads. It is based on the 1909 novel The Isle of Dead Ships by Crittenden Marriott, and is also a remake of Maurice Tourneur's now lost 1923 classic of the same name. A mute copy of this film is preserved at the Library of Congress.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] The Vitaphone discs which contain the soundtrack to the film are currently lost. An almost complete copy of the sound version of the film survives (reel four is missing) at the Eye Filmmuseum archive with an estimated running time of 55:58.
The film featured a theme song entitled "Ship Of My Dreams" which was composed by George W. Meyer and Al Bryan.
A contemporary review in Variety reported that "the originality of the story [...] shares honors with the weird effect established by sets and the camera angles at which they are focused," that "the sets and atmosphere [...] keep an audience ever interested and tense," and described the scene in which the character Howard is "shot through a torpedo tube" as sufficiently quick and active that it "helps lessen the impossible."[6] A contemporary review of the film in The New York Times reported that "the weird story is the strongest point and the acting negligible," that "[t]his queer tale, while not particularly helped by the addition of sound, appears as a relief from the musical films and those audible photoplays in which dialogue holds the centre of the screen," that the character Howard "not only knows all about ships, radios and women, but who also can man a submarine and teach a crew its operation in three minutes," and that "Virginia Valli does not do much more than scream a little now and then."[7]
