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The Mystery Ship
The Mystery Ship
	Film advertisement
Directed by	Harry Harvey; Henry MacRae
Written by	William Parker; Blaine Pearson; Elsie Van Name
Starring	Ben F. Wilson; Neva Gerber
Distributed by	Universal Film Manufacturing Co.
Release date	December 1, 1917;
Running time	360 mins. (18 episodes)
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

The Mystery Ship is a 1917 American adventure film serial directed by Harry Harvey and Henry MacRae. The film is considered to be lost.^[1]

Cast

Ben F. Wilson as Miles Gaston
Neva Gerber as Betty Lee
Duke Worne as Betty's Fiancé
Nigel De Brulier as Betty's Father
Neal Hart
Harry Archer
Elsie Jane Wilson
Philip Ford (credited as Phil Ford)
Elsie Van Name
Kingsley Benedict
Malcolm Blevins
Francis Ford

Chapter titles

The Crescent Scar
The Grip of Hate
Adrift
The Secret of the Tomb
The Fire God
Treachery
One Minute to Live
Hidden Hands
The Black Masks
The Rescue
The Line of Death
The Rain of Fire
The Underground House
The Masked Riders
The House of Trickery
The Forced Marriage
The Deadly Torpedo
The Fight in Mid-Air

Reception

Like many American films of the time, The Mystery Ship was subject to cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required the cut of:

Chapter 1: three gambling scenes
Chapter 2: the "slugging" (knocking unconscious) of a man and throwing him overboard^[2]
Chapter 5: the striking a man on the head with a stone, the mob inside a wall shooting a man, and a man falling after the shooting^[3]
Chapter 6: the abduction of a young woman in an automobile and the assault on the male driver^[4]
Chapter 8: the choking of a man on the ship deck by a gangster, two scenes of a man threatening a young woman with gun, a Chinese man threatening a woman with dagger, a Chinese man putting poison on food, two closeup shots of a young woman choking a Chinese woman after she regains consciousness, a distant choking scene, and the last scene in the reel showing a dagger descending towards a young woman^[5]
Chapter 9, Reel 1: three closeup shots of a Chinese man threatening a young woman with dagger, and a man prying a window open to enter a house
Chapter 9, Reel 2: a man drugging cotton and placing it in a telephone receiver, all scenes of man in a torture chair, five fight scenes, the placing of an unconscious young woman in an automobile, the threatening of a man with a fireplace poker, and the "slugging" of a man at a garden gate^[6]
Chapter 10: the last two torture scenes and the intertitle "You'll never leave us alive"^[7]
Chapter 13, Reel 1: the attack, gagging and binding of a young woman; the entire scene of men shooting at each other from behind barricades of rugs and curtains, including shots of falling men
Chapter 13, Reel 2: the intertitile "She go die now", the first scene of a Chinese man chaining a young women to a platform, all torture scenes where flames are shown except the one where the young woman is rescued, a gun shooting through an opening in wall, two shots of a Chinese man falling, a man aiming a gun at a prisoner, and the shooting from a trap door^[8]
Chapter 14, Reel 1: the chloroforming of a man by the Man of Mystery, and all but the first and last struggle scenes between a man and a young woman^[9]
Chapter 15, Reel 1: the "slugging" of an agent by a foreign spy
Chapter 15, Reel 2: the flash flogging scene, three scenes of a man being choked with a rope, all scenes of a man on a young woman's bed after he takes false whiskers off
Chapter 16, Reel 1: the scene of a young woman and a man in bed, the scene of Gaston pulling the man from the bed, the man covering his face with his hands, the young woman in bed covering her face with her hands, the young woman turning away from the man and burying her face in a pillow
Chapter 16, Reel 2: the binding of a young woman^[10]
Chapter 17: all but the last holdup scene, the two intertitles "You mean our wife" and "The one that gets the Queen of Hearts—gets the lady", three scenes of police officers being shot at, all shots of men playing cards whilst waiting for a young women to wake up until the time she awakens, three scenes of a gang shooting at police officers, two scenes of men shooting at each other in a cellar, three scenes of a gang shooting at the titular Mystery Ship^[11]
Chapter 18, Reel 2: the shooting from a door and the shooting inside a shed^[12]