10 Surprisingly Good Scenes In Otherwise Terrible Movies

Ghost Ship was the third in what was to be a series of loose remakes of older horror films, following the moderately successful and surprisingly entertaining The House On Haunted Hill. It was a pet project of director Robert Zemeckis.

Hill was fun largely because it never took itself very seriously, casting Geoffrey Rush as an eccentric billionaire amusement park owner. Faithful to William Castle's original while still making it a standalone, the movie is a joyful distraction.

Ghost Ship, however, went the opposite route, taking itself deathly seriously and bearing no relation to the original. Much of the film follows a gang of scavengers who stumble upon the titular ship and watch them wander as they get picked off one by one, but the opening scene is what the rest of the movie should have strived for.

During a 1962 New Year's ball on the deck, couples gayly dance, when all of a sudden, a mysterious hand pulls a lever and a line snaps, unwinding a razor-sharp wire through the guests at high speeds. Slowly, and at different angles, their bodies are bisected. It's gory, it's sudden and unsettling and it's far supperior to anything that follows.