High Seas

"I know now why we are afraid of the dark. I had never imagined such secrets of the sea and the grave (which are one and the same). [...] Hush! the Sea is laughing, as though Hell cackled from the mouth of an ass. It is jeering. I can hear its voice echo like Satanic thunder amid the mud overhead -- It is calling to me! Call -- I must go -- The sea calls!" (William Hope Hodgson, "Out of the Storm" - 1909).

Who better than the great poet of oceanic mysteries could convey the sense of anguish and distress provoked by the watery expanses which humanity has always looked upon as the preeminent representation of the unknown, of the primordial chaos filled with monstruous and supernatural creatures? I'm obviously referring to the High Seas, those boundless stretches of ocean brimming with unfathomable horrors... horrors born of a hostile and threatening world - that is, before Freud and his colleagues concluded that those monstrosities may actually reside deep within ourselves. Not to mention the fact that from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, a boat is generally seen as a metaphor for consciousness struggling to break through the savage waves of the subconscious.

Cinema accordingly depicted the High Seas as a stage for long, perilous voyages, and did so with considerable inventiveness, even while never forgetting the ancient classics (we're still learning from Homer...) or the lessons of the great writers of modern and contemporary literature, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Herman Melville (1819-1891), and H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). Among the genres most closely associated with this watery theme, horror definitely rises to the top of the list. Thus, this Tag aims to assemble nautical-themed (+) films, mainly those with a (sci-fi) horror inclination, generally set on board boats, ships, or similar vehicles. Such films are often inspired by colorful maritime tales and legends in which the ocean plays a leading role: the mythical "Flying Dutchman" of Northern European folklore, the mystery of the "Mary Celeste", the alleged incidents involving the Bermuda Triangle, the sinister reputation of the Sargasso Sea, etc.

At this point, all that's left is for us to take our leave with the words of Victor Hugo, who in a memorable passage of "The Man who Laughs" (1869) offers us a hint of the impotence and vivid terror human beings experience when confronting the vast and capricious sea: "Omnipotence takes no care to hide its atom, it changes weakness into strength, fills naught with all; and it is with the infinitely little that the infinitely great crushes you. It is with its drops the ocean dissolves you. You feel you are a plaything".