Video Rewind is a review of an avant-garde, cultish, or otherwise odd film that has a small or large following. That means, by its fans, it can be watched over and over with greater enjoyment. We will feature films that can be accessed either via Netflix, OnDemand, or other sites such as YouTube or Hulu.

This British film from 1935 is a treat for Bela Lugosi fans. He is Anton Lorenzen, a broken-down one-armed sailor who inspires pity as part of the doomed crew of the Mary Celeste, a ship that in real life in the 1870s was discovered in the Atlantic sans crew.

This film, released in a much longer — unfortunately lost — version as “The Mystery of the Mary Celeste” in Britain, is an entertaining murder mystery. It sort of plays like a rougher Agatha Christie tale.

The plot: A captain and his bride (Shirley Grey) set sail with a ragged, rough, sinister ship’s crew, including Lugosi. One by one people start to die. The captain and his wife disappear. Finally only Lugosi’s Lorenzen and the sadistic first mate are left. At that point, Lugosi, acting like a 1930s version of Keyser Söze in “The Usual Suspects,” announces he is the killer, there to avenge a previous wrong. He kills off the first mate but then is hit by a beam of wood and falls into the sea to his death.

Before he dies, Lugosi brags of killing the captain and his wife. That scene appears clunky though. It sounds as if Lugosi’s voice is dubbed. This is important because the only remaining print is the 62-minute U.S. version of “Phantom Ship.” The longer, lost 80-minute version, “The Mystery of the Mary Celeste,” had an epilogue where the captain and his wife are discovered alive on an island, having escaped death on the Mary Celeste via a raft. It sure would be fun to locate a copy of the lost version. Lugosi biographer Frank Dello Stritto has located director Denison Clift’s original shooting synopsis for the film and it includes the island epilogue.

Lugosi is great in “Phantom Ship,” which used to be rare but in today’s digital world can be found easily and in fact watched for free on the Net. He inspires pathos and pity and then effectively turns cold-blooded killer. He did this very well also in the 1930s’ “The Black Cat,” the low-budget 1942 film “Black Dragons” and even in Ed Wood’s very low-budget 1955 film “Bride of the Monster.”

The rest of cast is capable and the ship scenes are quite effective for the low budget. “Phantom Ship” is definitely worth a buy as one of Lugosi’s best mid-1930s films. Watch it at tinyurl.com/j4tq54m.