‘Eerie. Strange. Macabre. Lovers caught in a dark tide of sinister terror!’
Night Tide is a 1961 fantasy horror film about a young sailor who is attracted to a mysterious mermaid performing at a carnival, but soon suspects that the girl is actually a siren who draws men to their watery deaths during the full moon.
The movie was written and directed by Curtis Harrington (Ruby; The Dead Don’t Die; The Killing Kind; The Cat Creature) and stars Dennis Hopper (Land of the Dead; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; Queen of Blood). The title was inspired by a line from Edgar Allan Poe‘s poem ‘Annabel Lee’.
Harrington managed to persuade top Hollywood composer David Raksin (The Hound of the Baskervilles, Laura, Whirlpool) to provide the film’s score for “virtually nothing” simply because he liked the movie.
Night Tide was filmed on a budget of $50,000 in 1960, premiered in 1961, but was held up from general release until 1963.
The film was restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
Plot [includes spoilers]:
Johnny Drake, a sailor on shore leave in Santa Monica, meets a young woman named Mora in a local jazz club. Mora tells him that she makes her living on the pier appearing as a mermaid in a sideshow attraction under the name ‘Mora the Mermaid’, a ‘half-woman, half-fish’, on the boardwalk, operated by Captain Murdock. She lives in an apartment above the amusement park that houses the merry-go-round.
Johnny goes to see her in her mermaid costume at the pier. Mora tells him that Captain Murdock is her godfather and he found her as an orphan living on the Greek island of Mykonos. Captain Murdock refers to her as his ‘ward’. Johnny becomes acquainted with the merry-go-round operator and his daughter Ellen, who warns Johnny that Mora may be dangerous, as her two previous boyfriends both drowned under mysterious circumstances.
As Mora and Johnny become closer, Mora tells him that she believes she is a siren, one of the legendary creatures who lure sailors to their deaths under the influence of the moon. Johnny witnesses Mora being followed by a mysterious black-clad woman, the ‘Sea Witch’ whom she believes is one of the sirens, calling her to return to the sea to fulfill her destiny.
However, Johnny does not believe that Mora is capable of killing anyone, and thinks she must be suffering from a delusion. During a scuba dive on the day of the full moon, Mora cuts Johnny’s air hose, apparently attempting to drown him. He is forced to the surface. She swims out to sea and disappears.
Johnny is devastated, but returns to the boardwalk the following evening and goes to the sideshow, where he finds Captain Murdock at the entrance as usual. Peering into the mermaid tank, he sees Mora’s corpse on display. Captain Murdock appears brandishing a gun, admitting to Johnny that he killed Mora’s boyfriends because he could not bear the thought of her leaving him. Murdock fires at Johnny, but misses. The gunshots attract the attention of two policemen on the boardwalk, and Murdock and Johnny are taken into custody.
At the police station, Murdock confesses, saying he found and adopted Mora when she was a young orphan. He planted the idea that she was a mermaid, incapable of living the life of a normal woman, in her head as a way of binding her to him forever. When she matured and began to attract male attention, Murdock murdered the men she grew close to and let Mora think that she had caused their deaths. However, Murdock denies any knowledge of the strange figure Mora believed to be a siren.
As Johnny’s shore leave ends, Ellen, who has taken an interest in him, visits the police station to bid him goodbye. He tells her that he will try to return in the future.
The production company, Virgo, defaulted on their Pathe Lab loan of $33,793 and Pathe was preparing to foreclose on the picture. Roger Corman asked the lab to hold off on their legal actions to allow Filmgroup to distribute the film, guaranteeing Pathe $15,000 within 12 months of the film’s release. Pathe agreed, and Filmgroup released through American International Pictures.
Buy Blu-ray: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
Buy Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood – Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
Cast and characters:
Dennis Hopper … Johnny Drake
Linda Lawson … Mora
Gavin Muir … Captain Samuel Murdock
Luana Anders … Ellen Sands
Marjorie Eaton … Madame Romanovitch
Tom Dillon … Merry-Go-Round Operator – Ellen’s Grandfather
H.E. West … Lt. Henderson
Ben Roseman … Bruno
Marjorie Cameron … Water Witch
Technical specs:
1 hour 26 minutes
Black and white
Aspect ratio: 1.66: 1
Audio: Mono (Westrex Recording System)
Trailer [4K]:
Free online on YouTube [1080p and 1080p Premium HD]:
Free online on YouTube [1080p HD]:
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