Product Details

• Actors: Dennis Hopper, Linda Lawson, Gavin Muir, Luana Anders, Marjorie Eaton
• Directors: Curtis Harrington
• Format: Black & White, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Milestone Video
• VHS Release Date: October 15, 2002
• Run Time: 84 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305176183
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,294 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

No ordinary cult film, Night Tide covers a variety of different waterfronts. It's a film from the American underground, it's a horror movie, and it's an early example of independent cinema (before there was such a term). Shot in 1960, it's also a strangely haunting artifact of its time. Night Tide was written and directed by Curtis Harrington, a member of the experimental avant-garde of the '50s who went on to make the atmospheric shocker Games and many an episode of Dynasty. Mounted on the cheap, and shot on authentic locations in Santa Monica and crumbling Venice, California, Night Tide has a loose, lyrical quality not found outside Cassavetes and Godard films of the same era.

Dennis Hopper, whose youthful looks and Method style were still intact at this point, plays an innocent sailor at liberty in a coastal town; he falls for a girl who plays a mermaid at the sideshow. Or is she really a mermaid? Inspired by Val Lewton's horror classic Cat People, Harrington cooks up a supernatural stew with the suggestion that the willowy lass is one of the "Sea People," called back to her ocean home by a weird sea witch (played by a real-life occult celebrity called Cameron). Yet Night Tide only occasionally feels like a horror movie; with its naturalistic exteriors, bongos, and coffeehouse atmosphere, it's more a slice of poetic bohemia. Luana Anders, who should have had a major movie career but later became a B-movie leading lady, is wonderfully fresh as the good girl, and the music score by Hollywood pro David Raksin (Laura) is inventive and offbeat. Shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1961, the film did not secure a U.S. release until 1963, when its New-Wave-ish style probably looked less innovative. Seen today, Night Tide is both a lovely mood piece and a look back at a peculiar moment in American moviemaking, and either way a bit of low-cost enchantment. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mermaid Nightmares, March 8, 2003

By 

tokyodoll (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Tide (DVD)

Great low-budget indy horror film from the 60s inspired by the Val Lewton classic 'Cat People'. Fans of other b/w indy horror flicks like 'Carnival of Souls' should really enjoy it. It stars the great Dennis Hopper ('Giant', 'Easy Rider', 'River's Edge', 'Blue Velvet', etc.) as a naive young sailor named Johnny who falls for a mysterious & beautiful girl called Mora. Mora works as "Mora the Mermaid" in a sideshow during the day on a CA Boardwalk. After they become lovers, Johnny discovers that Mora's last two boyfriends mysteriously drowned and soon he starts wondering if Mora is a real mermaid or one of the spooky "Sea People".

The soundtrack is a mix of great bongo numbers & bad b-movie music, but the real highlight is the eerie atmosphere and great stylized photography. The director tried hard to raise "Night Tide" out of the usual b-movie abyss and it shows. Excellent flick!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Strange, Moody, Effective Low-Budget Film, April 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Night Tide [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Night Tide" makes extensive use of the Venice, California milieu in which the story is set, telling the story of a lonely sailor (Dennis Hopper) who is attracted to Mora (Linda Lawson), a young woman who enacts the role of a mermaid in one of the sideshows on the pier. Mora, her guardian, and several of the people who make up the sideshow subculture hint at the possibility of a terrible secret about Mora's past loves and perhaps her true otherworldly nature, and the film takes off from there. The streets of Venice (as it appeared in the early '60s when the film was made) are turned into a shadowy, bizarre landscape through the excellent photography and editing, and the colorful supporting characters contribute to the strange, dreamlike mood. Performances are uniformly excellent and right, from the leads to minor characters. Director/writer Curtis Harrington, in his feature debut, has made a low-key suspense/fantasy film that, like the films of Val Lewton in the 1940s (Cat People, The Seventh Victim, et. al.), substitutes our dread of monsters for the monsters themselves and keeps us guessing until the end. Though not well-known except in cult cinema circles, this is a beautifully-done, effective film you can watch again and again.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something's happening here...., December 3, 2004

By 

Peter (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Tide (DVD)

A haunting, mysterious and magical movie. Marjorie Cameron adds an element of real life magic. Kenneth Anger also had done this when he used her in `The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)'. Marjorie Easton also adds to the spell, and Dennis Hopper is wonderful. The carnival is the perfect background for a a plot about fantasy and reality. Filmed at the Santa Monica Pier, Venice and Ocean Park, California, where Anton LaVey played organ at strip joints in the late 1940's. The name Mora is found in many parts of the world as the death aspect of the `Triple Goddess', or Night Mare, or female vampire.