Night Tide

Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide is not a great film, but it’s an extremely unusual, surreal, often visually gorgeous piece of work that somehow, despite a miniscule budget and a story premise that would otherwise be silly, creates a convincing and eerie storybook community out of a boardwalk carnival in Venice Beach, California. A few amateurish performances delivering stiffly written dialogue somehow add to the dream-like setting, a seaside carnival where Johnny Drake, a sailor on shore leave played with earnest charm by Dennis Hopper, enters a bar (where a brilliant jazz ensemble is burning up the stage) and encounters a mysterious woman named Mora (Linda Lawson). Mora performs as a “real-life” mermaid in a carnival sideshow operated by Captain Sam Murdock (Gavin Muir), who has served as her guardian since finding her living alone on a Greek island when she was a child. Falling head over heels for the “woman of the sea,” Johnny learns from the locals that Mora’s last two boyfriends drowned during a full moon and that many in the town suspect Mora killed them. Johnny sticks around to find out the truth. Harrington and his crew create impressive atmosphere, using shadows, light, and water to blur the lines between natural and supernatural, reality and dream, Mora’s form shadow-dancing against a rock formation or gliding underwater. Eagle-eyed viewers may recognize the face of the merry-go-round operator played by Tom Dillon, who had bit parts in at least a dozen earlier noirs, including The Woman in the Window (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).