Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Night Tide Blu-ray Movie Review

"And so, all the night tide, I lie down by the side of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride in her sepulcher there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea."

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater October 10, 2013

Few directors have had filmographies as incongruous and unpredictable as the late Curtis Harrington, a B-movie auteur who gradually gave up his early artistic leanings for the safety of a steady paycheck. Under the mentorship of avant-garde luminaries like Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren, Harrington made a series of experimental shorts in the late 1940s and early '50s before leaving for Paris, where he wrote a book on Josef von Sternberg and allied himself with the New Wave critic-filmmakers of Cahiers du Cinéma. On returning to the U.S., he scraped together $50,000 to make 1961's Night Tide, an independent feature modeled loosely on producer Val Lewton's Cat People, and soon found himself—like a lot of young, talented directors at the time—within the inner circle of Roger Corman, for whom he made Queen of Blood, a piece of proto-Alien sci-fi horror. He followed this with the Diabolique-esque psycho-thriller Games and then a pair of high camp "Grand Dame Guignol" movies— What's the Matter with Helen? and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, both starring Shelly Winters—that rode unabashedly on the success of Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

From the late 1970s, however, unable to finance more personal films, Harrington began to direct made-for-TV movies and episodes of shows like Baretta, Charlie's Angels, and Dynasty, which pigeonholed him and put an end to his theatrical feature career. He died in 2007, suffering a final indignity when Kenneth Anger—with whom he'd had a falling out years before—showed up unbidden at his funeral with a film crew and essentially hijacked the ceremony. If there's a saving grace here for Harrington's reputation, it's that his early films have received a lot of critical reevaluation lately, with the consensus that the director was less of a sell-out than an underappreciated talent whose abilities—unlike those of New Hollywood contemporaries and former Corman acolytes like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese—were never allowed to completely flourish.

Night Tide is Harrington's most celebrated work, and for good reason. It's a poetical B-movie mystery, and the title is a perfect summation of the film's mood—dark and sensual, with a story pulled along by unseen forces. In his first lead role, a young Dennis Hopper stars as Johnny Drake, a Navy seaman on shore leave near the Santa Monica pier. Venturing into a jazz club called The Blue Grotto, where we see him double-fist beers while also somehow managing to carry a lit cigarette, Johnny makes a few passes at the gorgeous brunette Mora (Linda Lawson), who declines his clumsy advances and runs out of the bar when a witchy-looking woman—played by real-life occultist and L. Ron Hubbard muse Marjorie Cameron—shows up to give her the evil eye and a stern warning in Greek. Johnny catches up with the frightened Mora outside and walks her home, and for the favor she invites him over the next morning for breakfast on her terrace overlooking the beach. Here, he learns that Mora not only has an affinity for the ocean— watch her catch a seagull with her bare hands—but that she also spends her days as a "mermaid" in a sideshow act, donning an artificial tail and lying in a false fish tank that makes it appear as though she were underwater.

The two soon strike up a nascent relationship, but Mora is clearly holding something back. Johnny learns through the neighborhood grapevine that his new girlfriend is actually a suspect in the drowning deaths of her two previous lovers, but equally shocking is his conversation with Mora's boss and ward, Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir), who rescued her from a Greek island as a girl and claims that she's an honest-to-goodness mermaid, a member of the ancient race of Sirens. What's more, Mora believes this herself and is convinced that her people—including the witchy emissary from The Blue Grotto —are "waiting for me to join them."

This is-she-or-isn't-she question pulls the narrative from one scene to the next, but a conclusive, one-way-or-the-other answer isn't the point. (Which is good, because the ending is a little weak.) Night Tide is all about its hypnotic atmosphere. The pier where Mora works is sunny but desolate. Captain Murdock lives in a crumbling, not-yet-gentrified part of Venice Beach that wouldn't be out of place in Eraserhead. The whole film has a dreamy undercurrent that obfuscates what's real and what isn't. It's haunting, but in a subtle, uncertain way. It's perhaps even a stretch to call Night Tide a horror movie; it's more like a work of spooky magical realism, heavy with subconscious yearning and the smell of ocean salt in the air.

Night Tide Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino-Lorber's 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray release of Night Tide is sourced from the 2007 restoration of the film by the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles. While not without some minor damage—occasional white specks, a few quick scratches, a little jitteriness here and there—the 35mm print looks fantastic, rich in texture and tone. The film's natural grain structure is untouched by digital noise reduction, and there are no obvious signs of any other kinds of digital manipulation. Some shots are sharper than others, of course—such is the nature of low-budget, shooting-on-the-fly cinematography —but overall, the level of clarity is excellent, with ample fine detail in faces, clothing, and other in-focus areas of the frame. The stark and perhaps slightly overexposed cinematography has a strong, consistent tone—no blown out highlights or overly crushed shadows here—and there do not appear to be any compression or encode issues. For this current technological generation, at least, I think this qualifies as the definitive edition of Night Tide.

Night Tide Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For audio, Kino stays true to source with an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 mono track. As with the print, there are a few light age/budget-related fidelity issues here—some muffling in the dialogue and mild brashness in the high-end of the music and sound design—but nothing off-putting or distracting. The effects throughout generate a strong sense of atmosphere and presence—lapping and crashing waves, cawing seabirds, wind—and even when muddled, conversations are always easily understood, which is good considering there are no subtitle options here. (Can't we at least have English subtitle tracks on all your releases, Kino?) One of the most sublime aspects of the film is the snaking, oboe-led score from David Raksin—the "Grandfather of Film Music," with over 100 movie scores to his name—and minus a few upper-register crackles, the music sounds wonderful: clear, dynamic, and appropriately creepy. No real problems here.

Night Tide Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary: Dennis Hopper and director Curtis Harrington sat down a few years ago for a retrospective conversation about the making of the film, filled with small details and remembrances and "where are they now" comments on the other actors in the film. A pleasant, informative listen.
• Curtis Harrington Interviews (SD, 25:37 and 21:16): "In 1987, director Curtis Harrington was interviewed on two episodes of David Del Valle's public access series Sinister Image. Program 1 covers his early career, including Night Tide, and Program 2 covers his later career."
• Trailers (HD): Trailers for Night Tide, The Stranger, and White Zombie.

Night Tide Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It may not be as visceral as Night of the Living Dead or as immediately spooky as Carnival of Souls—which might explain why it's one of the more overlooked independent horror features of the 1960s—but Curtis Harrington's Night Tide is nonetheless a chilling B-movie mystery that draws many of its charms from the youthful energy and low-budget, shot-on-location aesthetic of the French New Wave. It also happens to be Dennis Hopper's first starring role, and it's worth watching just to see the tender, sensitive side of the actor in his pre-Easy Rider days. It's the film's atmosphere, though, that really sells the thing—a salty mix of boardwalk nostalgia, jazz, and magical realism. Kino-Lorber's Blu-ray release is definitely the best the film has ever looked on home video, and the disc also includes a thoughtful audio commentary from Harrington and Hopper, along with two extended interviews with the director from 1987. Recommended.