6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
On leave in a shore side town, Johnny becomes interested in a young dark haired woman. They meet and he learns that she plays a mermaid in the local carnival. After strange occurrences, Johnny begins to believe that she may actually be a real mermaid that habitually kills during the cycle of the full moon.
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Gavin Muir, Luana Anders, Marjorie Eaton, Linda Lawson (I)Horror | 100% |
Mystery | 4% |
Romance | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.65:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
English: LPCM Mono
None
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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