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Night Tide

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Night Tide
File:Night Tide FilmPoster.jpeg
Theatrical poster
Directed byCurtis Harrington
Written byCurtis Harrington
Produced byAram Katarian
Starring
CinematographyVilis Lapenieks
Edited byJodie Copelan
Music byDavid Raksin
Production
company
Virgo Productions
Distributed byFilmgroup
American International Pictures
Release date
  • July 1961 (1961-07) (Spoleto Film Festival)[1]
Running time
84 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$75,000[1]

Night Tide is a 1961 American fantasy film sometimes considered to be a horror film,[2][3] written and directed by Curtis Harrington and featuring Dennis Hopper in his first starring role. It was filmed in 1960, premiered in 1961, but was held up from general release until 1963. The film's title was inspired by some lines from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" [4]

Plot

Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper), a sailor on shore leave in Santa Monica, meets a young woman named Mora (Linda Lawson) in a local jazz club where real-life flautist Paul Horn (musician) and his band are playing. Mora tells him that she makes her living appearing as a mermaid in a sideshow attraction on the boardwalk, operated by Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir). She lives in an apartment above the amusement park that houses the merry-go-round. Johnny learns that Mora makes her living on the pier as a sideshow attraction under the name 'Mora the Mermaid' – a 'half-woman, half-fish'. He goes to see her in her maid costume at the pier. Mora later tells Johnny that Captain Murdock is her godfather and that he has been like a father to her since he found her as an orphan living on an island, Mykonos. Captain Murdock refers to her as his 'ward'. Johnny becomes acquainted with the merry-go-round operator and his daughter, 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' (Marjorie Cameron) whom she believes is one of the Sirens, calling her to return to the sea to fulfill her destiny. However, Johnny doesn't 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 couldn't 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 on a Greek island. He planted the idea that she was a mermaid, incapable of living the life of a normal woman, as a way of binding her to him forever. When she matured and began to attract the attention of young men, Murdock murdered them and let Mora think that she had caused their deaths. However, Captain Murdock denies any knowledge of the strange figure Mora believed to be a Siren.

As Johnny's shore leave ends, the merry-go-round operator's daughter, 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.

Production

Development

Harrington sold his original script, called The Girl from Beneath the Sea, to Corman in 1956.[5] According to Spencer Kansa, Harrington based his script on a self-penned story titled "The Secrets of the Sea." [6] Kansa states that prior to filming the director had turned down an offer from the Mickey Cohen gang to finance the picture. "They were very charming men but I had visions that if the film didn't do well I'd end up at the bottom of the LA river in a block of cement!"[6]

The mermaid mural for the sideshow attraction in which Mora stars was painted for the film by Paul Mathison. Mathison was an associate of Cameron's, who had been part of her magical circle with Jack Parsons, starred as Pan in Kenneth Anger's film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and also costumed Cameron and dressed the set for Harrington's 1956 short documentary on Cameron, The Wormwood Star. According to Spencer Kansa, the mural "if you look closely hides a clue to the finale of the picture." [7] Mathison can be seen in the opening Jazz club scene, sporting a blonde buzz cut.

Another patron of the Jazz club where jazz flautist Paul Horn and his band play is Barbette (performer), the famous trapeze artist and star of Jean Cocteau's seminal surrealist short film Blood of a Poet.

Cast and Casting

  • Dennis Hopper ... Johnny Drake
  • Linda Lawson ... Mora
  • Gavin Muir ... Capt. 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 (credited as Cameron)

The role of Mora the Mermaid (played by Lawson) was originally to be played by Susan Harrison, who had been the lead in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Harrison, at the time a friend of director Harrington, initially agreed to take the role, but then reneged due to a personal relationship.[8]

Harrington had previously worked with actress Cameron; his 1956 short (10-minute) documentary The Wormwood Star (viewable on YouTube) is about her and her artwork.

Filming

In order to film some of the underwater sequences in Night Tide, director Curtis Harrington gave detailed instructions to a cameraman who then shot the scenes underwater at the director's request.[8]

The film was produced by Aram Kantarian. The cinematographers were Vilis Lapenieks and Floyd Crosby.

Release

Night Tide premiered at the Spoleto Film Festival in Spoleto, Italy in July 1961, where it was named the top American film that year.[9] The film's production company, Virgo, defaulted on their Pathé Lab loan of $33,793 and Pathé 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 Pathé $15,000 within 12 months of the film's release. Pathé agreed, and Filmgroup released it through American International Pictures.[10] It was given a general theatrical release in the United States two years after its initial premiere, opening in Detroit on February 13, 1963.[1] It later screened in New York City on May 25, 1964.[1]

The film was restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.[11]

Critical Reception

The entry for the film in Horror: The Aurum Film Encyclopedia says: 'Clearly inspired by Cat People (1942), following Val Lewton's principles by having a vividly realistic setting (the tawdry pier and funfairs) and providing a rational explanation for most of the mystery (the girl's adoptive father planted the siren story in her mind), it is both clumsy and tentative and strikingly atmospheric. More of a fantasy than a horror movie perhaps, the film does make darkly minatory use of its dream sequences (the mermaid nightmarishly metamorphosing into an octopus) and the recurrent motif of the mysterious woman in black whose appearances frighten the girl. [12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Night Tide". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Los Angeles, California: American Film Institute. Archived from the original on May 2, 2019.
  2. ^ Shelley 2009, p. 94.
  3. ^ Maxford 1996, p. 127.
  4. ^ Spencer Kansa. Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron. p. 164
  5. ^ THOMAS M. PRYOR (Mar 12, 1956). "'MATADOR' IS EYED BY TWO STUDIOS: Allied and United Artists Are Discussing Plan to Sponsor Jointly Conrad Novel R.K.O. to Share Arness Of Local Origin". New York Times. p. 23.
  6. ^ a b Spencer Kansa, Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron, p. 164.
  7. ^ Spencer Kansa. Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron, p. 166.
  8. ^ a b "Retrospective in Terror: An Interview with Curtis Harrington – April 2005". The Terror Trap.
  9. ^ Parsons, Louella (July 31, 1961). "O'Neill's 'Journey' First Work As Film". The Record. Hackensack, New Jersey. p. 32 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ Fred Olen Ray, The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors, McFarland, 1991, p 45-47
  11. ^ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  12. ^ Phil Hardy, ed. Horror: The Aurum Film Encyclopedia. London: Aurum Press, 1985, p. 145

Sources

Wikiquote has quotations related to Night Tide.
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