Night Tide
It’s funny how most younger fans of the legendary Hollywood rebel Dennis Hopper fail to realize that when HE was younger, Hopper was actually best friends with the original Rebel Without A Cause himself, James Dean, even appearing alongside him in that ubiquitous 1950s classic. After Dean’s fiery death in a smash up car accident, one can theorize that Hopper had decided to “carry on” in the way that Dean would have wanted, having a wild, unbridled career en route to his own immortality amongst cinema fans. But first, Hopper had to pay his own dues in order to achieve his late friend’s stature, laboring for years in supporting roles and low budget movies until the film industry was finally willing to give him a chance to direct his own stuff. One of those low budgets that enabled him to build his name was this 1961 release that became famous not just for Hopper’s starring presence, but also for its weird yet hypnotic atmosphere and ambiguous nature that literally causes the viewer to question much of the reality with which we are presented. Hopper plays Johnny Drake, a young sailor on an extended shore leave from the Navy who decides to spend his off time living and wandering around the world famous Santa Monica pier, which at the time featured numerous carnival like attractions and rides. By his own admittance having hardly even yet gotten to see all that much of the great big world for which he had signed onto The Navy for in the first place, he finds his world turned upside down when he meets Mora (Linda Lawson), an extremely beautiful girl, so much so that she clearly stands out from the other boardwalk denizens. After much resistance, he finally gets to walk her home and even have her agree to a breakfast date with her the next morning, only to learn then that she works on the pier as the resident “mermaid”, i.e. she dresses up in a fishtail costume and lays herself out in a tank so that tourists can pay a quarter to stumble in and gaze upon her all under the behest of the drunken “sea captain” (Gavin Muir) who runs the exhibit and serves as its official barker, running a spiel over the PA system in order to draw the crowds in. This captain also happens to be Mora’s guardian and only father figure, having adopted her from Greece at a young age and brought her to America. Hopper continues seeing her and appears to be as happy as a clam, but soon cracks start to appear in the façade, starting when a couple of other locals let him know that the last two boyfriends whom she has had both wound up dead via accidental drowning and then upon a visit to the drunken sea captain, Hopper is told that indeed, his life too is also in danger, since Mora IS actually a mermaid who in reality will change both physically and mentally, becoming a deadly siren who will end Hopper’s life and make him victim number three. In addition, there is a mysterious old woman (Marjorie Cameron, who in real life ran in circles with such types as L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley) who appears to be making a habit of harassing Mora (and Hopper) in a threatening manner (or is she just another local crazy person?). Worst of all, Mora herself confirms to Hopper that she is truly a genuine mermaid, one who fears that her “people” could come ashore at any time looking for her with possibly bad intentions. Hopper is perturbed by much of this (and is suffering from his own nightmares of being eaten by Mora The Mermaid), but he has also accepted the fact that he’s hopelessly in love with her and vows to stay by her side no matter what happens. Hopper might be playing a throwaway naïve young romantic role here, but even then he manages to successfully incorporate various quirks and nuances into his performance that makes him seem more real than your typical character of this kind. Lawson as Mora does project that beautiful yet otherworldly quality that is necessary for this type of character to work, even as the story starts to veer into the possibility that she actually suffers from delusional mental illness about her biological status which was brought on by constantly being told since childhood by her drunken sea captain guardian that she was an actual mermaid of the sea and that was what made her so special, possibly an advanced form of manipulation by the old man in order to keep her compliant under his watch. Or, maybe not. The fact that the film never quite chooses its own lane between the myth or the reality of the situation is both its strongest suit and indirectly responsible for its biggest weakness, which is the buildup of the story in the first half where at that halfway mark, Hopper is fully aware of what she is and the danger involved, but yet after he chooses to stand by her, the film just sort of slogs its way towards the ending and the possible explanation involved with it. Nonetheless, the sinister and mysterious atmosphere of an oddball boardwalk amusement pier community (as utilized here and in a scant few other films such as Lost Boys) is exploited to its full effect by director Curtis Harrington, and Hopper would succeed here in adding another brick towards building his legend that continues to resonate today…
7/10