Night Tide (1961)

dir Curtis Harrington cast Dennis Hopper, Linda Lawson, Gavin Muir, Luana Anders

On the Santa Monica pier, Johnny (Hopper), a sailor on liberty, introduces himself to Mora (Lawson), a distant young woman who seems to want only to be left alone. However, Johnny's persistence pays off and the two strike up a friendship. Mora, it transpires is an immigrant from a Greek isle, who works as a mermaid, wearing a fake fishtail and lying in a tank of simulated water in an attraction run by an Englishman, Captain Murdock (Muir). Johnny's and Mora's friendship turns into a romance, but Johnny learns a disturbing fact: both of Mora's last two boyfriends were drowned under mysterious circumstances that are still being investigated by the police. Mora eventually tells Johnny that she is the descendant of the "Sea People," the man-killing sirens of Greek myth, who are trying to compel her to return to the sea. Captain Murdock tells Johnny that Mora's instinct to kill will eventually get the best of her and that he will meet the same fate as her former boyfriends if he does not leave her.

This is a slow and talky, but not uninteresting film that effectively builds up a feeling of strangeness and dread amid a laconic atmosphere of jazz clubs, carnival rides, and sideshow attractions. Both the Leonard Maltin and Video Hound film guides say that this is not a horror movie, but it is every bit as much of a horror movie as Cat People (1942), which it closely resembles. Like Cat People, it hints at the presence of the supernatural without insisting on it. Mora meets a mysterious woman who seems to share her ancestry, just as Irena did in Cat People, for instance. In fact, Night Tide, is one of the most successful attempts since the Val Lewton thrillers to make a truly Lewtonesque film. Its not as good as the actual Lewton films, but is a worthy attempt.