Film

Night Tide (1961)

Director: Curtis Harrington

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The title comes from Poe, the highly discernible influences come from Sternberg and Kenneth Anger (with both of whom Harrington had previously crossed paths) and the budget unfortunately came from Roger Corman's pennypinching Filmgroup company. Hopper is a sailor drifting around a misty seafront funfair. He meets and falls for a girl who believes she's one of the Sea People, awaiting the call of the night tide to rejoin her own, and meanwhile deadly to those who love her. All this entails much slow and dreamy wandering about, punctuated by a couple of dream sequences, in the most startling of which the Sea Lady metamorphoses into an octopus while Dennis is making love to her. It's quite sympathetic in its dogged artiness, though a misleading prelude to Harrington's subsequent unremarkable career.

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