Night Tide (1961)

... aka: Girl from Beneath the Sea, The
... aka: Muerte en el fondo del mar (Death on the Seabed)

Directed by:
Curtis Harrington

"I guess we're all a little afraid of what we love."

After making numerous shorts, this was Harrington's feature film debut, which took a decent amount of time to move from the printed page to the big screen. Harrington had written an unpublished short story titled "The Secrets of the Sea" some time in the mid-50s. He then turned it into a script called "The Girl from Beneath the Sea," which he sold to Roger Corman in 1956. The film finally was made in 1960 through an independent company called Virgo Productions on a budget of, according to the director himself, 75,000 dollars. Before it could be released, a lab loan defaulted and legal action was in the works when Corman (who had helped Harrington raise the initial budget) stepped in to save things. Corman then struck up an agreement with the lab to return the money owed after the film's release. Night Tide debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 1961 before Corman's company AIP got the film into general release in 1963 (where it was often double-billed with The Raven) and the rest is history.

While on leave, sailor Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) goes to a Venice Beach nightclub to listen to a jazz combo and spots the beautiful and mysterious brunette Mora (Linda Lawson) sitting all by herself. She agrees to let him walk her back to her apartment and the two arrange a date for the following morning. When Johnny shows up for brunch, Mora discusses her great love for seafood, explains that she is originally from "an island" and that she now works as a mermaid at a sideshow attraction on the pier. She serves him fresh mackerel and then a seagull strangely lands on her lap and allows her to pet it. Johnny finds himself quickly falling in love with Mora, but as is usually the case with young love, one often has no clue what they're really getting themselves into until it's too late. And the more Johnny learns about Mora, the more he begins to think his own life may be in danger.

The supporting characters each fill in a piece to the mystery. Gavin Muir plays Mora's boss and guardian Captain Samuel Murdock, formerly of the British Navy. He tells Johnny he found Mora on a Greek isle and has been taking care of her ever since. He also wastes no time trying to dissuade Johnny from seeing her by suggesting she may be part of a race of sirens, who are known for luring seamen to their deaths. Considering the Captain keeps a jar containing a pickled human hand in his liquor cabinet, he may not be so trustworthy himself. But Ellen (Luana Anders), who works at her grandfather's merry-go-round attraction, pretty much confirms all this by informing Johnny that Mora's last two boyfriends have both wound up dead. Though no evidence was found to implicate anyone, a policeman (H.E. West) is still keeping a close eye on her. Either way, something is up and since Johnny has fallen for Mora, he's determined to find out just what, even if it kills him.

Around the time this was made, Harrington had been hobnobbing with Kenneth Anger and other underground filmmaker types and making his own experimental short films. This marked an attempt to bridge the gap between that world and the more mainstream, commercially viable one. The results are a mixed bag. The film is moody, intriguing and ambiguous to start, nicely capturing a feeling of isolation and loneliness, but it's also extremely slow-going and some scenes feel extraneous. The acting is neither great nor terrible (though it's interesting seeing a young, clean-cut and handsome Hopper [as opposed to his later unshaven, filthy hippie and middle-aged psycho personas] playing a genuinely nice character for a change) and there are so many loose ends left at the end it barely qualifies as a legitimate resolution.

Harrington claims to have been inspired by Poe's mournful poem "Annabel Lee" (which is where the title comes from and is even quoted at the very end), but he was also just as influenced by the classic Cat People (1942) and copies numerous scenes and ideas from it, most notably the famous "my sister" moment when a black-clad "Water Witch" (Marjorie Cameron, subject of the 1956 Harrington short The Wormwood Star) shows up at the club and mutters something in Greek to Mora. All in all, I wasn't quite blown away by this one but it's still interesting and certainly worth a look.

The cast also includes Marjorie Eaton as a psychic and tarot card reader and Bruno VeSota, who can be seen briefly walking down a flight of stairs (and also apparently did this film's makeup). Though Vilis Lapenieks receives sole credit as the film's cinematographer, Floyd Crosby actually shot much of the interiors sans credit. Having fallen into the public domain, this is an extremely easy movie to find, but there are both very good and very bad quality prints on the market. Up until the 2013 Blu-ray release from Kino, Image Entertainment's DVD release was the best this had ever looked. The latter also comes with a very interesting commentary track (recorded in 1997) with Harrington and Hopper.

★★1/2

Killing Kind, The (1973)

... aka: Are You a Good Boy?

Directed by:
Curtis Harrington

As a teenager, Terry Lambert (John Savage) was hanging out on the beach with some friends when they decided to gang rape the neighborhood "loose" girl. After a few of them have their turn with ther, they throw Terry on top but he's unable to go through with it. Guess who ends up being the only one to serve time for the crime? A combination of the "victim" lying in court and inept representation meant that Terry was convicted and spent two years behind bars. Now released, Terry returns to his hometown understandably angry and bitter about the whole incident. He goes to stay with his flighty, doting, lonely, overbearing mother Thelma (Ann Sothern), who owns a boarding house and has about 50 cats running around. Thelma is the very smothering, overprotective type of mother. She detests younger women, says they're "tacky whore sleeping around with everybody." Because of that, Thelma's boarding house is filled with elderly women. A younger woman, aspiring model Lori Davis (a pre-Laverne and Shirley Cindy Williams), shows up looking for a room and Thelma decides to go ahead and rent to her only because she finds her gangly and unattractive.

Living next door are sexually-repressed librarian Louise (Luana Anders) and her uppity, elderly, wheelchair-bound father (Peter Brocco). He finds it "unnatural" that a mother and son behave like Terry and his mother do - laughing and carrying on at all hours of the night - and calls them "low class idiots." He also labels Terry a psychopath because when he was younger he tried to burn down the house. He's pretty much right. While spying on the younger female boarder, Terry snaps a cat's neck and later gets a little rough with her in the swimming pool. He calls up Tina (Playboy Playmate Sue Bernard), the girl who got him thrown in jail, and gives her a veiled threat, then runs her off the road into a canyon and kills her. He catches a rat and smashes it in a trap in front of an elderly tenant (Marjorie Eaton), making her faint. Louise has been watching much of this from next door with binoculars. One evening while watching Terry swim, Louise gets drunk and heads over to talk to him. She confesses being bored with life and having fantasies about burning books and putting ground glass into her miserable father's food. She also comes on to him, telling him, "It must have been wonderful being raped. I wouldn't have told on you." Terry refuses to reciprocate and she ends up leaving in tears thinking she's too old for him... but will try to get her revenge later.

Terry continues to lose his mind. He questions Thelma about his upbringing. According to her, he died before Terry was born, but considering the amount "uncles" who came and went during his childhood, it's probably closer to the truth that Thelma has no clue who is his real father. Terry blames the incident on the beach years ago for his inability to perform with women (something the perceptive Louise calls him out on), so he grabs a bottle of wine and decides to pay his attorney, Rhea Benson (Ruth Roman) a visit. At knife-point, he forces her to suck down glass after glass of wine and booze until she's falling-down drunk. He then coats her with lighter fluid and torches her alive. Upon returning home, Lori makes the unwise decision of coming on to Terry in her bathroom and ends up strangled in her tub. When Thelma finds out what's happened, she decides to take Terry to a landfill to dispose of the body. But what's a mother ultimately to do with the monster she inadvertently helped create?

Originally titled Are You a Good Boy?, this low-budget film (made for a little over 200 thousand dollars) was barely released back in its day. Apparently the investors took control of the film and handed it over to a wannabe distributor who had no clue what he was doing. As a result, the film wasn't promoted and played just a few big city theaters and Midwestern drive-ins before disappearing. It wouldn't be until the video age that the film would be more widely seen.

The psychology of the killer seems fairly well thought-out by the director, writers (Tony Crechales and producer George Edwards) and actors. Terry has been betrayed, confused, emasculated and/or belittled by nearly every woman he's come across, from his attention-starved mommy to his beach dalliance to both his careless attorney and the judge who put him away. Upon returning to the real world, he has no clue how to behave when women come on to him, and most aren't very patient or compassionate towards him. The pitifully lonely Thelma seems well-intentioned, but her relationship with her son is icky to put it mildly. She's constantly hugging him, playing with his hair and taking his picture... even while he's in the shower. When he tries to kiss her on the cheek she demands a "real" kiss on the lips. It's not really incestuous per se, it's more like she has groomed her son since birth to take the place of a husband or boyfriend; the dependable man by her side she could never snag in life. In the process she's seriously messed up her son. One feels real pity for both Terry and Thelma and both lead actors do a superb job making their characters seem like real people. The supporting cast is also very good.

In addition, it's nicely-photographed by Mario Tosi (who'd go on to shoot CARRIE) and movingly scored by Andrew Belling. Edwards later recycled the repressed librarian and her bitter father characters for 1979's THE ATTIC, which starred Carrie Snodgress and Ray Walston in the roles. Paragon originally released the VHS and Dark Sky handled the DVD release (which features a good interview with the director) in 2007.

★★★