Admirable film.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This is a real unheralded minor gem. It has a similar tone and atmosphere to Carnival of Souls (1962) yet is much less well known than that cult classic. Both films stories are based around carnivals, in Carnival of Souls it was an abandoned one whereas Night Tide is set in an off-season seaside resort. The melancholic, lonely ambiance given off by this setting is one of the chief strengths of the film. A sailor falls in love with a carnival girl who believes herself to be a mermaid, an underwater race who kill by the full moon. She says she has been responsible for the deaths of her previous two lovers.In keeping with the haunting and dreamy atmosphere, the mermaid is portrayed as a doomed creature who takes no joy in her situation. The film displays the influence of the Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur films of the 40's and 50's in the way that it presents its chilling story in a highly subtle, sophisticated manner. I was especially brought to mind of Cat People (1942) with is cursed central female character. It also shares another detail from that film, with its mysterious woman in the periphery of events who interacts occasionally and appears to also be one of the mythical race. This latter aspect is very well integrated into the story and adds a nice bit of ambiguity to events. The haunting jazz score also perfectly captures the right ambiance of the events. Lastly, there is Dennis Hopper who has one of his early starring roles here, unusually he plays a gentle soul and he does it very convincingly; although, in fairness, the cast in general all put in fine performances. This low budget flick is one that remains very emotive and interesting. It takes a less obvious approach to its material and this pays off with a haunting, tragic tale that makes quite an impact.

Aside from seeing an early starring role for Dennis Hopper, there isn't a whole lot to recommend this low budget film. The basic story idea of a dangerous woman who destroys men isn't bad, but the execution of the story is the problem. Again and again, the story is badly paced. In some cases, irrelevant scenes go on too long and deaden the pace. A good example is the dancing scene...you see it all. As a result, my attention wavered. Additionally, the cinematography is dark and fuzzy and the film just looks bad. And, while we know Hopper could act, here he just seemed lost--editing his performance to tighten things would have helped a lot.Only for the die-hard Hop-heads and the curious. otherwise, there are better low-budget public domain films out there.

Well for whatever reason the first time I saw this movie I was extremely impressed with it, but this time around it seemed quite a bit rough around the edges. Still, I have to give this movie a lot of credit for originality in bringing a sort of fantasy sensibility into a "noir" kind of story. Also I think in some of the moments here when Dennis Hopper hits his stride, we're seeing basically "A Star is Born" situation going on and that makes the film precious in a whole other way.The plot owes quite a lot to Jacques Tourneur's "The Cat People" -- this is the aquatic version of that film. There's even a mysterious woman who confronts the heroine in a restaurant in a scene lifted from Tourneur's film directly. What I enjoyed here that wasn't in Tourneur's film is the seedy carnival atmosphere. But in so many areas, particularly Luana Anders performance as the "good girl", the film fails to take advantage of interesting possibilities and instead presents clichés as if they were fully formed ideas.The nightmare sequences are awkward but intriguing, the mood and tone of the film is pleasingly dark and empty. This film may have in turn influenced other films, particularly Herk Harvey's famous "Carnival of Souls" which features a similar scene underneath an amusement boardwalk and a similar quiet mood.

Don't get me wrong... I don't think this is a great achievement in film making.I stumbled across this movie on late night TV, back in the early days of UHF, when, at 13 or 14, it was very exciting to me to have new channels that were so low budget that they showed things that, in the light of mainstream, 3 channel, VHF programming, seemed very much like they were being beamed in from another galaxy.Through the lens of adolescent angst that I saw it through, this is a movie about unbearable loneliness, brilliantly captured by Dennis Hopper, whose only way out of his loneliness is through a beautiful woman from another world that he can't fully understand.Like Kabuki theater on Darvon, he moves through the shadows of this overfiltered dreamworld of seaside 1960. The real monster is loneliness, and unlike most horror movies, the monster wins this one.The setting, the off season seaside resort (and it could have been any, not just Venice Beach) was perfect, being there by oneself is possibly the loneliest experience one could have, hinting at a livelier, fun=filled world that, because of time, is unattainable.It represents to me, maybe the first "indie" film I saw and recognized as one, "indie" in the original sense of a movie that was not made to be a box office hit, but because someone HAD to make a movie about something they felt strongly about, or had an artistic vision that had to be shared. Many of the earlier examples of these movies found their way onto UHF, because they were cheap to rent. But they got me hooked, and as soon as I could drive, sought out the art theaters in nearby towns that showed what was then called "underground" cinema, Kenneth Anger, John Waters (pre-flamingoes) I am Curious (Yellow and Blue.) These films are not as enchanting to me now, but then, none of them ever lived up to Night Tide for me.For sentimental reasons, this has always been, and will always be, one of my very favorite movies.