FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

mcannady1 Spoiler near the end -NIGHT TIDE is an intriguing film that seems to contain various subplots. The compelling ending is difficult to perceive, but a certain clue may point to a resolution of the tale.Johnny Drake,(HOPPER) a sailor on leave, falls for a lovely girl (MORA) (LAWSON) who works on the Santa Monica pier in a side-show attraction as a mermaid in a tank that appears to be filled with water.Not long after Johnny meets Mora, a strange woman speaks to her angrily in a foreign language, and Mora flees from her in terror. He tries to find out who the woman is and why she is harassing Mora, but the girl claims not to know her.Johnny walks Mora home to her apartment and finds she is reluctant when he tries to befriend her. However, she does invite him to breakfast for the following morning in her apartment which is located over a quaint old carousel.The following morning on his way to meet Mora for breakfast, Johnny becomes acquainted with the carousel owner and his friendly daughter (Ellen) (ANDERS), who soon warn him of the danger of being too friendly with Mora. It seems that two young men she had befriended were found dead. A friendly nearby fortune-teller defends Mora, saying that the case was never solved and the killer was never found.Johnny and Mora fall in love, but she warns him that she is concerned for his safety. She is obsessed with the sea and says she is one of the sea people. She appears to be conflicted about her innocence in the murders of the two young men. Though Johnny tells her the sea people are only a myth, Mora greatly fears them and now admits that the strange woman who approached her on the night they met is one of the sea people warning her that she must join them soon.Johnny meets Mora's stepfather Captain Murdoch, who also warns him about Mora. He invites Johnny to his home which contains some intriguing and frightening sea-faring curios. He had adopted the four year old orphan whom he discovered on a Greek island in his travels and did not know she would grow up to become a monster. He does not want Johnny to be the next victim.Despite the warnings, Johnny goes diving with Mora and is astounded and greatly dismayed when she tries to drown him. After a dangerous fight for his life, he waits for her in the boat but cannot find her.May contain Spoiler, but could be important in figuring out the end -Early the next morning Johnny heads for the side-show on the pier, intending to have it out with Mora. When he finds her dead in the tank, Captain Murdoch appears and starts shooting at him. He says Johnny is responsible and implies that she committed suicide as she does not know what to do about their relationship.Later Captain Murdoch claims to be the guilty party in the murders and admits to fabricating the yarn about the Sea People. His motive was a fear of one day losing the ward he had grown to love. He denies knowing the strange woman who harassed Mora, though Johnny spotted her near the captain's home just before arriving.. Turning the corner, Johnny finds she had disappeared all too quickly.Key Point - When Johnny approaches the mermaid concession, a distinct scream from Mora can be heard. However, it is simultaneously drowned out by the loud sounds emanating from a nearby ride that was just set in motion. I have not seen this clue in any of the other reviews and wonder if the end of the film can be explained that way.Night Tide is an interesting and compelling film which has you sympathizing with not only Mora and Johnny, but the pathetic Captain Murdoch, a literary old gentleman who is very lonely. Also, I am intrigued by the mysterious woman in black who threatens Mora. All in all, it is an intriguing film with some horrific undertones. The location on the pier is very realistic and charming (invoking a glimpse of its former appearance in the early 60's).

MartinHafer 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.

preppy-3 A sailor on leave named Johnny Drake (a young Dennis Hopper) meets and falls in love with beautiful Mora (Linda Lawson). She also plays a mermaid in a side show...and thinks she's descended from a race of "fish people" and can never be with a human being. Johnny tries to prove that she's wrong...but is she? There's a lot wrong with this movie--Hopper (an excellent actor) is terrible in his role and there's some incredibly inappropriate music during it. But it's shot in moody black and white with excellent direction by Curtis Harrington and Lawson is great in a very difficult role. The movie has a dream-like quality to it. You're not sure if this is all happening or is just a fantasy of Johnnys. The dialogue and the images all have a dream-like quality to it. When I originally viewed this back in the 1990s it was a poor quality print on tape. That actually worked in its favor! It made the dream feeling more realistic (so to speak). TCM showed a beautiful letter-boxed print which (somewhat) detracts from that feeling...but it's still there. Also the last part of the film was far too dark to make out on tape but is crystal clear now. So this is a moody and definitely odd fantasy--not really a horror film like many believe. Far from perfect but worth a look. I give it a 7.

nevfahs 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.