Curtis Harrington's "Night Tide" probably didn't seem especially engaging on paper: it's a gentle, tragic love story with some slightly macabre overtones. But it clicks because of the utterly authentic locations (I was amazed to discover that Venice Beach, which looked so battered and defeated in Matt Cimber's "The Witch Who Came from the Sea", was in precisely the same condition more than a decade earlier!), Vilis Lapenieks' tasty cinematography, and David Raksin's jazzy, melancholic score. Dennis Hopper is okay, but I think he plays the young sailor as more of a noodlehead than was necessary. On the other hand, Linda Lawson is terrific as the beautiful, distant, otherworldly sideshow performer to whom Hopper is attracted, and Gavin Muir does a good job as Lawson's eccentric adoptive father. Comparisons to "Carnival of Souls" are inevitable because of the amusement pier backdrop, I suppose, but "Night Tide" is not a horror film. It would make a nice double feature with the aforementioned "The Witch Who Came from the Sea".
Review of Night Tide
