Poe with a Megaphone

Night Tide. Amidst the clapboard and tinsel of the amusement park at Venice, Calif., a siren song lures a young sailor toward destruction. He meets a girl, Mora, whose dark eyes distill the rapture of the depths. "I am a mermaid," she tells him--perhaps referring to her job, which involves slipping into a scaly fishtail and then into a tank at a boardwalk sideshow. But Mora is unfathomably fey. She collects starfish and coral. Gulls fly into her arms. She is tormented by a mysterious Woman in Black who appears with jet veils murmuring about her like sea things.

Thus fact and fantasy interweave in this first feature by Writer-Director Curtis Harrington. Shot along the Southern California beach front on a $75,000 budget, the film emits an uncommon glow of freshness and imagination. Harrington daringly chose to unfold his realistic tale of suspense as if he were Edgar Allan Poe with a megaphone, and most of the time the experiment succeeds. He heightens reality, giving a nightmare quality to commonplace events. Soon even the ripple of bath water begins to sound ominous. In one scene, punctuated by echoes, the pilings under an old pier are transformed into a forest of briny, fearful enchantment.

Night Tide ebbs when it tries to be too logical, for a legend tends to slacken under close scrutiny down at police headquarters. But solid professionalism is evident everywhere. The music underscores action with fine restraint, and Harrington's serviceable dialogue suits the guileless, understated performances of his principals, Linda Lawson and Dennis Hopper. They are deftly typecast. As the sailor, Hopper talks about Denver, but his Attic profile might have been minted in ancient Greece. And Actress Lawson lushly incarnates the myth of mariner and maid that has haunted men's imaginations for more than 2,000 years.

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