Night Tide

Ok, real quick, here's the second film in the double bill from the Black Maria Film Collective and byNWR from late last month (scroll down for the first). This is Night Tide, directed by Curtis Harrington (who plied his trade in TV mostly) and starring a young Dennis Hopper. Now, this is a pretty neat, kooky little oddity about a sailor who falls for a girl who may or may not be a mermaid. It's ok and I'd probably have thought much less of it had it not screened straight after The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds. But in comparison, it's a fucking masterpiece. 

There are some over-wrought performances, possibly a hint at the director's future work on Charlie's Angels and Dynasty, but it had clean camera movements, functional editing and crisp enough sound design - things all devoid from the earlier film. Hopper is fine, very perky even, a world away from:

"What are they going to say about him? What? Are they going to say he was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit, man!" or "HEINEKEN!? Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!!"

Once again, this is a film I can safely say I would never had seen if it weren't for these kind of events, and in this case, I'm grateful to Refn and the BMFC.

See also:

Although I didn't think much of it, Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017) seems to be roundly appreciated, and it has a fish man in it. Much better is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), with Hopper in a small but memorable role.