Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty one
Speaker 3: horror fantasy romance Night Tide, written and directed by Curtis Harrington,
Speaker 3: starring Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson. So this movie had
Speaker 3: been on my list for a while. I think I
Speaker 3: added it to the list after we talked about Curtis
Speaker 3: Harrington in our episode on Queen of Blood, a later
Speaker 3: movie by Herrington from nineteen sixty six. If you don't
Speaker 3: remember that episode, Queen of Blood was the Roger Corman
Speaker 3: financed sci fi horror movie in which a bunch of
Speaker 3: astronauts rescue an alien emissary who is shipwrecked on the
Speaker 3: mark shin moon Phobos. But then while they're on the
Speaker 3: way back to Earth, it turns out, uh oh, she's
Speaker 3: a vampire and she wants to drink all their blood.
Speaker 3: One of the members of the crew in that movie,
Speaker 3: not the main member of the crew, kind of a
Speaker 3: secondary character, is played by Dennis Hopper, which is gonna
Speaker 3: be a funny connection to this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe John Saxon might have been the lead
Speaker 2: in that one, and Basil Rathbone was in it as well.
Speaker 3: Basil Rathbone playing one of those stay in one room
Speaker 3: and read some lines. But yeah, John Saxon is on
Speaker 3: the spaceship. I think Dennis Hopper gets his blood drank.
Speaker 3: And yeah, but Queen of Blood was notable for being
Speaker 3: like half original footage and half footage from a couple
Speaker 3: of pre existing Soviet Soviet science fiction movies, mostly like
Speaker 3: special effects shots from these movies had been bought And
Speaker 3: then I think Roger Korman's like, you know, let's we
Speaker 3: already owned the rights to this, let's make another movie
Speaker 3: out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but in the end, far better film than it
Speaker 2: had any right to be given those constraints.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I think it helps that those special effects
Speaker 3: shot shots that they bought in actually do look very good,
Speaker 3: like very artful, you know, kind of beautiful, pleasing special
Speaker 3: effects shots. But anyway, the funny thing about that is,
Speaker 3: according to Curtis Harrington, Corman offered to put up the
Speaker 3: financing for Queen of Blood because he was impressed with
Speaker 3: Night Tide, the movie that we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about today. Night Tide had been Harrington's first feature film,
Speaker 3: so especially once we start talking about this movie, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be really funny to think about, like this kind
Speaker 3: of quiet, subtle art film leading to the opportunities including
Speaker 3: Queen of Blood. So what kind of movie is Night Tide?
Speaker 3: A lot of reviewers have had trouble placing it in
Speaker 3: a genre. The main thrust of the story is a
Speaker 3: romance between the characters played by Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson,
Speaker 3: but this movie also has elements of horror, element of thriller,
Speaker 3: definitely of fantasy and mystery. Personally, I would say that
Speaker 3: it's an eerie, supernatural romance, but of course you've got
Speaker 3: these these parts that feel like film noir, parts that
Speaker 3: feel like full corror. I'd say, yeah. Sometimes you could
Speaker 3: just say it's an art house film. I think that's
Speaker 3: fair because it's got these scenes that have dangling images
Speaker 3: from out of a dream. It's very popular in that
Speaker 3: mid century, you know, art film genre. I'm thinking of
Speaker 3: the empty rocking chair and the wind and things like that,
Speaker 3: and then other parts of this movie just feel like
Speaker 3: beach blanket bingo. You know, there's kind of a beach
Speaker 3: party atmosphere to the happier romance scenes that I like.
Speaker 3: I like the contrast there when things get really spooky
Speaker 3: and Linda Lawson starts talking about hearing the moon talking
Speaker 3: to her, but they've like just been talking about putting
Speaker 3: the suntan lotion on. And then also, it's sort of
Speaker 3: like a beat coffee house movie, especially in a few
Speaker 3: scenes early on. And it's a cycle logical murder thriller,
Speaker 3: like a Hitchcock movie. So there's just a whole lot
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, number of Once you list them out, it
Speaker 2: sounds like this is going to be they're going to
Speaker 2: be experiencing whiplash, but everything proceeds at a pace and
Speaker 2: at a rate that feels very natural.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So I'll go ahead and do a quick
Speaker 3: synopsis to orient Us at Night. Tide is the story
Speaker 3: of a young Navy recruit named Johnny who falls in
Speaker 3: love with a woman named Mora who works on the
Speaker 3: Santa Monica peer in California playing a mermaid at a
Speaker 3: carnival attraction, and at first they have a blissful romance,
Speaker 3: but things start to become strange when Johnny notices that
Speaker 3: Mora is being followed everywhere by an older woman with
Speaker 3: a witch like presence who speaks to her in a
Speaker 3: foreign language. And Mora seems haunted by the moon and
Speaker 3: feels the effects of the tide on her body and
Speaker 3: dreams that the ocean is calling to her. And then
Speaker 3: on on top of all this, Johnny starts to hear
Speaker 3: rumors about Mora's last two boyfriends, who both died under
Speaker 3: weird circumstances. So a mystery comes into focus, and the
Speaker 3: question is does Mora have a secret or could maybe
Speaker 3: she and Johnny both be casualties of some kind of
Speaker 3: conspiracy by the sea. So I will note that in
Speaker 3: this episode, as usual, we're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: the ending of the film, and this movie definitely has
Speaker 3: some big surprises in it, So if you want to
Speaker 3: hop out go watch the movie before we ruin any
Speaker 3: of the plot surprises, you should probably go for that.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, I'll go ahead and mention where you can
Speaker 2: find it. Then there's a really nice indicator Blu ray
Speaker 2: edition of the film if you're going for physical media,
Speaker 2: and this features a four K restoration and a special
Speaker 2: treat that this makes me wish I had watched it
Speaker 2: in this format. A nineteen ninety eight audio commentary that
Speaker 2: features both director Curtis Harrington and starre Dennis Hopper. I
Speaker 2: believe there was. Yeah, Yeah, it's supposed to be really good.
Speaker 2: A lot of them are just just talking about the
Speaker 2: making of the film and pointing out all sorts of little,
Speaker 2: little curious facts about what you're seeing. But I believe yeah,
Speaker 2: And I believe there was also a Quino Lurber release
Speaker 2: as well. You can also find this one on digital
Speaker 2: easy to find in that format. I will point out, however,
Speaker 2: I rented it digitally, and only after i'd already you know,
Speaker 2: made the purchase for the rental, that I realized it
Speaker 2: was colorized. And as I've mentioned before, I'm not one
Speaker 2: hundred opposed to colorized versions of films. With certain films,
Speaker 2: it can. It can kind of work, you know, your
Speaker 2: sort of sci fi films. Sometimes I don't universally hate it,
Speaker 2: but Nighttide demands to be seen in its original black
Speaker 2: and white. I ended up having to figure out how
Speaker 2: to set my smart TV to grayscale, which is not easy.
Speaker 2: Back in the old days, it was just a knob,
Speaker 2: you know, and your old televisions. Nowadays you have to
Speaker 2: go into a whole bunch of sub menus. But once
Speaker 2: I converted it to gray scale, I was able to
Speaker 2: watch it h and you know, I believe as it
Speaker 2: was intended. But you don't want to have to go
Speaker 2: through all that. Get it in black and white if
Speaker 2: you can, Otherwise you're gonna have to do a workaround.
Speaker 3: I would recommend watching it in black and white. I
Speaker 3: don't want to ruin your enjoyment for the movies where
Speaker 3: you like it. But I'm generally not a fan of colorization.
Speaker 3: I would say, specially in this case, I would not
Speaker 3: recommend that.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think there was some film we watched
Speaker 2: for Weird House and I ended up not minding it,
Speaker 2: but I can't remember. It's probably more of an exception
Speaker 2: to the rule than anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, might as well note here that the title of
Speaker 3: the movie Night Tide is a quote from the poem
Speaker 3: Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. This is a poem
Speaker 3: about the death of a woman beloved by the poet,
Speaker 3: which takes place in a kingdom by the sea, so
Speaker 3: you can see the relevance to this story. But the
Speaker 3: last stanza of annabel Lee goes as follows, for the
Speaker 3: moon never beams without bringing me dreams of beautiful annabel Lee,
Speaker 3: and the stars never rise. But I feel the bright
Speaker 3: eyes of the beautiful Annabelle Lee. And so all the
Speaker 3: night Tide, I lie down by the side of my darling,
Speaker 3: my darling, my life, and my bride in her sepulcher,
Speaker 3: there by the sea, in her tomb, by the sounding sea.
Speaker 2: Very nice, very nice. There's the title right there. Now.
Speaker 3: I just had the thought, as a literary illusion, does
Speaker 3: that give away too much about the ending of the movie?
Speaker 3: What's your feeling about that? Rob? Should you make allusions
Speaker 3: to other works of literature if they have the same
Speaker 3: ending as the story that you're going to tell?
Speaker 2: Sure? Why not? Because the audience never knows if you're
Speaker 2: going to stick to it or subvert it, So why not?
Speaker 3: I guess you're right. And it's probably obscure enough a
Speaker 3: reference to Annibal Lee that probably nobody's going like, oh,
Speaker 3: night Tide, that's that agg Allan Poe poem. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like two words, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Now a note about expectations here. Nighttide is not a
Speaker 2: monster movie, and I think some folks have had maybe
Speaker 2: disappointment with this based on some online reviews, were looking
Speaker 2: at where people went into it, maybe wanting something a
Speaker 2: little camp here, a little more B movie, you know,
Speaker 2: And Yeah, it's just not the case, as we've been saying.
Speaker 2: Think of it more of it as an avant garde
Speaker 2: noir contemplation on loneliness and desire. Likewise, we should point
Speaker 2: out that the homo erotic and gay subtext is something
Speaker 2: that the folks have often noted about this film, and
Speaker 2: that too is also subtle and doesn't tackle anything directly
Speaker 2: or overtly, but very much a part of the sort
Speaker 2: of like commentary world of this film thing. A lot
Speaker 2: of has been written about this, as we'll discuss. Curtis
Speaker 2: Harrington was himself an openly gay director, and in this
Speaker 2: film is noted for some of that subtext. And given
Speaker 2: that we're here at the tail end of Pride Month,
Speaker 2: seemed like a perfect time to dive into another one
Speaker 2: of his films.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that the gay subtext that is often
Speaker 3: read into this movie is really interesting because I see
Speaker 3: it applied not just to one character like I think
Speaker 3: sometimes critics talk about elements of disappearing with reference to
Speaker 3: the protagonist Johnny you know, played by Dennis Hopper, but
Speaker 3: also applied to the character Mora played by Linda Lawson,
Speaker 3: for example, questions about whether to some extent is the
Speaker 3: question of her belonging to the people of the Sea,
Speaker 3: having this kind of like unconfirmed or secret relationship with
Speaker 3: the Sirens or the mermaids, the people of the Sea,
Speaker 3: having something to do with like being in the closet
Speaker 3: or being being sort of having an identity that like
Speaker 3: can't be fully realized among the people you walk about
Speaker 3: to day to day.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, like what happens to that, to her nature,
Speaker 2: to her identity here in this world where she can't
Speaker 2: be who and what she is. So it's gonna be
Speaker 2: it's gonna be fun to talk about these aspects of
Speaker 2: the film. Yeah, some quick stats. This is, of course,
Speaker 2: is our second Harrington film, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: our fourth film to feature Dennis Hopper, following episodes on
Speaker 2: ninety three Super Mario Brothers, Queen of Blood and Head.
Speaker 3: Oh, Dennis Hopper had something to do with Head totally.
Speaker 2: He was in the I wasn't on that episode, but
Speaker 2: he's in the credits. He at least pops up somewhere
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: Okay, I forget what he had to do with head,
Speaker 3: but that makes sense, you know, the sixties freak out guy.
Speaker 3: Though this is a very pre sixties freak out Dennis
Speaker 3: Hopper we're going to get in this movie. I want
Speaker 3: to talk about that extensively when we get into him
Speaker 3: in the connection section. But this is not your average
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, when I think Dennis Hopper, I think Super
Speaker 3: Mario Brothers, Dennis Hopper, King Koopa guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. People often think about that. They think about Blue Velvet,
Speaker 2: they think about Speed or water World or I mean,
Speaker 2: I think another major touchstone that's earlier than all of
Speaker 2: those examples is of course Apocalypse. Now, yeah, where he
Speaker 2: plays the photojournalist. I'm an American, that character totally. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll talk about that in a bit.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's get into the folks behind this film.
Speaker 2: We'll talk a little bit more. First of all about
Speaker 2: Curtis Harrington, the director, the writer. He lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: six through two thousand and seven. Harrington was obviously a
Speaker 2: big Edgar Allan Poe fan, so it's fitting that his
Speaker 2: first film was a nineteen forty two short based on
Speaker 2: the Fall of the House of Usher. It was the
Speaker 2: first of a string of short films that also included
Speaker 2: fifty six Is the Wormwood Star, and then Nighttide was
Speaker 2: his first feature film independently produced with at least some
Speaker 2: amount of help and connection making from Roger Korman. As such,
Speaker 2: he followed it up with a Roger Corman produced though
Speaker 2: uncredited in that regard film sixty five, Voyage to the
Speaker 2: Prehistoric Planet, followed by Queen of Blood. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, so I can't comment on
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me neither, don't know anything about it, but it
Speaker 3: seems fitting with this string of movies that Harrington started
Speaker 3: doing after Night Tide in the sixties, where he's essentially
Speaker 3: trying to get a more mainstream movie making career. He's
Speaker 3: breaking out of the art house film world, which he
Speaker 3: occupied in the fifties and still somewhat you could say
Speaker 3: somewhat occupied in the era of Night Tide. Night Tide
Speaker 3: is kind of a bridge he's making, sort of still
Speaker 3: an art movie, but it has some mainstream narrative appeal,
Speaker 3: and then eventually he's going to break through into just
Speaker 3: like I'm doing science fiction movies. I'm making money in
Speaker 3: the industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's going to be be interesting
Speaker 2: to compare him to him to some other contemporary figures.
Speaker 2: We'll get into it in a bed here. But after Night
Speaker 2: Tide he shot sixty seven's Games, a thriller with James Kahn,
Speaker 2: then the nineteen seventy film How Awful About Alan starring
Speaker 2: Anthony Perkins. Seventy one's What's the Matter with Helen? That's
Speaker 2: with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters. Seventy two's Whoever Slew
Speaker 2: Anti Rue? That's with Shelley Winters, Sir Ralph Richardson, and
Speaker 2: Michael Gothard is in that as well. I can't I
Speaker 2: haven't seen it, so I can't tell you if he's
Speaker 2: wearing cool sunglasses in that, but I assume that he is,
Speaker 2: or glasses some sort of cool eye wear. Seems to
Speaker 2: frequently come with a Gothard performance.
Speaker 3: What was the name of the Michael Gothard movie we
Speaker 3: did on the show?
Speaker 2: Oh it was Scream Screen again? Yes, yeah, ok, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And there may have been another one he popped up
Speaker 2: in as well, but memorable screen presence for sure. Let's
Speaker 2: see Harrington also directed seventy three's The Killing Kind with
Speaker 2: the Sue Bernard, a faster Pussycat, Kill Kill. He also
Speaker 2: did the seventy three TV movie The Cat Creature, the
Speaker 2: seventy four TV movie Killer Bees, the seventy five TV
Speaker 2: movie The Dead Don't Die with George Hamilton, seventy seven's
Speaker 2: Ruby with Piper Laurie, the seventy eight TV movie Devil
Speaker 2: Dog the Hound of Well, that's with the Richard Krenna,
Speaker 2: and also Martin Beswick, who was in another movie we
Speaker 2: were considering for this week, and that movie is not
Speaker 2: this movie, Devil Dog the Hound of Hell. Not to
Speaker 2: be confused with Zoltan Hound of Dracula, different, different evil
Speaker 2: dog movie.
Speaker 3: Is that the same as the movie Dracula's Dog or
Speaker 3: a different.
Speaker 2: Movie that is Dracula's Dog? Yes, okay, okay. For folks
Speaker 2: who thought that Zoltan Hound of Dracula was too confusing,
Speaker 2: they're like, what are we talking about here? No, it's
Speaker 2: Dracula's Dog. And then Harrington's final full length film was
Speaker 2: Mattahari in nineteen eighty five, starring Sylvia Crystal of Emmanuel fame,
Speaker 2: and he continued to work as a director on various
Speaker 2: TV shows, including the likes of Logan's Run, Charlie's Angels,
Speaker 2: Wonder Woman, Dark Room Dynasty in one episode of the
Speaker 2: eighty seven Twilight Zone revival Cool. So, Night Tide is
Speaker 2: often referenced as Harrington's best and this is one of
Speaker 2: the one of the main reasons we've moved on to
Speaker 2: this after or Queen of Blood. We're like, we're impressed
Speaker 2: with what we've seen from this guy in a film
Speaker 2: where he was working with various constraints. What is it
Speaker 2: like when he not to say he had just complete
Speaker 2: free reign here, but you know, it's an independently produced picture.
Speaker 2: He had a great deal of creative freedom here. You know,
Speaker 2: what's it like when he puts that together? So Night
Speaker 2: Tide is often considered one of his best, alongside seventy
Speaker 2: one's What's the Matter with Helen? To understand that one's
Speaker 2: highly regarded as well. But yeah, Night Tide especially manages
Speaker 2: to exist with a foot in kind of two different worlds,
Speaker 2: So the realm of avant garde experimentation and the world
Speaker 2: of commercial genre work, and it mix for a very
Speaker 2: interesting film. Again, not a campy monster film, but it's
Speaker 2: effectively creepy. It's you know, it would say, low key
Speaker 2: beautiful in many scenes, some very surreal shots, some dreamlike qualities,
Speaker 2: great use of supernatural elements, and much of the film
Speaker 2: strength is in its more I think ethereal contemplation of
Speaker 2: loneliness and desire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the movie is very subtle. I want to look
Speaker 3: into some of these subtle touches and characterization when we
Speaker 3: get into the plot section, especially just in the first
Speaker 3: few minutes of the movie. But there's a lot of
Speaker 3: feeling in it, and it does still have I think,
Speaker 3: some of an art house sensibility, though I wouldn't stress
Speaker 3: that too much because that might give you the idea
Speaker 3: that it's, you know, more like these these other art
Speaker 3: house films of the mid century that Harrington, by the way,
Speaker 3: was associated with, people like Maya Darren and Kenneth Anger,
Speaker 3: who made you might say, more symbolic films or films
Speaker 3: that were less narratively coherent and instead were you know,
Speaker 3: sequences of images or kind of strange abstract contemplations on
Speaker 3: a theme. Harrington also did movies like that before he
Speaker 3: had his breakout, you might say, with Night Tide. He
Speaker 3: was mainly thought of as an art filmmaker, and he
Speaker 3: made artistic short films like some of these other contemporaries
Speaker 3: like Kenneth Anger, but yeah, he broke through, and he's
Speaker 3: often considered one of the few, or maybe the only
Speaker 3: one of these mid century California art directors who made
Speaker 3: the switch into mainstream cinema. The others didn't.
Speaker 2: Really Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kenneth Anger, I think is the
Speaker 2: really interesting figure to compare him to, because Anger never
Speaker 2: left the indie scene, like he stayed in short indie
Speaker 2: experimentation for the duration of his career, whereas, again, Harrington
Speaker 2: successfully makes this transference into the commercial world and then
Speaker 2: brings aspects of what made him special in the experimental
Speaker 2: world with him.
Speaker 3: And in Harrington's work, I feel like you can really
Speaker 3: see both sensibilities, like there is there is definitely something that,
Speaker 3: to me at least, always is still artistic about him,
Speaker 3: like he's somebody who is at some level trying to
Speaker 3: create art. But you can also see that he appreciates
Speaker 3: camp and he has a love of the old Hollywood style,
Speaker 3: like one thing about Night Tide A lot of people
Speaker 3: have noted, and I think Harrington himself admitted to this.
Speaker 3: He agreed that the movie was very influenced by a
Speaker 3: previous Hollywood film, the nineteen forty two movie Cat People,
Speaker 3: which I think we're going to have to do on
Speaker 3: the show someday.
Speaker 2: It keeps coming out.
Speaker 3: We just never did an episode on it. But that
Speaker 3: was Val Luton, produced, directed by Oh, I don't know
Speaker 3: how you actually pronounce his name, Jacques Turner Tournaire his
Speaker 3: French name. But that movie is also a romance about
Speaker 3: a romance between a man and a woman in which
Speaker 3: the woman may have a bizarre, supernatural secret. But you
Speaker 3: can also apply a psychological framing to the plot. You
Speaker 3: can kind of read it in the supernatural way or
Speaker 3: in the psychological way, which is very much how Night
Speaker 3: Tide is positioned as well. In general, I think for Harrington,
Speaker 3: a major theme of his career was the constant struggle
Speaker 3: and tension between artistic ambitions and a desire to maintain
Speaker 3: a sort of artistic integrity, setting that against the practical
Speaker 3: necessities of filmmaking and the you know, the desires of
Speaker 3: people who were financing films like he's. I think he
Speaker 3: framed his own life story very much in terms of
Speaker 3: this constant difficult compromise between like what he felt he
Speaker 3: had to do as a filmmaker and what he wanted
Speaker 3: to do as an artist. But also you could get
Speaker 3: the idea from that that he's somebody who's, you know,
Speaker 3: very self serious about his work. And I don't think
Speaker 3: that's entirely true either, because I was reading some excerpts
Speaker 3: from a book that he wrote about his career called
Speaker 3: Guys Don't Work in Hollywood. The excerpts I read are
Speaker 3: fantastically He's a good writer, like good snappy pros, very funny, droll,
Speaker 3: dry sense of humor, and he clearly he just has
Speaker 3: a good sense of irony about Hollywood and about you know,
Speaker 3: the people that he works with and what's going on.
Speaker 3: There's one story that he tells in the book, again
Speaker 3: clearly with a strong sense of irony, about how he
Speaker 3: is invited to a dinner being given in honor of Truman,
Speaker 3: Capote and Trum. He says Truman Capote comes up to
Speaker 3: him and says, oh, I loved Night Tide. You know,
Speaker 3: so he's about the movie we're talking about today. Capoti
Speaker 3: was a fan. But he gets seated at this dinner
Speaker 3: next to some actress. I actually can't remember her name,
Speaker 3: but an actress who he becomes aware is a fan
Speaker 3: of like religiously based book movie censoring crusades, you know,
Speaker 3: against immorality and film, and so he's just kind of
Speaker 3: trying to wind her up. He's like, oh, really, you know,
Speaker 3: tell me about all the immorality and film. And apparently
Speaker 3: she was like, can you believe this filth they're making?
Speaker 3: Like Lawrence of Arabia. Apparently she was incensed because she
Speaker 3: believed T. E. Lawrence was gay and thought, how could
Speaker 3: you make a film about such a person?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the one of the classic films of
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But anyway, the book seems like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I would really like to read this book. Harrington seems
Speaker 3: like an interesting guy, not just somebody whose work was interesting,
Speaker 3: but he had interesting perspective about it and about the
Speaker 3: industry that he worked in. So I'm going to come
Speaker 3: back and try to read that book.
Speaker 2: At some point. Now. One of the things as well,
Speaker 2: that Harrington has often given credit for is that he
Speaker 2: recognized in Dennis Hopper and already you know, very very
Speaker 2: you know, seasoned performer you been working for a number
Speaker 2: of years, realized this is a guy whose performance you
Speaker 2: could build a movie around. Yeah, and indeed this is
Speaker 2: a lead Yeah, this could be this is a lead
Speaker 2: actor right here. Let's use him like that, because this is,
Speaker 2: in fact, Dennis Hopper's first starring role plays Johnny Drake.
Speaker 2: We've talked about Hopper before, he of course lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six through twenty ten. And since we've discussed Hopper before,
Speaker 2: you know, mostly want to situate him within his career
Speaker 2: in filmography here and again talking about like the Dennis
Speaker 2: Hopper we see in this movie versus performances from Dennis
Speaker 2: Hopper that may more instantly come to mind for you know,
Speaker 2: folks looking back on the totality of his career. So
Speaker 2: Hopper's credits go back to TV roles in the mid fifties.
Speaker 2: He also had some early, minor and sometimes uncredited film
Speaker 2: roles in the likes of fifty five's Rebel without a Cause.
Speaker 2: He just plays like a random goon in that. I've
Speaker 2: actually never watched Rebel without a Cause, and I certainly
Speaker 2: haven't watched it looking for Dennis Hopper, but he's in
Speaker 2: there somewhere. He's also when I Died a Thousand times.
Speaker 2: He's in Giant in fifty six and various other films,
Speaker 2: including Key Witness in nineteen sixty that was his credit
Speaker 2: right before Nighttide, but again no lead roles until this film. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: he did a great deal more TV work. He played
Speaker 2: Tarzan in a nineteen sixty four Andy Warhol movie. He
Speaker 2: was in the Sons of Katie Elder in sixty five,
Speaker 2: Queen of Blood in sixty six, and then in sixty
Speaker 2: seven he appeared in the Roger Corman directed and Jack
Speaker 2: Nicholson scripted LSD film The Trip, as well as Cool
Speaker 2: Hand Luke. And this is around the time that we
Speaker 2: generally began to leave behind the scrappy young Dennis Hopper
Speaker 2: and began to deal with the sort of counter culture
Speaker 2: Dennis Hopper. And this is a period of some great
Speaker 2: career high points, but also the beginnings of generally what's
Speaker 2: considered multiple substance struggles that would plague Hopper until he
Speaker 2: finally became sober and I believe nineteen eighty five, enabling
Speaker 2: a career comeback that saw him appear in such films
Speaker 2: as Hoosiers, which he received an OSCAR nomination for Blue Velvet,
Speaker 2: as well as films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre too. I mean,
Speaker 2: these are all films that came together, you know, because
Speaker 2: he was able to really you know, jump back in
Speaker 2: and and and see his career take back off again.
Speaker 3: I Mean, I like a lot of Dennis Hopper rolls,
Speaker 3: but I got to say there is nothing better than
Speaker 3: his chainsaw shopping scene in Texas Chainsaw too, that that
Speaker 3: is an Oscar worthy scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, at the time period we're talking about here, though,
Speaker 2: is kind of like a period of ups and downs.
Speaker 2: You know, some of the ups are notable. Like you know,
Speaker 2: he directed and co wrote the Oscar nominated nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine film Easy Writer, which of course is you know,
Speaker 2: considered a classic. He directed seventy one's The Last Movie,
Speaker 2: and nineteen eighties Out of the Blue, a film that
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think it received much attention in
Speaker 2: the States when it came out. There's some distribution issues,
Speaker 2: but there's been there's been a lot of re examination
Speaker 2: of that picture in recent years. And of course he
Speaker 2: also appeared in seventy nine Is of poc Lips Now
Speaker 2: during this time period as well, and that, of course
Speaker 2: is also a very iconic performance that you know, in
Speaker 2: my mind that that's one that really stands out, is
Speaker 2: like Oh, that's Dennis Hopper. That's the sort of crazy
Speaker 2: role that you that you come to expect from exactly.
Speaker 3: So we were talking about this earlier. But when I
Speaker 3: think Dennis Hopper, I think of his roles as high
Speaker 3: energy madmen, you know, phrenetic presence dominating the screen, and
Speaker 3: sort of acid rogues, people who have a countercultural, rebellious
Speaker 3: screen presence. And also I just think about his villain roles,
Speaker 3: you know, Blue Velvet Speed in the nineties, that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. I mean, you know, Speed's probably not his
Speaker 3: most artistically significant film, but he's notable in it. Like
Speaker 3: you can't forget Dennis Hopper and Speed. But in Nighttide,
Speaker 3: I just kept thinking, it is hard to believe Dennis
Speaker 3: Hopper was ever this cute. The character he plays, named
Speaker 3: Johnny Drake, is naive, soft spoken, a little bit shy
Speaker 3: and helpless, and Hopper plays this role very earnestly without
Speaker 3: any irony that's detectable. And I say that about the
Speaker 3: irony because I would say even in some of his
Speaker 3: other earlier, more straightforward roles that I've seen on the screen,
Speaker 3: like he's kind of a background character in Queen of Blood,
Speaker 3: just playing one of the Astronauts and he's not doing
Speaker 3: anything all that exciting. But I remember thinking in Queen
Speaker 3: of Blood that you could still get this devil in
Speaker 3: disguise energy coming off of him. Like maybe that's my imagination,
Speaker 3: but there's this energy like, if only somebody would let
Speaker 3: me out of the cage of this role, I'd tear
Speaker 3: this place apart. And there's nothing like that here, not
Speaker 3: even a hint. This character is very earnest and reserved,
Speaker 3: and Hopper is fully committed to the character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, Hopper is really really good and Night
Speaker 2: Tide it's fascinating performance on multiple levels. It's it's a
Speaker 2: great performance knowing the sorts of roles and struggles that
Speaker 2: would come to define him later on, but it's just
Speaker 2: a great subdued, vulnerable performance, you know. I think it's
Speaker 2: so nicely. His performance so nicely captures this sort of
Speaker 2: yearning awkwardness of young adulthood, you know, like he he's
Speaker 2: he's he's like, I'm going to get out there, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna I'm going to live my life. But he doesn't
Speaker 2: really know how to do that yet, how to fill
Speaker 2: in such a large blank in the sentence of one's life. Yes,
Speaker 2: and so his his performance is wonderful and again like
Speaker 2: low key and and and he has this and at
Speaker 2: the same time raw and it's kind of painful to
Speaker 2: watch at times in the best of ways, like yeah,
Speaker 2: like in a very subdued way, the exposed nerve endings
Speaker 2: of emotion slightly grazing against the expanding realities of his world.
Speaker 2: You know it, I don't know. It just makes you
Speaker 2: think about being like a young person and not knowing
Speaker 2: how to do any of the things that you feel
Speaker 2: the desire to do.
Speaker 3: That's such a great observation. You're totally right about the Yeah,
Speaker 3: the way that he wants to live a life but
Speaker 3: he doesn't know how to do it. You can see
Speaker 3: that embodied when he tells the story at the beginning
Speaker 3: about how he always wanted to see the world, so
Speaker 3: he joined the Navy so he could see the world.
Speaker 3: But then he tells more like, I haven't really seen
Speaker 3: anywhere yet, you know, I've just been here in California.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he mentions Hawaii, so about like he's
Speaker 2: been to a military base in Hawaii and then back
Speaker 2: here and in otherwise he's just been on a ship. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because he's supposed to be from Denver. I believe that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, and there are other ways that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think you can say that the way he's pursuing
Speaker 3: romance is like he has a yearning and he knows
Speaker 3: that this is something he's supposed to do and he's
Speaker 3: trying to do it right, but he also doesn't know
Speaker 3: how to do it. He senses there's a gap and
Speaker 3: he's trying to cross it, but he doesn't he doesn't
Speaker 3: know where the bridges are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I was looking up to see, you know,
Speaker 2: outside of that commentary track, which I didn't have access for,
Speaker 2: I was wondering what Dennis Hopper has said about the film,
Speaker 2: and I found a quote from an interview that Amy
Speaker 2: Greenfield did with Hopper for Curtis Harrington's Cinema on the Edge,
Speaker 2: And I'm just going to read a quote from it.
Speaker 2: Here Hopper said, and you know, also, and I think
Speaker 2: Curtis would agree with this also. But I've always equated
Speaker 2: what Jean Cutos was saying. I think it was Jean
Speaker 2: Cutou who said that ninety eight percent of creation was
Speaker 2: accident and one percent was intellect and one percent was logic.
Speaker 2: The art was learning how to make the accident work
Speaker 2: for you. And I think, and when I think of Nighttide,
Speaker 2: I think that Curtis had a very strong script. He
Speaker 2: knew where we were going moment to moment, but within
Speaker 2: that there was the freedom to create and then learn
Speaker 2: to make the accident work for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see that. I mean, this is a
Speaker 3: very script bound movie. It doesn't feel improvised, like clearly
Speaker 3: the characters are following their lines as written, and the
Speaker 3: story is very coherent as written. But apart from like
Speaker 3: the dialogue and the structure of the story, it does
Speaker 3: it has the energy of one of those movies where
Speaker 3: there was a lot of collaboration from the actors, Like
Speaker 3: the actors are very much informing and contributing to their
Speaker 3: own performances. Doesn't feel like overly controlled in terms of
Speaker 3: how the actors are behaving and acting out their roles.
Speaker 3: If that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. You know another
Speaker 3: thing I just wanted to mention because this hadn't come
Speaker 3: up yet. Apparently Dennis Hopper was a fan of Curtis
Speaker 3: Herrington's short art films, and that was part of the
Speaker 3: reason that he agreed to do Night Tide. Like Curtis
Speaker 3: Harrington tells the story about how they met up in
Speaker 3: a coffee shop and I guess this would have been
Speaker 3: in La and they were talking about doing this project.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how much Hopper got paid for
Speaker 3: this role. I mean, maybe there was just regular ambition involved,
Speaker 3: but clearly he was sold enough on Herrington as an artist,
Speaker 3: on the artistic vision for the film that that was
Speaker 3: a big part in his agreeing to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've read the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's move on to the love interest
Speaker 2: here and our possible mermaid, and that is Mora, played
Speaker 2: by Linda Lawson, who in nineteen thirty six through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two American model, singer and actress of Italian descent
Speaker 2: born Linda Gloria Sposiani. Her early career highlights were tied
Speaker 2: to American nuclear weapons testing. She won the Atomic Pageant
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas in nineteen fifty five. This was at
Speaker 2: the time of Operation Q, the Operation Q test, and
Speaker 2: so her nickname was Miss Q. Yes, she was an
Speaker 2: atomic pin up girl.
Speaker 3: Bizarre. It's hard to imagine this was ever really a
Speaker 3: thing like a beauty pageant tied inherently to weapons testing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the good old days when a test program for
Speaker 2: a weapon of mass destruction had a sexy pr push
Speaker 2: Yeah crazy yeah, so yeah. I think she was a
Speaker 2: showgirl at the Sands Hotel at the time, and then
Speaker 2: she got this gig as the Atomic pin up girl.
Speaker 2: But after this she got into acting with TV roles
Speaker 2: on various shows of the late fifties and sixties, including
Speaker 2: episodes of Sea Hunt and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and her
Speaker 2: first film role was nineteen sixties The Threat, followed by
Speaker 2: Night Tide. Afterwards. She continued to work in TV with
Speaker 2: rolls really into the mid two thousands. Her other credits
Speaker 2: include nineteen sixty six is Let's Kill Uncle? That's from
Speaker 2: William Castle.
Speaker 3: Oh the movie house gimmicks guy like the Tingler? Did
Speaker 3: he do the Tingler?
Speaker 2: He did? Yeah? Yeah, I'm not sure what the gimmick
Speaker 2: would have been for Let's Kill Uncle, like, you know,
Speaker 2: bring your uncle to the movie theater. If someone kills him,
Speaker 2: your ticket, his ticket is on us. I don't know,
Speaker 2: Oh boy. She was also in sixty seven's Magical Mystery Tour.
Speaker 2: I believe that one's generally considered one of the lesser
Speaker 2: Beatles films. Yeah. Also nineteen seventy one sometimes a great
Speaker 2: notion directed by and starring Paul Newman, as well as
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies Miss Stones. Thing. That one actually has ed
Speaker 2: Wood Junior in it as an actor. As an actor, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think he has just a small role and I
Speaker 2: think one of his alter egos there and then oh yeah,
Speaker 2: she also put out a smooth jazz pop album in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty. Wow.
Speaker 3: I think Linda Lawson is fantastic in this movie. Some
Speaker 3: people have characterized her role as a fem fatale, and
Speaker 3: have also noted that Harrington's movies, especially even his short films,
Speaker 3: the less narratively focused shorter films, had fem fatale like
Speaker 3: figures in them, and in terms of explicit role in
Speaker 3: the plot, you could say fem fatale makes sense because
Speaker 3: we do learn she is suspected of having murdered her
Speaker 3: two previous boyfriends, and the audience has to wonder if
Speaker 3: maybe Johnny is next. But she doesn't play this character
Speaker 3: like the typical film fatale from the era. You know
Speaker 3: that character, I think is often portrayed as dangerous, untrustworthy,
Speaker 3: possibly a heartless woman with secrets and hidden designs, to
Speaker 3: the extent that Moura in Knighttide has secrets, and I
Speaker 3: think maybe you are supposed to wonder if she has secrets.
Speaker 3: It feels like she might not be aware of them
Speaker 3: fully herself. They don't feel like schemes. They feel like
Speaker 3: secrets that are operating upon her rather than you know,
Speaker 3: from her desires. And so Lawson is quite mysterious, and
Speaker 3: she has this great, you know, kind of unspoken thing
Speaker 3: that she does in a lot of scenes where it
Speaker 3: looks like she is maybe thinking something very strange that
Speaker 3: she's not ready to say out loud. But she does
Speaker 3: not come off like a villain or like a heartless
Speaker 3: person working a scheme. So despite the structural threat she
Speaker 3: poses within the plot, Maura is very sympathetic and I
Speaker 3: would say even lovable, and a lot of that is
Speaker 3: from Lawson's performance. I think she's great.
Speaker 2: You know, there's probably like a sliding scale when you're
Speaker 2: considering a character in a film that may be a
Speaker 2: mermaid or a siren, where on one hand you've got
Speaker 2: like full fem fatale or even full monster, and then
Speaker 2: on the other end like complete doll person. You know,
Speaker 2: we've all seen films like this often played up for
Speaker 2: comedic effects where it's like, how do I do human?
Speaker 2: You know, how do I behave as a human being?
Speaker 2: How do I eat lobster at dinner table? That sort
Speaker 2: of thing. You know, she doesn't feel like that. She
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like that at all, And she doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like the extreme either. She's somewhere in a nice, comfortable middle,
Speaker 2: which of course is a great place to be because
Speaker 2: that's where everyone is. You know, we can see her
Speaker 2: on the screen, we can have these questions about her
Speaker 2: and even wonder if she's some sort of a supernatural
Speaker 2: entity or other worldly being, but she's still you know,
Speaker 2: everything we see from her we can relate to.
Speaker 3: There's enough about her that is just clearly normally earthy
Speaker 3: and human. We see her enjoying food, we see her
Speaker 3: going out and enjoying music, you know, sitting there and
Speaker 3: trying to listen to music while Johnny's bothering her. There's
Speaker 3: enough about her that does feel human. She is not
Speaker 3: just the terror and the panic that maybe she's being
Speaker 3: called to the sea, but then these mysterious sort of
Speaker 3: waves roll over her and that becomes part of her
Speaker 3: in the moments where it's relevant in the plot. But
Speaker 3: she's very human at other times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, all right, we have a character I think
Speaker 2: we referred to m already. Sam Captain Samuel Murdoch also
Speaker 2: an important character. We eventually learn that he is essentially
Speaker 2: her father figure. Yeah, that he had adopted her founder
Speaker 2: on an island at some point and has been her caretaker,
Speaker 2: and he runs the Mermaid Show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does also run the Mermaid Show. He is
Speaker 3: her adoptive father, and he also is her boss at
Speaker 3: the Mermaid Show.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, he has completely shaped the world that she
Speaker 2: lives in in ways that are particular to this story
Speaker 2: that you know, you could apply to any kind of
Speaker 2: like parental scenario, or you could even view him outside
Speaker 2: of the rental confines and just see him as kind
Speaker 2: of just a general authority figure for what she is
Speaker 2: and how she fits into the world. Yeah. But this
Speaker 2: character is played by Gavin Muir, who lived nineteen hundred
Speaker 2: through nineteen seventy two. Chicago born English educate educated actor
Speaker 2: of the stage, screen, and TV, often affected a British
Speaker 2: accent in his roles. He was a Broadway performer as well.
Speaker 2: This was the tail end of his acting career, his
Speaker 2: final film with only a single TV role. Afterwards in
Speaker 2: sixty five, but his credits go back to nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 2: Other notable films include thirty six's Mary Queen of Scott's,
Speaker 2: forty five's The House of Fear, and Abd and Costello
Speaker 2: Meet the Invisible Man in fifty one. Peter Loriie was
Speaker 2: reportedly the first pick for this role, but was to
Speaker 2: expense and I believe Laurie and Muir once worked together
Speaker 2: in the same episode of nineteen fifty six's Operation Cicero.
Speaker 2: But anyway, as much as I love Peter Lourie, I
Speaker 2: can't picture louri in this role. I feel like Gavin
Speaker 2: Muir does a great job here, and he provides a
Speaker 2: nice theatrical counterpoint to Hopper's naturalistic style. So again, Hopper
Speaker 2: is very subdued and believable. But Sam here is, you know,
Speaker 2: he's a little bit more bombastic and theatrical, you know
Speaker 2: he is. He's literally like a barker at the carnival
Speaker 2: for the Mermaid Show. And this kind of showmanship seems
Speaker 2: to permeate a lot of a number of aspects of
Speaker 2: his life.
Speaker 3: He's on he's playing. I liked this character a lot
Speaker 3: more on second viewing because the first time, I was like,
Speaker 3: when we're getting to know him in his early scenes,
Speaker 3: I'm like, he's I don't know, he kind of buffoonish sometimes.
Speaker 3: But then on second viewing, I realized, like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is not just the actor playing the character. The character
Speaker 3: is an actor. The character is a performer, and he's
Speaker 3: playing a guy who is always performing, like his persona
Speaker 3: is kind of a performance, and he's performing for Johnny
Speaker 3: as well, even when people aren't really watching. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: he's playing a kind of familiar, stock, jovial English sea
Speaker 3: captain character and that's the role he plays at the
Speaker 3: Mermaid Attraction for the crowds, and so he's still playing
Speaker 3: it all the time. I guess the question is like,
Speaker 3: is there a division between the persona he uses when
Speaker 3: he's performing at work versus who he is and his
Speaker 3: off time. And then I guess you could ask the
Speaker 3: same question about Mora really is she really the thing?
Speaker 3: She's just acting pretending to be at this attraction? But
Speaker 3: man thinking about this, but anyway, Yeah, so I liked
Speaker 3: this character a lot better this second time. He seemed
Speaker 3: more interesting and more complex the second time. Also, I
Speaker 3: think though I'd love Peter Laurie so much. Peter Laurie
Speaker 3: I think would have brought too much suspicion to this
Speaker 3: character if just by being cast you'd immediately been thinking like,
Speaker 3: what's the Skuy's deal? Whereas Kevin Muir here is very
Speaker 3: disarming at first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so I really liked him in this all right.
Speaker 2: Some getting into some of the side characters been in
Speaker 2: this case a very important side character. We have the
Speaker 2: character Ellen Sands, played by Lewana Anders, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty eight through nineteen ninety six. She is an interesting
Speaker 2: figure in the cinema of the fifties and sixties, especially
Speaker 2: those who was active into the mid nineties. She began
Speaker 2: as a byte messenger at MGM, alongside various other folks
Speaker 2: starting out their careers with small studio roles like this,
Speaker 2: including Jack Nicholson, who she apparently attended an improv class with.
Speaker 2: Her first role was in fifty seven's Reform School Girls
Speaker 2: that was a Samuel ze Arkov production, followed by a
Speaker 2: handful of crime films before Night Tide. Given her connections
Speaker 2: at this point to Nicholson and now Hopper, it should
Speaker 2: come as no surprise that she begins popping up in
Speaker 2: Corman productions there uch as Pitting the Pendulum in sixty one,
Speaker 2: sixty three's The Young Racers, Francis Ford Coppola's debut film
Speaker 2: Dementia thirteen and sixty three, and The Trip in sixty
Speaker 2: seven Wow. She also went on to appear in sixty
Speaker 2: nine's Easy Rider, which again Hopper directed, playing Lisa, one
Speaker 2: of the hippie girls, and she'd also continue to appear
Speaker 2: in various Jack Nicholson films over the years, including seventy
Speaker 2: three Is the Last Detail, seventy six Is Missouri Breaks,
Speaker 2: seventy eight's Going South, and The Two Jakes.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety, she brought myself to watch The Two Jakes.
Speaker 2: Two Jake I'm trying trying to remember is Two Jakes
Speaker 2: the sequel to Chinatown. Yes, okay, all right, that's all
Speaker 2: I know about it. Yeah, and it features two Jakes
Speaker 2: one way or another. I don't know. I like films
Speaker 2: that feature two of something like The Big Lebowski has
Speaker 2: two lebowskis.
Speaker 3: Exactly what I was thinking of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at any rate, Yeah, maybe it's good right in
Speaker 2: if you have opinions on the Two Jakes, But.
Speaker 3: You're a Jake Kitties, I'm a Jake Kitti.
Speaker 2: Who plays the other Jake. Is it a dual role?
Speaker 2: I don't know, anyways. Andrews also worked with Harrington on
Speaker 2: sixty seven's Games and seventy three is The Killing Kind
Speaker 2: and she pops up in a bizarre horror film in
Speaker 2: which Andy Rooney plays an insane Hollywood makeup artist who
Speaker 2: kidnaps women. That's nineteen seventy one's the Manipulator, Okay, but
Speaker 2: I really liked her here as well. A supporting but
Speaker 2: important role was a kind of She's almost like the
Speaker 2: counter to Mara's siren song. While Mora is often detached
Speaker 2: and you know, and potentially otherworldly, Allen is very much
Speaker 2: positioned as an all American girl, you know, very much
Speaker 2: part of the world. But you know, I think one
Speaker 2: of the interesting questionestion is does she also have her
Speaker 2: own sort of siren song here? Is she presenting kind
Speaker 2: of a compromise to the desires that Johnny in particular
Speaker 2: is feeling. Is she like a safe choice in a
Speaker 2: world that denies your desires?
Speaker 3: That's a very good point. Is She's an interesting character
Speaker 3: in exactly that way. So while Johnny is starting to
Speaker 3: he loves Mara, he's clearly in love with her, but
Speaker 3: he's starting to have all these questions and fears about
Speaker 3: what she is and what, you know, what she might
Speaker 3: mean for him. Here's Ellen over here, who clearly is
Speaker 3: infatuated with him. Ellen clearly likes him, and she seems safe.
Speaker 3: She seems so safe. So there, it's a different kind
Speaker 3: of temptation than we usually see in romance stories. Often
Speaker 3: the temptation is a temptation too danger from what is safer.
Speaker 3: Here it goes the other way around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the danger is Yeah, you take the easy road,
Speaker 2: but then where does that lead in the end, Like
Speaker 2: what sort of life for you potentially, you know, intunbeing
Speaker 2: yourself Finn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean to be clear that it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like there's anything wrong with Ellen.
Speaker 2: No, No, she seems like she seems fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she she likes him, she's a nice person all,
Speaker 3: you know, basically everything about her that I can recall,
Speaker 3: I don't recall anything, you know, anything negative coming off
Speaker 3: of her in the movie. But she's not the person
Speaker 3: Johnny loves. And so I guess there's a question of
Speaker 3: like it's like your true love versus just what seems safer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, spoiler here. Of course we're past spoilers,
Speaker 2: but this is who Johnny's going to end up with.
Speaker 2: And you could certainly watch this film and totally read
Speaker 2: it like, oh yeah, he ended up with the good girl.
Speaker 2: That's great, happy ending. But you can also read it
Speaker 2: the other way. And that's one of the beautiful things
Speaker 2: about this film.
Speaker 3: I think you should read it the other way, or
Speaker 3: maybe should is too strong, and you know, I don't
Speaker 3: want to instruct people how to interpret the film, but
Speaker 3: I mean I think it the loss of Mora is
Speaker 3: the tragedy that is the lost love. You know that
Speaker 3: his love for her was real and her love for
Speaker 3: him was real, and so something is law when he
Speaker 3: ends up with Ellen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Some other supporting characters of note here,
Speaker 2: we have a character by the name of Madame Romanovitch
Speaker 2: who pops up. She's like a tearro reader that has
Speaker 2: a great scene with Johnny and she's.
Speaker 3: Call her a fortune teller. Oh yeah, romance, that's right.
Speaker 2: She's very particular about that. But she's played by Marjorie
Speaker 2: Eaton with nineteen oh one through nineteen eighty six, American actress,
Speaker 2: perhaps best known at least to many out there in
Speaker 2: a kind of a trivia sense, as the original actor
Speaker 2: to play the Emperor in nineteen eighties, The Empire Strikes.
Speaker 3: Back, unbelievable. Yeah, I think they gave her chimpanzee eyes,
Speaker 3: didn't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's got She's under a whole lot of makeup
Speaker 2: with these giant eyes and a big black robe on,
Speaker 2: and she's also not doing her own voice. She's dubbed
Speaker 2: by a male actor. But it was, you know, originally
Speaker 2: this was the glimpse we had of the Emperor on
Speaker 2: the like the hollow presentation inside of Darth Vader's meditation chamber,
Speaker 2: and it's and of course later that scene ends up
Speaker 2: being replaced with footage of the I mcdarman performance of
Speaker 2: Palpatine that we would get in Return of the Jedi
Speaker 2: in the prequels to follow. Yeah, but anyway, that's what that's,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things she's known for. But
Speaker 2: as a full performer, she's also known for roles in
Speaker 2: forty nine's The forsyth Woman, sixty three's Monstrosity, and sixty
Speaker 2: four is Mary Poppins. She was also in Harrington's The
Speaker 2: Killing Kind and you know, fun little performance here, you know,
Speaker 2: totally solid you do not get any Emperor Palpatine vibes
Speaker 2: from No.
Speaker 3: She has a fun little scene doing a tarot reading
Speaker 3: for Johnny in this movie, Rob. I wondered, what, though,
Speaker 3: what you made of her rant against tea bags. You're
Speaker 3: a fan of tea bags, right, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 3: generally fill my own tea bags. Oh okay, yeah, but
Speaker 3: I still use them. I've used other methods of straining
Speaker 3: the leaves out. But her main thing is it's just
Speaker 3: difficult to read someone's fortune if you don't have the
Speaker 3: tea leaves in the you know, at the bottom of
Speaker 3: the cup and all. So that's that's not my primary
Speaker 3: ambition in making a cup of tea.
Speaker 2: So you know, we differ in that detail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's a professional grudge against tea bags. Yes, but hey,
Speaker 3: this is not the only interesting Marjorie in the cast here.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. We also have Marjorie Cameron here credited
Speaker 2: as Cameron, and she plays a figure that is credited
Speaker 2: as the Water, which I believe, but you might just
Speaker 2: more distinctly refer to her as like the mysterious woman.
Speaker 2: There's a mysterious woman that shows up we already mentioned him,
Speaker 2: shows up speaking to Moura in some sort of foreign language.
Speaker 2: I think it is actually Greek, but it's all Greek
Speaker 2: to me. But yes, credited here as Cameron, and she
Speaker 2: was herself a very fascinating counterculture figure of the time,
Speaker 2: an American an artist, poet, actress, and occultist. She was
Speaker 2: a follower of the esoteric religious movement known as the Lima,
Speaker 2: founded in the early nineteen hundreds by Alistair Crowley, who,
Speaker 2: of course lived eighteen seventy five through nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 2: At this point, she was still married to another Thelamite
Speaker 2: of note, American rocket engineer Jack Parsons.
Speaker 3: Man, we are hitting some weird connections with this movie, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is just kind of like
Speaker 2: the counter culture scene in and around LA that this
Speaker 2: movie is rising out of. It's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 3: So would I be correct in assuming that Marjorie Cameron
Speaker 3: was sort of connected to Harrington's world through more like
Speaker 3: the art scene, like avant garde films.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was very much a part of
Speaker 2: the avant garde arts scene. I'm to understand she was
Speaker 2: friends with both Harrington and Kenneth Anger, who we mentioned already.
Speaker 2: She appeared in Harrington's nineteen fifty six short film Wormwood Star.
Speaker 2: She's also in Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Speaker 2: from fifty four. Nighttide was her fourth film and also
Speaker 2: her last film, but she remained active as a poet
Speaker 2: and an artist after this. So a nice enigmatic screen
Speaker 2: presence here, and truly she gets to be one of
Speaker 2: the film's real pervasive mysteries. Oh yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: just a couple behind the scenes notes. The cinematographer on
Speaker 2: this film was Villis Lapinix, who lived nineteen thirty one
Speaker 2: through nineteen eighty seven, Latvian born cinematographer, best known for
Speaker 2: his work on various genre films. He later won a
Speaker 2: Primetime Emmy in seventy five for his work on the
Speaker 2: television series Kojak. His credits include fifty eight's Hideous Sun Demon,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, The Little Shop of Horrors, sixty two's Ega,
Speaker 2: sixty five's Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, seventy one's The
Speaker 2: Hellstrom Chronicle, seventy seven's Night Tear, seventy one Cisco Pike,
Speaker 2: and the nineteen eighty one sci fi comedy The Creature
Speaker 2: Wasn't Nice. Starring Leslie Nielsen.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say the cinematography in Nighttide is significantly better
Speaker 3: than his work in Ego.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ega as I remember very much. A Let's shoot
Speaker 2: this puppy between the hours of like noon and two
Speaker 2: am in California. Lets get as much natural, like oppressive
Speaker 2: light as possible. Yeah, all right? And then finally, the
Speaker 2: composer here is David Raskin, who lived nineteen twelve through
Speaker 2: two thousand and four. Two time Oscar nominee for forty Eights, Forever,
Speaker 2: Amber and fifty nine separate tables. His work in film
Speaker 2: goes back to the thirties, but often in uncredited form.
Speaker 2: His other work includes thirty nine to Gorilla, sixty three
Speaker 2: Scorpio Rising, that's the Kenneth Anger work, and eighty three's
Speaker 2: The Day After. That's Nicholas Meyer, who talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before. He also worked with Harrington on What's
Speaker 2: the Matter with Helen?
Speaker 3: All Right, would you like to talk about the plot?
Speaker 3: Let's do it, Okay. I think the best way to
Speaker 3: do this is we're not going to narrate the whole
Speaker 3: movie scene by scene, but we are going to focus
Speaker 3: more closely on some stuff in the first half and
Speaker 3: then maybe talk in a more summary way about the
Speaker 3: second half of the film. So I especially want to
Speaker 3: look at the opening few minutes in a lot of
Speaker 3: detail because I think there's a lot of subtlety here
Speaker 3: and they establish some interesting things. So the credits play
Speaker 3: over crashing waves on the beach and there's eerie obo music,
Speaker 3: and in between the credits we see a young man
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper. Again. This is you know, it might be
Speaker 3: hard to picture Dennis Hopper this way if you've never
Speaker 3: seen him before. Like easy rider, but very smooth, super
Speaker 3: clean cut in a navy uniform. He's leaning on the
Speaker 3: wooden railing at the boardwalk and smoking a cigarette. And
Speaker 3: it's nighttime and we can see the glare of theater
Speaker 3: Marquee is flashing behind him, and.
Speaker 2: This is nighttime. Yes, this is like that's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons this film I think really should be seen
Speaker 2: in black and white. These early scenes especially, you have
Speaker 2: just a great play between the darkness and the light.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bright lights on the Marquees and at the
Speaker 3: games that we're going to see in a minute. So
Speaker 3: this is our main character, Johnny Drake. He's a young
Speaker 3: Navy recruit, we will find out he's originally from Denver, Colorado,
Speaker 3: and he's currently on shore leave in Santa Monica, California.
Speaker 3: So in this first shot, he is smoking a cigarette
Speaker 3: by himself on the pier, and I would say something
Speaker 3: about him conveys loneliness. I think it's kind of there.
Speaker 3: And the way he takes a puff and then he
Speaker 3: cradles his chin in the palm of his hand and
Speaker 3: just looks out over the water. He seems sweet, also
Speaker 3: kind of bored and be like he doesn't know what
Speaker 3: he should be doing. Johnny finishes his cigarette and then
Speaker 3: he goes out, wandering past the arcade games on the
Speaker 3: pier and past a shooting gallery. He stops in a
Speaker 3: store and tries out a guess your Weight machine. It
Speaker 3: says like, you know, game is free if you guess correctly.
Speaker 3: We never see if he guesses right. He puts a
Speaker 3: coin in and checks it out. Then he straightens out
Speaker 3: his uniform and goes by himself into a photo booth,
Speaker 3: and the camera follows him inside the booth and we
Speaker 3: see him going from this kind of slack straight face
Speaker 3: to suddenly cocking his face up in a smile. When
Speaker 3: the flash goes bright, and then he comes out and
Speaker 3: he studies the pictures that get printed out, and he
Speaker 3: seems to take them as feedback. He like adjusts the
Speaker 3: tilt of his hat as if that might address something
Speaker 3: that is lacking in the way he looks in the photos.
Speaker 3: And I love that little moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot more expensive than just buying
Speaker 2: a mirror, but yeah, so it's a nice moment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's very much the same, the sense that you know,
Speaker 2: he is out there looking for life, he wants to
Speaker 2: experience life. But you know, ironically he is you know,
Speaker 2: at a carnival environment, you know, at the pier where
Speaker 2: everything is being like very much sold to you, the
Speaker 2: idea of like, this will be fun, guessing your weight
Speaker 2: up via machine. That's fun, right, give it a go,
Speaker 2: give us some money for it, and then you know,
Speaker 2: inevitably it's going to be disappointing.
Speaker 3: So next Johnny wanders into a jazz club called the
Speaker 3: Blue Grotto. We see it outside. It's rob Do you
Speaker 3: know what this light thing is? There's like a light
Speaker 3: bulb above and then below the light bulb there is
Speaker 3: what looks like a dangling eggsack full of translucent glass.
Speaker 3: Spheres or something, but I guess it creates an interesting
Speaker 3: way of reflecting all the light. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: kind of want one of these for my house.
Speaker 2: Whatever it is, Yeah, yeah, it's not at first thought
Speaker 2: that it was going to be like, you know, glass
Speaker 2: floats from from you know, the kind they used to
Speaker 2: use with fishing nets and all. But I don't think
Speaker 2: that's what it is. It's just some sort of weird
Speaker 2: diffuser and also not a mirror ball, but yeah, something else.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never seen this before anyway.
Speaker 3: Johnny goes into the Blue Grotto where a hip jazz
Speaker 3: combo is playing. It is a very flute forward jazz band.
Speaker 3: You don't, at least I don't. Maybe I'm not worldly enough.
Speaker 3: I don't often think of flute forward jazz, but that's
Speaker 3: what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Do you have a little jazz flute? Yeah? I think
Speaker 2: Howard Moon would approve.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the club is in a basement, and when
Speaker 3: Johnny enters from the street level, he has to go
Speaker 3: in by descending down a staircase like he's going into
Speaker 3: an underworld, and he stops on the stairs to look
Speaker 3: out over the crowd, and then the camera pans over
Speaker 3: the people to kind of give us a flavor. And
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting because Rob, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: you've got a different impression, but to my eyes, this
Speaker 3: is not the kind of crowd that a movie usually
Speaker 3: picks to fill a club scene because and the reason is,
Speaker 3: this crowd seems kind of culturally mixed. Like you've got
Speaker 3: young and old. You've got some hips in sunglasses and
Speaker 3: cool clothes who are very on frequency with the band,
Speaker 3: and then you've got other people who just look like
Speaker 3: squares who wandered in off the street. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what you mean. Oftentimes, though we'd see
Speaker 2: this sort of setting in far lesser films, we have
Speaker 2: like some sort of a club scum right where we
Speaker 2: want to get a very clear idea apart across that
Speaker 2: this is like a bad place and it's full of scoundrels.
Speaker 2: Here though, it kind of feels like, oh, Johnny has
Speaker 2: finally found a place of authentic interest. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not just some sort of carnival trick, Like this is
Speaker 2: actual art going on and people were here to experience it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Johnny pauses while he's coming down the stairs.
Speaker 3: It seems like he feels drawn to this place, but
Speaker 3: maybe he doesn't know how he fits in. And you
Speaker 3: can see these subtle signs of anxiety and Hopper's body language,
Speaker 3: like in the way he keeps folding and kneading his
Speaker 3: sailor's cap and his hands while he's walking around looking
Speaker 3: for a place to sit. And then also after he did,
Speaker 3: you know, as after he gets a beer, he pours
Speaker 3: half of it out into so he's got the bottle.
Speaker 3: He pours half of the bottle into this class mug,
Speaker 3: but he pours it badly, so it's got this huge,
Speaker 3: massive head on top. And then you see him not
Speaker 3: knowing which to take a sip out of, so he's
Speaker 3: like bottle, no weight glass, So he's watching the band
Speaker 3: awkwardly alternating which thing he's trying to take a sip
Speaker 3: out of. And then he goes to sit down and
Speaker 3: finds a place with his back to the wall, basically
Speaker 3: sitting beside the band, looking out over the crowd, and
Speaker 3: he sees a man and a woman sitting together, with
Speaker 3: the man kind of gallantly lighting a cigarette for the woman.
Speaker 3: He sees a lonely looking old man sitting by himself
Speaker 3: in a dark alcove with the light of a lamp
Speaker 3: reflecting off of his bald head. And then he sees
Speaker 3: a meaty looking guy in a square haircut who looks
Speaker 3: like he could maybe be in the Armed forces himself,
Speaker 3: and he's sitting at a table with two women, with
Speaker 3: one of the women stroking his hair while they talk.
Speaker 3: Then he sees another man sitting alone, haggard, staring at
Speaker 3: the floor, with a bunch of empty bottles at his table.
Speaker 3: This guy's in a night of heavy drinking. And then
Speaker 3: finally a couple sitting nestled together, with the man's arm
Speaker 3: around the woman, and they're whispering to each other intently
Speaker 3: while their faces are just a few inches apart. I
Speaker 3: feel like the effect of this pan across the room
Speaker 3: is almost like, just in very quick successions, seeing lots
Speaker 3: of different ways your life could go. Yeah, like seeing
Speaker 3: people who look like they're happy and in love, and
Speaker 3: seeing people who look like they're they're you know, crashed
Speaker 3: out and in a terrible place, and then maybe other
Speaker 3: kind of strange positions somewhere in between. But I feel
Speaker 3: like it fits in very much with the we see
Speaker 3: the way Johnny looks at the world in this scene,
Speaker 3: and it's very much one of not knowing how he
Speaker 3: fits in or what kind of course his life is
Speaker 3: going to take.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but with the suspicion that it's like companionship is important,
Speaker 2: and like the people who have companionship their lives seem active.
Speaker 2: In those who are not attached, they seem lonely, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to be one of them. How are
Speaker 2: people looking at me alone in this club?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So finally the camera pans over to land on
Speaker 3: Linda Lawson playing the character that we will come to
Speaker 3: know as Maura. She is sitting by herself, looking beautiful,
Speaker 3: mysterious and very intense. But I would also say inscrutable.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what the word for this is,
Speaker 3: but Rob, I hope you'd agree. Like she has a
Speaker 3: way of looking very intense without looking very emotional.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you almost expect her to have a notebook
Speaker 2: at the hand and she's like maybe taking notes about
Speaker 2: the performance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the other people we saw were mostly quite
Speaker 3: emotionally readable, like they were happy or at least content,
Speaker 3: or they looked lonely and run down, and Maura's face
Speaker 3: doesn't tell us much. Maybe there is a sense that
Speaker 3: she is practiced at hiding emotional information, which might make
Speaker 3: more sense later on. But she's watching the band mouth flat,
Speaker 3: bobbing her head slightly to the music. And I only
Speaker 3: noticed this on the second viewing. I didn't pick it
Speaker 3: up the first time. But the way she's dressed here
Speaker 3: is interesting. Everybody else is dressed in what looks like
Speaker 3: fairly normal kind of sixties club clothes or just sixties
Speaker 3: street clothes. Maura is wearing a white dress that is
Speaker 3: draped in a way that looks a lot like how
Speaker 3: they would dress women to be ancient Greeks or Romans
Speaker 3: in the movies of this time.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, she really does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is nothing about looking at her that gives
Speaker 3: her away as being of the twentieth century. She's not
Speaker 3: wearing a watch or any modern fashion or anything that
Speaker 3: looks twentieth centuries like. She looks like she could be
Speaker 3: a Greek goddess. And then another thing I would say
Speaker 3: is that she does not look approachable. She is giving
Speaker 3: off big, leave me alone energy, which Johnny promptly ignores.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like awkwardly sets across from the hottest
Speaker 2: woman in the entire venue and then proceeds to think
Speaker 2: that he can talk to her during the middle of
Speaker 2: the performance.
Speaker 3: Hi, what's up. Yeah, so Johnny, he comes across the room.
Speaker 3: He takes a moment to work up his courage, and
Speaker 3: then he asks if he can sit down at her
Speaker 3: table because he says he can't see the band from
Speaker 3: where he's sitting, and she says that's fine. She's being polite,
Speaker 3: and he's so nervous and cute here. He kind of
Speaker 3: laughs at himself while he's asking to sit, And then
Speaker 3: after he sits down, he tries to make conversation with her,
Speaker 3: but she's like, I'd like to listen to the band please,
Speaker 3: So he's like, oh, okay, and then he offers to
Speaker 3: buy her a drink. She says no, thank you. He
Speaker 3: offers again, she says no, thank you again. Seems like
Speaker 3: this is going nowhere, like she's being polite but she's
Speaker 3: not looking for company. But then everything changes because suddenly,
Speaker 3: in the back of the club, a woman emerges from
Speaker 3: behind a curtain and walks into the crowd. She's dressed
Speaker 3: in all black, in a gown with black sheer sleeves
Speaker 3: and a long dangling gold necklace. She has heavy eye
Speaker 3: makeup on, and there's something instantly ominous and kind of
Speaker 3: enchanted looking about her. This is the character that I
Speaker 3: think in the credits maybe is called water Witch or
Speaker 3: people called the sea Witch. But again, you could think
Speaker 3: of her at this point as just a mysterious woman.
Speaker 3: So she steps into view and she locks eyes on Maura.
Speaker 3: Mara sees her and then looks back, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of like they know each other, but somehow the shared
Speaker 3: gaze is not friendly. It is threatening and hypnotic. She
Speaker 3: approaches the table and she begins to speak to Maura
Speaker 3: in another language. There are no subtitles, so we have
Speaker 3: no idea what she's saying. I read online. I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is true, but I read online like
Speaker 3: a user comment somewhere saying that she is speaking in
Speaker 3: Greek and she's saying something along the lines of you
Speaker 3: will come and join us soon. Yeah, So, whether or
Speaker 3: not that's true, that feels like what she could be
Speaker 3: saying in this scene, and I think it is not
Speaker 3: something that the audience is supposed to understand. It's unclear actually,
Speaker 3: if Maura understands what she's saying. The tone of the
Speaker 3: speech is not friendly. It feels like a piece of
Speaker 3: maybe threatening information is being delivered, and then Mara's eyes
Speaker 3: flare and she looks disturbed, and the woman walks away.
Speaker 3: So Johnny's just oblivious this whole time. He's like, huh,
Speaker 3: who was that? And Mora says she doesn't know. She's
Speaker 3: already like trying to get out, like this has alarmed her,
Speaker 3: and she's like nervously collecting her things and trying to leave,
Speaker 3: and Johnny's like, hey, what did that woman say to you?
Speaker 3: Morris says nothing and then hurriedly asks Johnny if he'll
Speaker 3: pay for her check, and then she bolts for the exit,
Speaker 3: so Johnny follows. On his way out the door, he
Speaker 3: looks back and he makes eye contact with the Sea Witch,
Speaker 3: who is now sitting at a table, just stroking the
Speaker 3: stem of a cocktail glass, very impassive, but she doesn't
Speaker 3: look away. She just like stares straight back at Johnny.
Speaker 3: She stares him down and he has to turn and run.
Speaker 3: So after this, Johnny follows Mora out into the streets,
Speaker 3: which are now lonely and deserted. Earlier they were full
Speaker 3: of people going around to the different games and shops
Speaker 3: and stuff. And I guess now it's late, so Mara
Speaker 3: tries to tell Johnny to leave her alone, but Johnny
Speaker 3: is persistent, and eventually Mara agrees to let him walk
Speaker 3: her home. When they get to her apartment, Johnny realizes
Speaker 3: that the building houses a Merry Go Round, and he
Speaker 3: laughs at this and asks if she lives inside a
Speaker 3: wooden horse. It's unclear to me if the character Johnny
Speaker 3: is supposed to be aware of the trojan horse implications
Speaker 3: of this question. I think the writer, like Curtis Harrington,
Speaker 3: is aware, and I think the audience is supposed to
Speaker 3: be aware, But I don't know whether Johnny is supposed
Speaker 3: to understand what he's saying there. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you had an opinion.
Speaker 2: On that, But no, I mean I think yet Johnny
Speaker 2: doesn't really pick up on it. And yeah, I think
Speaker 2: we as the audience are to pick up on it
Speaker 2: to some degree.
Speaker 3: Johnny not super familiar with the classics, as we will
Speaker 3: learn from a later scene. Yeah, but the question breaks
Speaker 3: through and Mara laughs at this, and she says, no,
Speaker 3: her apartment is upstairs, it's above the Merry Go Round.
Speaker 3: They talk about the pros and cons of living over
Speaker 3: a Merry Go Round. Cons include It's noisy pros include
Speaker 3: the music reminds her of when she was a child,
Speaker 3: and you can see in this exchange that despite you know,
Speaker 3: she was not interested at first, now she's starting to
Speaker 3: like Johnny. Johnny then tries some inappropriately aggressive cording. He
Speaker 3: tries to get her to invite him upstairs, but she
Speaker 3: says no. He tries to kiss her. She's not ready. However,
Speaker 3: she does eventually tell him that they can see each
Speaker 3: other again, and she invites him to come over in
Speaker 3: the morning so she can cook him breakfast, which seems
Speaker 3: like a weird date. I don't know is that, but anyway,
Speaker 3: Johnny is thrilled, so she goes upstairs and he is
Speaker 3: just so related. He climbs up on the handrailing of
Speaker 3: the boardwalk and walks along the top of it like
Speaker 3: a kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's a great scene here, because in
Speaker 2: all of this you get the sense that neither of
Speaker 2: them really know how any of this really works. They
Speaker 2: just kind of have vague ideas about how courtship is
Speaker 2: supposed to work. And Johnny, we might we can I
Speaker 2: think very much assume that Johnny has maybe just is
Speaker 2: just acting on stories that he's heard from Navy buddies
Speaker 2: to a large extent, like this is how it works.
Speaker 2: And then maybe more doesn't really know either, And so yeah,
Speaker 2: they're gonna end up having this weird second date where
Speaker 2: they have breakfast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I love this second date scene, actually the
Speaker 3: fish breakfast scene. So Johnny comes back brighton early, and
Speaker 3: you can tell he really set his alarm clock for
Speaker 3: this one. He is still wearing his navy uniform. I
Speaker 3: don't know exactly what we're supposed to read into this,
Speaker 3: like are these the only clothes he has or the
Speaker 3: nicest clothes? Is he trying to impress her? I'm not
Speaker 3: quite sure, but like he's often wearing this this navy
Speaker 3: uniform and scenes where he's not on duty.
Speaker 2: You know, you may have read this as well, but
Speaker 2: I read that in order to properly shoot the navy
Speaker 2: uniform that Dennis Hopper is wearing, they had to like
Speaker 2: have a slightly dingy navy uniform, So like a pure
Speaker 2: white one would I guess maybe just be too bright
Speaker 2: on the screen or it wouldn't read didn't look good,
Speaker 2: it didn't look the way they wanted to, So they
Speaker 2: had to have him in a slightly dingy one, but
Speaker 2: then like they were out shooting and like somebody, like
Speaker 2: somebody actually in the navy like reprimanded Hopper on wearing
Speaker 2: such a dingy uniform and they'd be like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's for a movie Justice. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some navy guys tried to get him for not
Speaker 3: being up to dress code, which is hilarious imagining him
Speaker 3: being like impressed back to sea or something grabbed Dennis
Speaker 3: Hopper and take him to the boat. Yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 3: Dennis Hopper, he comes back. So Johnny has a nice
Speaker 3: introduction to the older man who runs the Merry Go
Speaker 3: Round downstairs, and he takes some time to admire the
Speaker 3: hand carved wooden horses. You can tell he's just over.
Speaker 3: He's just so excited to be coming back to have
Speaker 3: breakfast with Mora. He's like, you know, the whole world
Speaker 3: is bright. And Johnny also meets Ellen, the granddaughter of
Speaker 3: the Merry Go Round. Grandpa Ellen is about Johnny's age,
Speaker 3: and they're getting along well. But when the Merry Go
Speaker 3: Round man finds out that Johnny is here to visit Mora,
Speaker 3: his mood kind of darkens and he seems a little concerned.
Speaker 3: He asks if Johnny just met her for the first time,
Speaker 3: and for some reason, Johnny gets kind of sheepish and
Speaker 3: he lies. He says, no, no, I've known her for
Speaker 3: a while. I don't know exactly why he lies here,
Speaker 3: And maybe he doesn't really understand either. He just kind
Speaker 3: of feels off guard and like maybe something's wrong or
Speaker 3: I don't know, or maybe I don't know if there's
Speaker 3: a thing about propriety, like should he be visiting her
Speaker 3: apartment if you just met her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of the vibe I got from it,
Speaker 2: where he's like, oh, you just meet this woman, and
Speaker 2: you know, if he were to say, yeah, I just
Speaker 2: met her last night, and you know, this is just
Speaker 2: some stranger and he didn't know what the strange getting
Speaker 2: at either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can hear church bells tolling while Johnny had
Speaker 3: upstairs to see her. By the way, on the way
Speaker 3: up the stairs, Johnny crosses paths with the guy who
Speaker 3: I am pretty sure is the same actor who played
Speaker 3: the night watchman from The Wasp Woman, Remember the guy
Speaker 3: who likes radio programs And then Susan Cabot eats.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, I didn't clock that, but but it's
Speaker 2: so good connection.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Johnny goes up to Mora's apartment. Of course, this
Speaker 3: would be another Roger Corman connection. So Johnny goes up
Speaker 3: to Mora's apartment. She welcomes him inside. Her mood seems
Speaker 3: a lot happier than the night before. She shows him around.
Speaker 3: Her apartment is decorated with sea stars and other things
Speaker 3: she's collected from the ocean, and you can hear the
Speaker 3: waves outside the window. So it's an overwhelming presence of
Speaker 3: the sea in this apartment, both from within and from without.
Speaker 3: And so they go out to eat breakfast on the balcony,
Speaker 3: which looks out over the beach. Her balcony has an
Speaker 3: amazing view of the sea and you can see people
Speaker 3: swimming down below. And they sit down. Johnny suggests that
Speaker 3: they make a toast. He says, to you and me
Speaker 3: and to the beautiful Pacific that had more significance the
Speaker 3: second time I saw it, Like you might want to
Speaker 3: reconsider inviting the Pacific Ocean to be a third party
Speaker 3: in their relationship. Notably, Mora just says to us, Johnny,
Speaker 3: she does not mention Pacific. But so what are they
Speaker 3: having for breakfast? Just fish? Yeah, that's it. Fish, nothing else.
Speaker 3: It's two mackerel she has cooked. She says she got
Speaker 3: them this morning. She doesn't say where she got them.
Speaker 3: Did she get them at the market or.
Speaker 2: I mean at this point in the movie. If you
Speaker 2: go into this movie at all, you know that there's
Speaker 2: some possibility of mermaids. So yeah, I was like wondering,
Speaker 2: did she just dive in and she caught all of
Speaker 2: these or these caught them with their bare hands and
Speaker 2: brought them up, you know. And I was also wondering,
Speaker 2: how much of a kind of like Splash Mermaid out
Speaker 2: of water scenario are we going to get it. She's
Speaker 2: gonna start eating like fish heads and stuff, but now
Speaker 2: we don't get any of that. Love moreplash.
Speaker 3: Have you seen Splash?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been on. This is one that me and
Speaker 2: my sisters used to watch. We had it on VHS,
Speaker 2: probably like taped off a TV or maybe it was
Speaker 2: an actual VHS. We watched it a lot because they
Speaker 2: were super into Mermaids. And it's just a really good movie.
Speaker 2: As I recall, I have not seen it in decades,
Speaker 2: but I probably should revisit it.
Speaker 3: Is the premise, is it Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah? Yes, yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 3: and like she's a mermaid, and if she's a legit.
Speaker 2: Mermaid, yeah, and then you know there are all these
Speaker 2: It's very much a Mermaid out of Water film, with
Speaker 2: some hilarious sequences, including a scene where they get lobster
Speaker 2: at a restaurant and she begins to like eat the
Speaker 2: lobster whole, like shell and all like a sea animal wood.
Speaker 2: And it's a great scene.
Speaker 3: Well, some excellent overlap with Night Tide because more here
Speaker 3: goes on about how she loves food from the ocean.
Speaker 3: She's like, I love lobster, crab, sea urchin. She described
Speaker 3: sea urchin as like a beautiful fruit from the sea
Speaker 3: that you just scoop up and eat. Johnny's never had it,
Speaker 3: of course, I get the feeling. Johnny's Johnny's very chicken
Speaker 3: nuggets guy. Like he's not not tried a lot of foods.
Speaker 2: But he wants to and that's and that's a great thing.
Speaker 2: Like he wants these news new experiences and he's open
Speaker 2: to try anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So also I think maybe he does not like fish,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't say anything about it. You see him
Speaker 3: take a tiny bite of his mackerel and then he
Speaker 3: pauses for a minute and he goes.
Speaker 2: Hmm, yeah, I mean, do we know that the fish
Speaker 2: is indeed cooked? That was I think I thought I
Speaker 2: had When it flakes, yeah, I think, yeah, flakes. It's okay.
Speaker 3: But they make conversation. So in the scene, Johnny learns
Speaker 3: about Mara's job. Maura works at a carnival attraction out
Speaker 3: on the pier, the Santa Monica Pier, where she performs
Speaker 3: as a mermaid. So she puts on an artificial fish
Speaker 3: tail that covers her legs and then she lies down
Speaker 3: in a tank that makes it look like she's underwater
Speaker 3: and people pay twenty five cents to come look at her.
Speaker 3: More of the mermaid, and then Johnny tells her about himself.
Speaker 3: He tells her that he grew up in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 3: His father left his family when he was a baby,
Speaker 3: so he grew up very close to his mother. He
Speaker 3: always wanted to travel and see the world, but he couldn't,
Speaker 3: And then after his mother died, he figured out that
Speaker 3: he could see other parts of the world if he
Speaker 3: joined the navy, So that's what he did. Though he
Speaker 3: hasn't been much of anywhere really, like you said, I think,
Speaker 3: he says, maybe he's only been to Hawaii so far,
Speaker 3: but more is encouraging. She's like, I think you'll you'll
Speaker 3: get to travel yet. But then from here, they're eating
Speaker 3: their food and there are seagulls circling and they're suddenly
Speaker 3: menaced by gulls, and strangely, one of them flies down
Speaker 3: and lands right in Mora's arms, and then she holds
Speaker 3: it like a cat, stroking its feathers, and Johnny is
Speaker 3: a little He's like, wow, where'd you learn to do that?
Speaker 3: And Mora says she does not remember. She maybe learned
Speaker 3: it on the island where she was born, and she's
Speaker 3: kind of muttering, sweet little bird, don't be afraid.
Speaker 2: So she's basically like a Disney princess here. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the wild birds are landing in her lap and she's
Speaker 2: treating them kindly.
Speaker 3: Like snow white. Yeah, bird's coming down land on the hand.
Speaker 3: But in this conversation, Mara tells Johnny that he can
Speaker 3: come see her where she works because she's gonna be
Speaker 3: working later that day. You get the sense that he's
Speaker 3: very excited to see her in mermaid mode, and so
Speaker 3: later that day she takes him out to the pier
Speaker 3: where she works, and they go to the Mermaid House
Speaker 3: before it opens, where Johnny meets an older man that
Speaker 3: Mara calls Sam. Sam is also known as Captain Murdoch.
Speaker 3: This is Captain Sam Murdoch, a retired sea captain with
Speaker 3: a British accent. He seems to be maybe sleeping off
Speaker 3: a hangover behind the booth in front of the building.
Speaker 3: Sam is the owner and operator of the Mermaid attraction,
Speaker 3: and he sits out front of the building with a
Speaker 3: megaphone running a spiel. He's like, come see the amazing
Speaker 3: half woman, half fish. It's the thrill of a lifetime.
Speaker 3: And we learn not in this scene, but we learn
Speaker 3: later that Sam is not just Moraa's boss, he is
Speaker 3: her a optive father. So when Sam and Johnny are
Speaker 3: left alone, Mora goes to get dressed and Sam kind
Speaker 3: of tries to bond with Johnny as they are both
Speaker 3: men of the sea, but of course Johnny just started
Speaker 3: being a man of the sea. And we learn in
Speaker 3: this conversation that Sam was once in the English Navy.
Speaker 3: After that he was captain of a private vessel, and
Speaker 3: we find out eventually that it was while sailing the
Speaker 3: world that he found a moura orphaned on an island
Speaker 3: near Greece. I think they say the island of Mikonos,
Speaker 3: and he adopted her and raised her there after. But
Speaker 3: after a bit, Mora calls out to Johnny from inside.
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm ready now, so Johnny has to come
Speaker 3: see her. And Johnny goes into the darkened room around
Speaker 3: the corner and he looks down into the tank and
Speaker 3: there are sparkles reflecting the spotlights, and so there are
Speaker 3: you know, reflected lights dancing up on the ceiling. And
Speaker 3: Johnny looks down and he sees more inside and she
Speaker 3: is beautiful, mesmerizing but haunting, and the music swells with
Speaker 3: these these strange tones. And when he's looking down on her,
Speaker 3: her eyes are closed, and there's this feeling that maybe
Speaker 3: she could be dead, but you could see her, you
Speaker 3: could see her moving ever so slightly, so you know
Speaker 3: she's alive. She's combing her long, dark hair while she
Speaker 3: lies there with the fishtail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you know, this is the first scene
Speaker 2: with the interior of the Mermaid Attraction where we can
Speaker 2: already begin to contemplate this in a number of ways,
Speaker 2: like the Mermaid as the object of desire and affection,
Speaker 2: but also as desire itself, like it's desire taking on
Speaker 2: this like strange form as it is imprisoned really and
Speaker 2: also ultimately kind of entombed in this exhibit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, imprisoned behind glass in a ways, stuck in there
Speaker 3: in a kind of suspended animation. Almost. The way she
Speaker 3: looks like she's not fully alive inside is kind of
Speaker 3: like listless, lethargic combing of the hair while being observed
Speaker 3: by the people who pay money to come and look down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's very much a specimen sort of display,
Speaker 2: you know, going into this, I was I was imagining
Speaker 2: up to this point that the Mermaid presentation would be
Speaker 2: kind of like the Mermaid shows that you see in
Speaker 2: various places, like the witchy watchy sort of thing. I've
Speaker 2: never seen that, oh well, you know, the old fashioned
Speaker 2: shows where you're generally going to be looking at a fish,
Speaker 2: like a big fish tank or some sort of a
Speaker 2: tank straight ahead, and there'll be women in Mermaid costumes
Speaker 2: that are performers using like a breathing hose apparatus and
Speaker 2: then swimming around, you know, very much alive, creating and
Speaker 2: maybe even you know, as the ones I've seen before,
Speaker 2: putting on some sort of a show like reenacting, like
Speaker 2: The Little Mermaid that sort of thick some sort of
Speaker 2: to the degree that you can truly act when you
Speaker 2: have to breathe through a hose in between tanks. Right,
Speaker 2: But it's not that it's not a live again. It
Speaker 2: feels more like a specimen, almost like some sort of
Speaker 2: a you know, a freak show sort of environment.
Speaker 3: So anyway, some time passes, we cut ahead and we
Speaker 3: see Johnny and Mora are continuing their romance over the
Speaker 3: following days. So they like each other more and more
Speaker 3: and they are starting to fall in love. There's a
Speaker 3: scene where they go to the beach together. They frolic
Speaker 3: in the water and then they lie out in the sun.
Speaker 3: There's a funny boat where they argue about whether you
Speaker 3: can go swimming right after you eat. Johnny says no,
Speaker 3: can't do it, it's dangerous, and Maura doesn't believe it. Rob,
Speaker 3: do you have a ruling.
Speaker 2: On this as a swimmer, I mean, I generally don't
Speaker 2: swim right after eating. I rarely think about it, just
Speaker 2: because it rarely comes up as a possibility. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I would probably have this if I were in Johnny's shoes,
Speaker 2: I would probably have this moment where I'd be like,
Speaker 2: is that true or is that a misnomer? And then
Speaker 2: I'd probably have to research it.
Speaker 3: Well, Johnny has no such self doubt full confidence, you
Speaker 3: can't do it. Mara tells Johnny about her relationship with Sam.
Speaker 3: You know, this is where we learn that he found
Speaker 3: her orphaned on the island of Mikonos. He raised her,
Speaker 3: He's been like a father to her. And she says
Speaker 3: she knows he's a strange man, but he's been good
Speaker 3: to her. And then Johnny there apologizes for thinking poorly
Speaker 3: of Sam at first and maybe saying some things that
Speaker 3: kind of was like what's the sky's deal? But then
Speaker 3: there's one part here, it's not the only part of
Speaker 3: the movie like this, where suddenly she starts describing a
Speaker 3: kind of mystical emotional relationship with the forces of nature,
Speaker 3: and especially the ocean. So Mora lies back and she
Speaker 3: feels the sun on her skin, and she says, I
Speaker 3: love the sun and the moon and the stars, and
Speaker 3: Johnny says, and the sea, and she says, yes, I
Speaker 3: love the sea most of all. But I'm afraid of
Speaker 3: it too. Johnny says, I guess we're all a little
Speaker 3: afraid of what we love, and that moment seems a
Speaker 3: little out of character for Johnny. I was like, what
Speaker 3: is Johnny suddenly wise? But I think it actually it
Speaker 3: scans the more I think about it, Like it makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's an out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom
Speaker 3: stuff like Johnny is not stupid, but he's not very experienced,
Speaker 3: and he's not very wise about the world. It just
Speaker 3: it just kind of feels like it's a thing he
Speaker 3: says because it feels like a thing to say in
Speaker 3: the moment, but actually there's a lot of truth to it,
Speaker 3: and it's relevant to the story.
Speaker 2: And I think it's lived in as well, like he
Speaker 2: he has experience already of being a little afraid of
Speaker 2: the things that he loves that he feels desire towards.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, this is just a beautiful line in the
Speaker 2: film that really feels more or less like its thesis statement,
Speaker 2: you know, and very very key to this contemplation on
Speaker 2: love and desire in a world that may push you
Speaker 2: in different directions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, And I think there are multiple ways to
Speaker 3: read it in which it's true. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: you can say from Johnny's perspective. It's true, and it
Speaker 3: makes sense because he's head over heels for Moura, but
Speaker 3: also she's strange, Like he's already had these strange moments
Speaker 3: where he feels like he doesn't really understand her, maybe
Speaker 3: worries that he's never going to be able to understand her.
Speaker 3: There's something different about her than she He's not on
Speaker 3: her level. But then I would say the second thing
Speaker 3: is the inevitable aspect of it. It's almost like a
Speaker 3: self fulfilling statement, which is that anytime you love something,
Speaker 3: you inevitably fear losing what you love, So like love
Speaker 3: can't exist without fear, right right, Yeah, almost some kind
Speaker 3: of Jedi sort of wisdom there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then also like the transformative nature of desire,
Speaker 2: like if I get the thing that I desire, does
Speaker 2: it change who I am? And yeah, does change who
Speaker 2: you are? And that's life.
Speaker 3: So that night, Johnny and Maura go out listening to
Speaker 3: music on the beach and Maura begins to dance to
Speaker 3: the music. But in the middle of the performance, actually
Speaker 3: quick aside, there are a couple of moments in Maura's
Speaker 3: dance where it the dance as a whole is interesting
Speaker 3: and cool. But there is a moment where it looks
Speaker 3: like she's doing the robot. This seems very pre the
Speaker 3: invention of the robot as the robot.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, I don't know the full history on
Speaker 2: the robot. When the robot was fully unveiled as a
Speaker 2: dance move.
Speaker 3: I don't know either. But there's a couple of moves
Speaker 3: that look like the robot. It's very transient. But then
Speaker 3: while she's dancing in the middle of the performance, Johnny notices,
Speaker 3: standing at a distance on the rocks in the dark
Speaker 3: is the Sea Witch, the woman from the club, the
Speaker 3: woman who confronted Maura before. And so she's out on
Speaker 3: this rock and the wind is whipping at her silk
Speaker 3: veil and she's making these intense eyes at them, and
Speaker 3: the sea Witch appears to have some kind of power
Speaker 3: over Maura. Maura sees her and then gasps with terror
Speaker 3: and then collapses in the sand. Johnny goes to her
Speaker 3: and helps her up, and he asks it was that woman,
Speaker 3: wasn't it, And Mora says, what woman? More mystery is
Speaker 3: Maura hiding something? Is Maura not aware herself? We don't
Speaker 3: really know. After this, there is a scene where Johnny
Speaker 3: hangs out with Ellen, who works downstairs in the Merry
Speaker 3: Go Round, remember her, her grandfather, and their friend Madame Ramanovich,
Speaker 3: the fortune teller, though she does not like to be
Speaker 3: called that she's a chiromancer, so Madame Ramanovitch. This is
Speaker 3: the scene where she goes on a rand against tea
Speaker 3: bags because she says, you know, if everyone was using
Speaker 3: these bags, I'd never be able to read anybody's tea leaves.
Speaker 3: She also explains that she can read other people's fortunes,
Speaker 3: but not her own. In this scene, it's very obvious
Speaker 3: that Ellen is taken with Johnny. Like Johnny, She's kind
Speaker 3: of looking up at him like, oh, isn't he dreamy?
Speaker 3: But Johnny only has eyes for more. He seems to
Speaker 3: not even notice that Ellen is interested in him, and
Speaker 3: in this scene Johnny starts to get the first hints
Speaker 3: of danger. There is a visit from a police detective
Speaker 3: that leads to Ellen sharing gossip with Johnny, which is
Speaker 3: that Mora's last two boyfriends both died under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker 3: The line she says is a quote. In the past
Speaker 3: two years, Mora had two boyfriends and they're both dead
Speaker 3: now They were both nice boys. They went with her,
Speaker 3: then suddenly they disappeared. A few days later, their bodies
Speaker 3: were found washed up on shore, drowned. Now there's no
Speaker 3: proof that Mara did anything wrong, but does seem suspicious,
Speaker 3: doesn't it like two boyfriends in a row, both disappeared
Speaker 3: and then showed up drowned. H and Ellen says, I
Speaker 3: bet she didn't tell you about those boys, did she?
Speaker 3: And no, she didn't tell him. Then the scene gets
Speaker 3: even more interesting. The payphone at the other end of
Speaker 3: the room rings. The old man answers it and then
Speaker 3: calls to Johnny says it's for him. Johnny says, that's
Speaker 3: funny because nobody knows I'm here. It's interesting. He goes
Speaker 3: to answer it, but there's nobody there on the phone.
Speaker 3: And then while he's standing at the phone, he looks
Speaker 3: out the window and he sees down below on the
Speaker 3: street the Sea Witch. She is walking briskly and she
Speaker 3: goes around the corner, so Johnny runs off to follow her,
Speaker 3: and he's trying to figure out who this woman is
Speaker 3: and why she keeps bothering Moura. And this leads to
Speaker 3: a very interesting sequence that this part to me felt
Speaker 3: like film noir, the part where Johnny is following her
Speaker 3: around town, going between these houses and over a wooden bridge,
Speaker 3: past the railroad, tracks, under electrical pylons, and eventually into
Speaker 3: this strange neighborhood that kind of looks like it's from
Speaker 3: a different world. I don't know exactly how to describe
Speaker 3: the weirdness of how this house looks, but they come
Speaker 3: to this old house with shuttered windows that seems like
Speaker 3: a kind of antique building. As Johnny goes around the corner,
Speaker 3: he sees there's a rocking chair on the porch that
Speaker 3: is rocking by itself with no one in it. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's just rocking in the wind. There's a child holding
Speaker 3: a doll standing in the road who doesn't speak, and
Speaker 3: Johnny asks her did you see a woman go by here?
Speaker 3: But the child just runs away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's far off the boardwalk at this point for sure, totally.
Speaker 3: And then Johnny finally realizes this house it is the
Speaker 3: address that old Sam gave him, telling him to come
Speaker 3: visit sometime. So Johnny approaches the door, he knocks, and
Speaker 3: he goes in, and Sam is quite drunk and intent
Speaker 3: on getting drunker, but he says, oh, you know, Johnny,
Speaker 3: I'm glad you came. I've got something important to tell
Speaker 3: you about. He's very jovial at first, but then he
Speaker 3: starts to turn serious and he tells Johnny that he
Speaker 3: is in grave danger from Maura. At first, he's vague
Speaker 3: about it. He's talking about how Maura has a certain
Speaker 3: compulsion which could put Johnny's life at risk, and Johnny's
Speaker 3: trying to understand what he's talking about. He's like, are
Speaker 3: you saying she's insane, that she's gonna hurt me? And
Speaker 3: he's like, well, you know, not exactly that she's insane,
Speaker 3: but take my word for it. You've got to break
Speaker 3: off this acquaintance. And then he sends in a funny party,
Speaker 3: sends Johnny to get another bottle of liquor for him,
Speaker 3: and then starts telling telling the strange backstory behind a
Speaker 3: severed hand he's got on the shelf.
Speaker 2: I really love this bit with the severed hand because
Speaker 2: this is I mean, first of all, there's just like
Speaker 2: the idea that this guy's just getting ripped on just
Speaker 2: room temperature gin from the bottle. But then also to
Speaker 2: the idea, like you quickly begin to realize Sam is
Speaker 2: he is a collector, and he's not just a collector.
Speaker 2: He's a collector of perhaps strange things or even dangerous things,
Speaker 2: which we get from this hand that he has bottled
Speaker 2: up there and preserved in the cabinet.
Speaker 3: A hand in a jar that I think, he says,
Speaker 3: was given to him as a gift by the ruler
Speaker 3: from some other nation who I think it was cut
Speaker 3: from a thief. Yeah so Sam, But anyway, eventually he
Speaker 3: gets around to the issue of Mara again. Sam says
Speaker 3: to Johnny, you've read the Greek myths, haven't you. Johnny
Speaker 3: has not. Sam asks Johnny if he's heard about the Sirens.
Speaker 3: Johnny's like, maybe, sort of. Sam says the Sirens were
Speaker 3: a strange race of sea people, half human, half creatures
Speaker 3: of the sea. The female of the species were known
Speaker 3: popularly as mermaids, women of the Sea. And then he
Speaker 3: goes on to explain that the show they run on
Speaker 3: the Pier where they have Maura as the mermaid is
Speaker 3: a fake. It's an illusion. He says. You wouldn't believe
Speaker 3: mermaids actually exist, would you. Johnny says no, he wouldn't
Speaker 3: believe that. Then Sam says, let me tell you, young man,
Speaker 3: that things happen in this world never dreamt of in
Speaker 3: your philosophy? Where do you think myths come from? Do
Speaker 3: you think they're just made up? No? They spring from truth,
Speaker 3: ancient truth, living truth. Then, as he's getting drunker, Sam
Speaker 3: he continues to talk, but he starts to become a
Speaker 3: little less coherent and a little more kind of rambling
Speaker 3: into different subjects. He starts saying, Maura, she lived with.
Speaker 3: That was her room up there behind that door. I
Speaker 3: found her on an island, but I didn't know what
Speaker 3: she was to become. I didn't know she belonged to
Speaker 3: that ancient race. She's a monster. I warned you. That's
Speaker 3: all I can do. And he starts to pass out,
Speaker 3: but Johnny's trying to get the information. It's like, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, what about that woman who's been following Mara?
Speaker 3: Does she live here? I saw her come here? And
Speaker 3: Sam says, there isn't any woman. I'm all alone. Then
Speaker 3: he passes out completely and Johnny climbs the stairs to
Speaker 3: see Mora's old room and inside it's decorated like her
Speaker 3: apartment with the sea stars and the shells. But this
Speaker 3: window is hanging ominously open, with the wind rushing in
Speaker 3: from the outside, blowing the curtains. Nothing really happens here,
Speaker 3: but it's fabulously spooky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost a sense of cosmic horror, you know, like
Speaker 2: trying to like discovering the sort of terrestrial like homeye
Speaker 2: origin of Maura. But there's much more beyond that. It
Speaker 2: just seems to like open up into the greater world,
Speaker 2: even the void. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, eventually Johnny confronts Mara about what Sam said to him,
Speaker 3: and her reaction is so strange. Mora says, no, she
Speaker 3: did not hurt her previous boyfriends, but she also says,
Speaker 3: it's true they're waiting for me to join them. So
Speaker 3: she actually believes the part about her being one of
Speaker 3: the people of the sea. She thinks that she must
Speaker 3: belong to the sirens in some way and they are
Speaker 3: calling to her. Johnny tells her he doesn't believe it.
Speaker 3: He's like, that can't be true. You're confused about that,
Speaker 3: And Moras says to Johnny, quote, you Americans have such
Speaker 3: a simple view of the world. You think that everything
Speaker 3: can be seen and touched and weighed and measured. You
Speaker 3: think you discovered reality, but you don't even know what
Speaker 3: it is. And Johnny asks Okay, if it's true that
Speaker 3: you're one of the people of the sea, how do
Speaker 3: you know? And then Mora says, and I love this part,
Speaker 3: she says, because I feel the sea water in my veins,
Speaker 3: because I listened to the roar of the sea, and
Speaker 3: it speaks to me like a mother's voice. The tide
Speaker 3: pulls at my heart. The face of the moon fills
Speaker 3: my soul with a strange longing. So I think we
Speaker 3: can step back and be a little more summary about
Speaker 3: the rest of the movie. You know, this is a
Speaker 3: little past the halfway point here, but for the rest
Speaker 3: of the story, Johnny is really in a difficult position
Speaker 3: where he I feel like for Johnny it would be
Speaker 3: he's not so afraid of Maura because part of him
Speaker 3: trusts her, but he's really so like if it had
Speaker 3: just been Sam and the other people warning him, like
Speaker 3: her previous boyfriend's disappeared, you know, you got to protect yourself,
Speaker 3: that would be one thing. He could probably ignore that,
Speaker 3: But I feel like he's really shaken by the fact
Speaker 3: that Mora seems to believe it herself, and he doesn't
Speaker 3: know how to deal with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in very much a sense that he is perhaps
Speaker 2: over his head at least, I don't know. If not emotionally,
Speaker 2: then it just we're I guess we're we're we've entered
Speaker 2: a complex phase of the relationship, definitely. It's a it's
Speaker 2: complicated level of the relationship here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there is a scene where Johnny's trying to
Speaker 3: understand what happens, and he goes to visit Madame Madame Romanovitch,
Speaker 3: the tarot reader, and he gets a reading where she
Speaker 3: warns him of many different kinds of different dangers. I
Speaker 3: don't remember everything exactly, she says, but she explains the
Speaker 3: whole like they do a full explanation of like the
Speaker 3: tarot layout. You know, here's what's here, here's what's across you,
Speaker 3: here's what's behind in front of you. Remember, the hanged
Speaker 3: man plays a significant role.
Speaker 2: And she mentioned something we mentioned before on the show.
Speaker 2: I think that the hanged man is a it comes
Speaker 2: from a place of serenity and wisdom and so forth.
Speaker 2: So she's yeah, the tarot sequence, and I'm no expert
Speaker 2: on taro. It feels very authentic and well well written out.
Speaker 3: There's also a scene later which I think is not
Speaker 3: super significant to the plot, but it's just a scene
Speaker 3: where Johnny goes to a bathhouse and happens to run
Speaker 3: into Sam who's they're getting a massage later. Some reviewers
Speaker 3: have singled this out just because they read it as
Speaker 3: including intentional a sort of queer coded or homo erotic
Speaker 3: jokes in there, Like there's a joke about a masseewer
Speaker 3: talking about like, oh, I'll pound you later.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is often singled out, but it is
Speaker 2: again not like super important to the plot, but it
Speaker 2: is also very well shot. You get the steam, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and there's exposed flesh. It does create this. Yes,
Speaker 2: it has a fascinating vibe. So it is interesting to
Speaker 2: sort of like, you can't help but take this and
Speaker 2: to some degree sort of factor it into the film's
Speaker 2: overall exploration of desire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does definitely have effective spooky elements. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I think also it seems people think that Harrington was
Speaker 3: just trying to get some in jokes in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, there's there's a really freaky scene later on where
Speaker 3: where Johnny comes home and he has a nightmare that
Speaker 3: he's like imagining kissing Maura, but then she's turning into
Speaker 3: a mermaid, and then she goes even further and suddenly
Speaker 3: he's having some kind of liaison with an octopus.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's pretty good. It's like, this is
Speaker 2: not like when Bella Lagosi wrestled that octopus. It looks
Speaker 2: looks creepy, and there's a lot of tension to it.
Speaker 2: A great nightmare slash dream sequence, to be sure, and
Speaker 2: certainly the most monstery this film gets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's also a scene where Johnny wakes up and
Speaker 3: discovers Maura having stepped out of the bathtub and wandered
Speaker 3: out of the apartment in the night, and he follows
Speaker 3: her wet footsteps on the ground trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what's going on, and she's like down under the pier,
Speaker 3: having gone walking into the water, and now she's up
Speaker 3: out in.
Speaker 2: The waves coming in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, so it's a frightening scene and so like
Speaker 3: you can tell they're both overwhelmed. They don't really understand
Speaker 3: what's going on. Johnny doesn't fully believe that she's a siren,
Speaker 3: but maybe he doesn't know what to believe.
Speaker 2: So much of this too, though, it just feels so
Speaker 2: authentic to like what it's like to like you enter
Speaker 2: into some sort of early relationship and you reach that
Speaker 2: point where you have to realize that the other person
Speaker 2: is indeed another person that's pulled by their own different
Speaker 2: motivations and desires and things within and outside of their control,
Speaker 2: and the overwhelming feeling you might get from that, you know.
Speaker 2: So there's so much of this film that just works
Speaker 2: on a very relatable level without even getting into the
Speaker 2: heavier stuff.
Speaker 3: That's true, You're right like that. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people have this early realization. It's like the first
Speaker 3: time it ever happens to them in their life that
Speaker 3: they realize, oh, you're dating somebody, and it's like either
Speaker 3: their problems are also your problems or you just can't
Speaker 3: stay together, like and you know, like you gotta yeah,
Speaker 3: and so so clearly something like that is going on there,
Speaker 3: and he's Johnny is he does He's not doing this
Speaker 3: from a malicious place, but he's also like he doesn't
Speaker 3: know how to process this stuff. So like a couple
Speaker 3: of times he's just trying to get her to forget
Speaker 3: all about it and move on.
Speaker 2: He's not getting a lot of great help from anyone
Speaker 2: else either, to be clear, Like other people have been like, hey,
Speaker 2: I think she might be a murderer, might want to
Speaker 2: be careful about that relationship, you know, including her father.
Speaker 2: So you know, he's I feel like, in a way,
Speaker 2: he's doing the best he can with like zero support
Speaker 2: from you know, other humans outside of the relationship.
Speaker 3: That's right. But eventually we get to a climactic scene
Speaker 3: where she decides that she needs to go out diving.
Speaker 3: She wants to go out scuba diving, and she wants
Speaker 3: Johnny to come with her, and so there will be
Speaker 3: a big twist coming here. They go out on a
Speaker 3: boat and they swim down to a reef and while
Speaker 3: they are under the water, Johnny is looking at something
Speaker 3: on the reef. He's got his mask on and he's
Speaker 3: got his breathing apparatus, and Maura comes up behind him
Speaker 3: with a knife and she's menacing him with this knife.
Speaker 3: Now she doesn't kill him. It seems maybe she's meaning
Speaker 3: to do something, but she stops herself or I think
Speaker 3: she does, like his breathing hose gets cut or disconnected
Speaker 3: in some way. Yeah, And I think I couldn't tell exactly,
Speaker 3: like does she cut his breathing hose?
Speaker 2: That's what I took from it. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 2: scenario is they go out to go scuba diving, and
Speaker 2: he's already like, do we really need to go that
Speaker 2: deep to see some neat stuff? You know, which I
Speaker 2: think is a reasonable question to ask. And she's like,
Speaker 2: oh no, there's the beautiful stuff down there. So they
Speaker 2: go down there. She cuts the air hose and then
Speaker 2: that forces him back up. This kind of like forcing
Speaker 2: this separation between the two of them. You can see
Speaker 2: a sort of like two fold like sort of like
Speaker 2: pushing him beyond his boundaries in an attempt to force
Speaker 2: him away from her, and then like then being more
Speaker 2: direct with it, you know, this is where I belong,
Speaker 2: this is not where you belong, and pushing him away.
Speaker 3: She has to stay below and he stays above so
Speaker 3: she doesn't stab him. So you see, you could interpret
Speaker 3: it different ways. What happens there when she cuts his hose,
Speaker 3: Like yeah, but he goes he has to swim back
Speaker 3: up to the boat and then he's in the boat
Speaker 3: and so he's like she coming up? Is she gonna
Speaker 3: he can't go back down because his hose doesn't work anymore? Uh,
Speaker 3: And then she never comes up. So what has happened
Speaker 3: to her? I think her fate is ambiguous for a
Speaker 3: time until Johnny goes after he gets back to shore,
Speaker 3: he goes back to the Mermaid House, the attraction on
Speaker 3: the pier and haunting, a terrifying scene. He goes inside
Speaker 3: and finds her body dead in the mermaid display.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was already presented kind of like a corpse
Speaker 2: under there anyway, and now it seems that she is
Speaker 2: indeed a corpse beneath the glass. And this leads to
Speaker 2: just a phenomenal scene, great drama, great symbolism, building on
Speaker 2: these ideas of alienation and uh yeah, the exhibit is
Speaker 2: is now, you know, not merely a prison at all,
Speaker 2: but also a tomb. And Sam here confronts him with
Speaker 2: a gun, and so here we get into some like
Speaker 2: some real tension and some confrontation.
Speaker 3: That's right. I didn't make this connection when I was
Speaker 3: watching it, actually, but when you said that this prison
Speaker 3: the tank has become a tomb, it reminded me of
Speaker 3: like actual glass coffins in the world, like the tomb
Speaker 3: of Linen or whatever, you know, or people go up
Speaker 3: and look at a body preserved.
Speaker 2: In beauty even yeah, yeah, or snow white. Which one
Speaker 2: is it that ye bites the apple? Yeah, and is
Speaker 2: under sometimes depicted as being under class.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so he goes and looks and
Speaker 3: Johnny is distraught but also distraught. Now, yes, is Sam
Speaker 3: the father who comes in with a gun?
Speaker 2: He can you killed her? Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, uh, And there's this confrontation. He begins shooting, but
Speaker 3: there's a struggle, and eventually the police arrive, Like there's
Speaker 3: some policemen outside, they hear the shooting. They come inside
Speaker 3: and Sam is arrested, and that leads into kind of
Speaker 3: like the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho, we get a post
Speaker 3: arrest kind of explanation scene, except in this movie it
Speaker 3: comes directly from Sam himself, who confesses and explains what happened.
Speaker 3: So his confession is essentially that as he grew up
Speaker 3: raising Mora, and as much as she needed him initially
Speaker 3: he was a father figure to her, he realizes also
Speaker 3: that he needs her and it was one of those
Speaker 3: cases where he just really couldn't accept that she was
Speaker 3: going to have to grow up and live her own
Speaker 3: life and live her life separate from him, and I
Speaker 3: think he just wanted to continue always being her father
Speaker 3: and sort of being the only person in her life
Speaker 3: and her being the person in his life, and so
Speaker 3: he decided, as a way of sabotage all other future relationships,
Speaker 3: that he was going to implant this idea on her
Speaker 3: that she was one of the sea.
Speaker 2: People, and so he essentially like raised her to have
Speaker 2: this strange worldview where she sees herself as a mermaid
Speaker 2: whose bound return to the sea and can never have
Speaker 2: like a no true human love, that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, pretty monstrous. But then he also
Speaker 2: has he confesses that he killed her two previous boyfriends
Speaker 2: as well, so that that was him as well. So
Speaker 2: he does get Johnny off the hook for that, but yeah,
Speaker 2: confesses to those murders.
Speaker 3: But there's a twist. He confesses to all that, and
Speaker 3: so Johnny's like, so, who was the woman that you
Speaker 3: had as part of this scheme?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Johnny's present for this scene as well, So don't
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know how much how realistic this
Speaker 2: is in terms of police work, but you know works dramatically.
Speaker 3: Who was the woman that you had pretending to be
Speaker 3: the queen of the Sirens, the sea witch that was
Speaker 3: calling her back to the And Sam's like, there wasn't
Speaker 3: any woman. Now, the police try to explain that to
Speaker 3: Johnny they're like, don't worry about the Johnny. He's just
Speaker 3: protecting his accomplices. You know, we'll figure out who his
Speaker 3: accomplices were eventually. But I think it's the audience were
Speaker 3: there to wonder like who was that?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: Is human accomplice or is there something else going on,
Speaker 3: Like are we actually getting the full story now through
Speaker 3: this confession or is that some kind of misdirection too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got the impression that this is left here
Speaker 2: to leave the hatch open for the mystery, so that
Speaker 2: even though we have had this almost kind of like
Speaker 2: Scooby doing moment here where the killer's mask is revealed
Speaker 2: and he fesses up to everything, but this one thing
Speaker 2: cannot be explained, and by not being able to explain
Speaker 2: the mystery woman, it leaves open the possibility that, yes,
Speaker 2: maybe she was actually one of the sea people, maybe
Speaker 2: she was bound to return to the sea, and leaving
Speaker 2: all of these dreamlike and mysterious supernatural aspects of the
Speaker 2: film very much in play, because I think it would
Speaker 2: that have would have been disappointing if we'd reached the
Speaker 2: end and everything that felt dreamlike and superstitious was just
Speaker 2: completely explained away, just completely Scooby Dude at the end.
Speaker 2: This way we keep that mystery alive.
Speaker 3: I agree. I like it that some questions are left unanswered.
Speaker 3: I mean I tend to like endings like that. I
Speaker 3: know some people get very annoyed when there are questions
Speaker 3: that are left unanswered at the end, but I almost
Speaker 3: always prefer that as long as it doesn't feel like
Speaker 3: you're just getting jerked around to no kind of planned resolution.
Speaker 3: You know, you want some important resolution but also some
Speaker 3: mystery to remain. That's kind of my sweet spot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, give me something to think about and contemplate later on.
Speaker 3: But you know, I think it's not just the presence
Speaker 3: of the Sea Witch that leaves some things kind of mysterious.
Speaker 3: I do think we're still to wonder like what explained,
Speaker 3: Like why did Mourra cut Johnny's air hose, Like what
Speaker 3: exactly was happening there? Her understanding of what she was
Speaker 3: doing there? Yeah, I don't know. I think I think
Speaker 3: there are other tensions. But then, as we've mentioned, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, throughout there is this other character Ellen who
Speaker 3: kind of appears there at the end and is like,
Speaker 3: you know, he just making her presence known, Like, Hey, Johnny,
Speaker 3: I'm still around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I hear your single. Now, so, hey, do
Speaker 2: you want to get you a coke float sometime or something?
Speaker 2: And yeah, so we get the sense that they are
Speaker 2: going to begin a relationship. Now, is it a true
Speaker 2: happy ending sort of scenario here, I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: know that that's necessarily the case. There seems to be
Speaker 2: a compromise here, and you know, his his true desire
Speaker 2: and his true love has has been lost, and this
Speaker 2: is very much, very much a diversion. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't see it as a happy ending. I
Speaker 3: see clearly like we have established Sam as the villain
Speaker 3: of the story, a complicated villain, but the villain of
Speaker 3: the story behind all of the loss and the suffering
Speaker 3: and the manipulation of Mora that led to her death.
Speaker 3: But despite the fact that the villain has been caught
Speaker 3: and has confessed, it still doesn't feel resolved, if that
Speaker 3: makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and that the air of tragedy remains.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay, Well that was Curtis Harrington's Night Tide. I
Speaker 3: stand up for this one. I think this is a
Speaker 3: really interesting, really cool movie. Gives you a Dennis Hopper
Speaker 3: unliked any Dennis Hopper I'd ever seen before. I like
Speaker 3: the acting across the board really, Linda Lawson is great,
Speaker 3: a strong script, a good good directing hand by Harrington
Speaker 3: makes me want to read Harrington's book. And yeah, bravo,
Speaker 3: bravo do all involved. I liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely definitely worth checking out. All right, we're going
Speaker 2: to go and close out this episode of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: But we'll just remind everyone out there that Stuffed to
Speaker 2: Bow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast
Speaker 2: with core episodes and Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays,
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Speaker 2: a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
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