WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: Night Tide 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:08.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:16.280 Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.480 And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:21.960 we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty one 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.440 horror fantasy romance Night Tide, written and directed by Curtis Harrington, 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:33.680 starring Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson. So this movie had 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.559 been on my list for a while. I think I 0:00:36.680 --> 0:00:39.800 added it to the list after we talked about Curtis 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:44.080 Harrington in our episode on Queen of Blood, a later 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:47.320 movie by Herrington from nineteen sixty six. If you don't 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:51.120 remember that episode, Queen of Blood was the Roger Corman 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:54.840 financed sci fi horror movie in which a bunch of 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:59.720 astronauts rescue an alien emissary who is shipwrecked on the 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:02.600 mark shin moon Phobos. But then while they're on the 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:04.960 way back to Earth, it turns out, uh oh, she's 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.199 a vampire and she wants to drink all their blood. 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:10.080 One of the members of the crew in that movie, 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:11.800 not the main member of the crew, kind of a 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.399 secondary character, is played by Dennis Hopper, which is gonna 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:16.200 be a funny connection to this movie. 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:18.480 Yeah, I believe John Saxon might have been the lead 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:21.480 in that one, and Basil Rathbone was in it as well. 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.440 Basil Rathbone playing one of those stay in one room 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.360 and read some lines. But yeah, John Saxon is on 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.279 the spaceship. I think Dennis Hopper gets his blood drank. 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:35.600 And yeah, but Queen of Blood was notable for being 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.680 like half original footage and half footage from a couple 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:43.679 of pre existing Soviet Soviet science fiction movies, mostly like 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:47.520 special effects shots from these movies had been bought And 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.960 then I think Roger Korman's like, you know, let's we 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.120 already owned the rights to this, let's make another movie 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:53.520 out of it. 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.000 Yeah, but in the end, far better film than it 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.120 had any right to be given those constraints. 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.120 Yes, and I think it helps that those special effects 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.120 shot shots that they bought in actually do look very good, 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:08.680 like very artful, you know, kind of beautiful, pleasing special 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:12.880 effects shots. But anyway, the funny thing about that is, 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:17.360 according to Curtis Harrington, Corman offered to put up the 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:21.280 financing for Queen of Blood because he was impressed with 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:23.560 Night Tide, the movie that we're going to be talking 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:28.240 about today. Night Tide had been Harrington's first feature film, 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.960 so especially once we start talking about this movie, it's 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.799 gonna be really funny to think about, like this kind 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:40.680 of quiet, subtle art film leading to the opportunities including 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:44.440 Queen of Blood. So what kind of movie is Night Tide? 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.080 A lot of reviewers have had trouble placing it in 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.080 a genre. The main thrust of the story is a 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:56.200 romance between the characters played by Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson, 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.919 but this movie also has elements of horror, element of thriller, 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:06.680 definitely of fantasy and mystery. Personally, I would say that 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:10.760 it's an eerie, supernatural romance, but of course you've got 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.360 these these parts that feel like film noir, parts that 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.239 feel like full corror. I'd say, yeah. Sometimes you could 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:19.520 just say it's an art house film. I think that's 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:23.880 fair because it's got these scenes that have dangling images 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:26.160 from out of a dream. It's very popular in that 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.720 mid century, you know, art film genre. I'm thinking of 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.600 the empty rocking chair and the wind and things like that, 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:35.160 and then other parts of this movie just feel like 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.560 beach blanket bingo. You know, there's kind of a beach 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:41.200 party atmosphere to the happier romance scenes that I like. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:44.720 I like the contrast there when things get really spooky 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.960 and Linda Lawson starts talking about hearing the moon talking 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:51.160 to her, but they've like just been talking about putting 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.880 the suntan lotion on. And then also, it's sort of 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.800 like a beat coffee house movie, especially in a few 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.120 scenes early on. And it's a cycle logical murder thriller, 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:03.480 like a Hitchcock movie. So there's just a whole lot 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:04.040 going on. 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:06.480 Yeah, yeah, number of Once you list them out, it 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:08.200 sounds like this is going to be they're going to 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:13.800 be experiencing whiplash, but everything proceeds at a pace and 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:15.760 at a rate that feels very natural. 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.279 Yeah, totally. So I'll go ahead and do a quick 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:22.160 synopsis to orient Us at Night. Tide is the story 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:26.240 of a young Navy recruit named Johnny who falls in 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.479 love with a woman named Mora who works on the 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:33.560 Santa Monica peer in California playing a mermaid at a 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.720 carnival attraction, and at first they have a blissful romance, 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:42.720 but things start to become strange when Johnny notices that 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.279 Mora is being followed everywhere by an older woman with 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:48.640 a witch like presence who speaks to her in a 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:53.360 foreign language. And Mora seems haunted by the moon and 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.680 feels the effects of the tide on her body and 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.760 dreams that the ocean is calling to her. And then 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.240 on on top of all this, Johnny starts to hear 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:06.160 rumors about Mora's last two boyfriends, who both died under 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:10.320 weird circumstances. So a mystery comes into focus, and the 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.320 question is does Mora have a secret or could maybe 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:17.279 she and Johnny both be casualties of some kind of 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:21.599 conspiracy by the sea. So I will note that in 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:23.799 this episode, as usual, we're going to be talking about 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.120 the ending of the film, and this movie definitely has 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.080 some big surprises in it, So if you want to 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.039 hop out go watch the movie before we ruin any 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.400 of the plot surprises, you should probably go for that. 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:35.440 Now, Yeah, I'll go ahead and mention where you can 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.440 find it. Then there's a really nice indicator Blu ray 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.159 edition of the film if you're going for physical media, 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.960 and this features a four K restoration and a special 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:48.000 treat that this makes me wish I had watched it 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:51.839 in this format. A nineteen ninety eight audio commentary that 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.440 features both director Curtis Harrington and starre Dennis Hopper. I 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:57.840 believe there was. Yeah, Yeah, it's supposed to be really good. 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.159 A lot of them are just just talking about the 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.640 making of the film and pointing out all sorts of little, 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.280 little curious facts about what you're seeing. But I believe yeah, 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.640 And I believe there was also a Quino Lurber release 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.279 as well. You can also find this one on digital 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.040 easy to find in that format. I will point out, however, 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:20.320 I rented it digitally, and only after i'd already you know, 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:23.200 made the purchase for the rental, that I realized it 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:26.360 was colorized. And as I've mentioned before, I'm not one 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.800 hundred opposed to colorized versions of films. With certain films, 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:32.600 it can. It can kind of work, you know, your 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:36.040 sort of sci fi films. Sometimes I don't universally hate it, 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.320 but Nighttide demands to be seen in its original black 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.000 and white. I ended up having to figure out how 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.599 to set my smart TV to grayscale, which is not easy. 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:47.480 Back in the old days, it was just a knob, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.000 you know, and your old televisions. Nowadays you have to 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.040 go into a whole bunch of sub menus. But once 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:55.080 I converted it to gray scale, I was able to 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.680 watch it h and you know, I believe as it 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:01.120 was intended. But you don't want to have to go 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:02.800 through all that. Get it in black and white if 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:04.839 you can, Otherwise you're gonna have to do a workaround. 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.160 I would recommend watching it in black and white. I 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:10.280 don't want to ruin your enjoyment for the movies where 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:12.960 you like it. But I'm generally not a fan of colorization. 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:16.160 I would say, specially in this case, I would not 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:16.920 recommend that. 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:19.320 I'm trying to think there was some film we watched 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:21.800 for Weird House and I ended up not minding it, 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.360 but I can't remember. It's probably more of an exception 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:27.280 to the rule than anything. 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:31.360 Yeah, might as well note here that the title of 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.600 the movie Night Tide is a quote from the poem 0:07:34.680 --> 0:07:37.840 Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. This is a poem 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.640 about the death of a woman beloved by the poet, 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:43.880 which takes place in a kingdom by the sea, so 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:47.080 you can see the relevance to this story. But the 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:51.480 last stanza of annabel Lee goes as follows, for the 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.680 moon never beams without bringing me dreams of beautiful annabel Lee, 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:58.760 and the stars never rise. But I feel the bright 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.520 eyes of the beautiful Annabelle Lee. And so all the 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:06.160 night Tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.840 my darling, my life, and my bride in her sepulcher, 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.280 there by the sea, in her tomb, by the sounding sea. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:17.600 Very nice, very nice. There's the title right there. Now. 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.200 I just had the thought, as a literary illusion, does 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:22.520 that give away too much about the ending of the movie? 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.160 What's your feeling about that? Rob? Should you make allusions 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.840 to other works of literature if they have the same 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:30.960 ending as the story that you're going to tell? 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:36.240 Sure? Why not? Because the audience never knows if you're 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.000 going to stick to it or subvert it, So why not? 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:41.880 I guess you're right. And it's probably obscure enough a 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:45.079 reference to Annibal Lee that probably nobody's going like, oh, 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.840 night Tide, that's that agg Allan Poe poem. You know, 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.000 it's like two words, yeah, yeah. 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:55.120 Now a note about expectations here. Nighttide is not a 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.640 monster movie, and I think some folks have had maybe 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.960 disappointment with this based on some online reviews, were looking 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.080 at where people went into it, maybe wanting something a 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:07.679 little camp here, a little more B movie, you know, 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.320 And Yeah, it's just not the case, as we've been saying. 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:13.040 Think of it more of it as an avant garde 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:19.320 noir contemplation on loneliness and desire. Likewise, we should point 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.880 out that the homo erotic and gay subtext is something 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.120 that the folks have often noted about this film, and 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.640 that too is also subtle and doesn't tackle anything directly 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.839 or overtly, but very much a part of the sort 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.520 of like commentary world of this film thing. A lot 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:41.160 of has been written about this, as we'll discuss. Curtis 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.000 Harrington was himself an openly gay director, and in this 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.160 film is noted for some of that subtext. And given 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:49.679 that we're here at the tail end of Pride Month, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.079 seemed like a perfect time to dive into another one 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:52.880 of his films. 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.120 Yeah. I think that the gay subtext that is often 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:59.960 read into this movie is really interesting because I see 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.720 it applied not just to one character like I think 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:06.960 sometimes critics talk about elements of disappearing with reference to 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:11.040 the protagonist Johnny you know, played by Dennis Hopper, but 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:15.800 also applied to the character Mora played by Linda Lawson, 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:20.720 for example, questions about whether to some extent is the 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.320 question of her belonging to the people of the Sea, 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.440 having this kind of like unconfirmed or secret relationship with 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:29.960 the Sirens or the mermaids, the people of the Sea, 0:10:30.760 --> 0:10:34.120 having something to do with like being in the closet 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:38.520 or being being sort of having an identity that like 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.800 can't be fully realized among the people you walk about 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:42.680 to day to day. 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:47.240 Absolutely, Yeah, like what happens to that, to her nature, 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.640 to her identity here in this world where she can't 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.599 be who and what she is. So it's gonna be 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:55.719 it's gonna be fun to talk about these aspects of 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:59.240 the film. Yeah, some quick stats. This is, of course, 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.000 is our second Harrington film, and it's going to be 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.040 our fourth film to feature Dennis Hopper, following episodes on 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:09.000 ninety three Super Mario Brothers, Queen of Blood and Head. 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:12.080 Oh, Dennis Hopper had something to do with Head totally. 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:14.320 He was in the I wasn't on that episode, but 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:17.320 he's in the credits. He at least pops up somewhere 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:17.640 in there. 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:20.240 Okay, I forget what he had to do with head, 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.080 but that makes sense, you know, the sixties freak out guy. 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:28.400 Though this is a very pre sixties freak out Dennis 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:30.240 Hopper we're going to get in this movie. I want 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.240 to talk about that extensively when we get into him 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.640 in the connection section. But this is not your average 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:36.400 Dennis Hopper. 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:37.520 Yeah. 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.200 You know, when I think Dennis Hopper, I think Super 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:42.760 Mario Brothers, Dennis Hopper, King Koopa guy. 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.000 Yeah. People often think about that. They think about Blue Velvet, 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.400 they think about Speed or water World or I mean, 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:53.160 I think another major touchstone that's earlier than all of 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:55.959 those examples is of course Apocalypse. Now, yeah, where he 0:11:56.000 --> 0:12:00.440 plays the photojournalist. I'm an American, that character totally. Yeah. 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:01.800 Well, we'll talk about that in a bit. 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.120 All right, Well, let's get into the folks behind this film. 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:16.000 We'll talk a little bit more. First of all about 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:20.000 Curtis Harrington, the director, the writer. He lived nineteen twenty 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:24.240 six through two thousand and seven. Harrington was obviously a 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:26.880 big Edgar Allan Poe fan, so it's fitting that his 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:30.840 first film was a nineteen forty two short based on 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:33.640 the Fall of the House of Usher. It was the 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.079 first of a string of short films that also included 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:40.520 fifty six Is the Wormwood Star, and then Nighttide was 0:12:40.559 --> 0:12:44.440 his first feature film independently produced with at least some 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:49.600 amount of help and connection making from Roger Korman. As such, 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.920 he followed it up with a Roger Corman produced though 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.440 uncredited in that regard film sixty five, Voyage to the 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.920 Prehistoric Planet, followed by Queen of Blood. I haven't seen 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.640 Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, so I can't comment on 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:03.000 that one. 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:05.480 Yeah, me neither, don't know anything about it, but it 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:11.200 seems fitting with this string of movies that Harrington started 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.120 doing after Night Tide in the sixties, where he's essentially 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:19.240 trying to get a more mainstream movie making career. He's 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.800 breaking out of the art house film world, which he 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:26.760 occupied in the fifties and still somewhat you could say 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.960 somewhat occupied in the era of Night Tide. Night Tide 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:32.040 is kind of a bridge he's making, sort of still 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.160 an art movie, but it has some mainstream narrative appeal, 0:13:36.080 --> 0:13:38.120 and then eventually he's going to break through into just 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.960 like I'm doing science fiction movies. I'm making money in 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:41.600 the industry. 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.480 Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's going to be be interesting 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:48.120 to compare him to him to some other contemporary figures. 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.079 We'll get into it in a bed here. But after Night 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.720 Tide he shot sixty seven's Games, a thriller with James Kahn, 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:58.560 then the nineteen seventy film How Awful About Alan starring 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.360 Anthony Perkins. Seventy one's What's the Matter with Helen? That's 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:06.400 with Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters. Seventy two's Whoever Slew 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.120 Anti Rue? That's with Shelley Winters, Sir Ralph Richardson, and 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.000 Michael Gothard is in that as well. I can't I 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:15.559 haven't seen it, so I can't tell you if he's 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:17.960 wearing cool sunglasses in that, but I assume that he is, 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:21.600 or glasses some sort of cool eye wear. Seems to 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:23.920 frequently come with a Gothard performance. 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:26.000 What was the name of the Michael Gothard movie we 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:26.760 did on the show? 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:31.000 Oh it was Scream Screen again? Yes, yeah, ok, yeah, yeah, 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:32.480 And there may have been another one he popped up 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:37.240 in as well, but memorable screen presence for sure. Let's 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:41.520 see Harrington also directed seventy three's The Killing Kind with 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.320 the Sue Bernard, a faster Pussycat, Kill Kill. He also 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.480 did the seventy three TV movie The Cat Creature, the 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:51.680 seventy four TV movie Killer Bees, the seventy five TV 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:55.280 movie The Dead Don't Die with George Hamilton, seventy seven's 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:59.000 Ruby with Piper Laurie, the seventy eight TV movie Devil 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.400 Dog the Hound of Well, that's with the Richard Krenna, 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.000 and also Martin Beswick, who was in another movie we 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.600 were considering for this week, and that movie is not 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:11.960 this movie, Devil Dog the Hound of Hell. Not to 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:17.000 be confused with Zoltan Hound of Dracula, different, different evil 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:17.600 dog movie. 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:21.040 Is that the same as the movie Dracula's Dog or 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:21.800 a different. 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.160 Movie that is Dracula's Dog? Yes, okay, okay. For folks 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:27.960 who thought that Zoltan Hound of Dracula was too confusing, 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:29.600 they're like, what are we talking about here? No, it's 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:34.000 Dracula's Dog. And then Harrington's final full length film was 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:38.560 Mattahari in nineteen eighty five, starring Sylvia Crystal of Emmanuel fame, 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:40.960 and he continued to work as a director on various 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.680 TV shows, including the likes of Logan's Run, Charlie's Angels, 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:48.200 Wonder Woman, Dark Room Dynasty in one episode of the 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:53.680 eighty seven Twilight Zone revival Cool. So, Night Tide is 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:57.520 often referenced as Harrington's best and this is one of 0:15:57.520 --> 0:15:59.360 the one of the main reasons we've moved on to 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.320 this after or Queen of Blood. We're like, we're impressed 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:04.360 with what we've seen from this guy in a film 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.120 where he was working with various constraints. What is it 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.640 like when he not to say he had just complete 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.760 free reign here, but you know, it's an independently produced picture. 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:16.480 He had a great deal of creative freedom here. You know, 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:18.240 what's it like when he puts that together? So Night 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.760 Tide is often considered one of his best, alongside seventy 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.160 one's What's the Matter with Helen? To understand that one's 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:30.400 highly regarded as well. But yeah, Night Tide especially manages 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:33.280 to exist with a foot in kind of two different worlds, 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.920 So the realm of avant garde experimentation and the world 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:41.760 of commercial genre work, and it mix for a very 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.960 interesting film. Again, not a campy monster film, but it's 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.480 effectively creepy. It's you know, it would say, low key 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:53.160 beautiful in many scenes, some very surreal shots, some dreamlike qualities, 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:57.720 great use of supernatural elements, and much of the film 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.240 strength is in its more I think ethereal contemplation of 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:02.440 loneliness and desire. 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:06.280 Yeah, the movie is very subtle. I want to look 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.600 into some of these subtle touches and characterization when we 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:11.840 get into the plot section, especially just in the first 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:16.080 few minutes of the movie. But there's a lot of 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:19.360 feeling in it, and it does still have I think, 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:24.199 some of an art house sensibility, though I wouldn't stress 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:26.199 that too much because that might give you the idea 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:29.040 that it's, you know, more like these these other art 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:32.400 house films of the mid century that Harrington, by the way, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.760 was associated with, people like Maya Darren and Kenneth Anger, 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.760 who made you might say, more symbolic films or films 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:45.960 that were less narratively coherent and instead were you know, 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:50.399 sequences of images or kind of strange abstract contemplations on 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:54.919 a theme. Harrington also did movies like that before he 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.520 had his breakout, you might say, with Night Tide. He 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.720 was mainly thought of as an art filmmaker, and he 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:06.560 made artistic short films like some of these other contemporaries 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:11.080 like Kenneth Anger, but yeah, he broke through, and he's 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:14.840 often considered one of the few, or maybe the only 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:20.720 one of these mid century California art directors who made 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:24.359 the switch into mainstream cinema. The others didn't. 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:26.920 Really Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kenneth Anger, I think is the 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:32.280 really interesting figure to compare him to, because Anger never 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.880 left the indie scene, like he stayed in short indie 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:43.600 experimentation for the duration of his career, whereas, again, Harrington 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:48.879 successfully makes this transference into the commercial world and then 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:53.399 brings aspects of what made him special in the experimental 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:54.120 world with him. 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.919 And in Harrington's work, I feel like you can really 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.760 see both sensibilities, like there is there is definitely something that, 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:06.119 to me at least, always is still artistic about him, 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:09.399 like he's somebody who is at some level trying to 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.160 create art. But you can also see that he appreciates 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.199 camp and he has a love of the old Hollywood style, 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.800 like one thing about Night Tide A lot of people 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.399 have noted, and I think Harrington himself admitted to this. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:27.080 He agreed that the movie was very influenced by a 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.800 previous Hollywood film, the nineteen forty two movie Cat People, 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:32.520 which I think we're going to have to do on 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:33.160 the show someday. 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:34.000 It keeps coming out. 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:36.040 We just never did an episode on it. But that 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.760 was Val Luton, produced, directed by Oh, I don't know 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:43.679 how you actually pronounce his name, Jacques Turner Tournaire his 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:48.960 French name. But that movie is also a romance about 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:51.840 a romance between a man and a woman in which 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:55.959 the woman may have a bizarre, supernatural secret. But you 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.480 can also apply a psychological framing to the plot. You 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.879 can kind of read it in the supernatural way or 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:05.520 in the psychological way, which is very much how Night 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:09.480 Tide is positioned as well. In general, I think for Harrington, 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:14.440 a major theme of his career was the constant struggle 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:19.720 and tension between artistic ambitions and a desire to maintain 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:24.359 a sort of artistic integrity, setting that against the practical 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:27.720 necessities of filmmaking and the you know, the desires of 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:32.160 people who were financing films like he's. I think he 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:35.480 framed his own life story very much in terms of 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:40.200 this constant difficult compromise between like what he felt he 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:42.560 had to do as a filmmaker and what he wanted 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:46.440 to do as an artist. But also you could get 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.159 the idea from that that he's somebody who's, you know, 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:51.640 very self serious about his work. And I don't think 0:20:51.680 --> 0:20:57.040 that's entirely true either, because I was reading some excerpts 0:20:57.080 --> 0:20:59.720 from a book that he wrote about his career called 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:03.120 Guys Don't Work in Hollywood. The excerpts I read are 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:08.560 fantastically He's a good writer, like good snappy pros, very funny, droll, 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.960 dry sense of humor, and he clearly he just has 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.080 a good sense of irony about Hollywood and about you know, 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.200 the people that he works with and what's going on. 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.480 There's one story that he tells in the book, again 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:24.800 clearly with a strong sense of irony, about how he 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:28.879 is invited to a dinner being given in honor of Truman, 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.040 Capote and Trum. He says Truman Capote comes up to 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:35.119 him and says, oh, I loved Night Tide. You know, 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.120 so he's about the movie we're talking about today. Capoti 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.879 was a fan. But he gets seated at this dinner 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:44.360 next to some actress. I actually can't remember her name, 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:47.960 but an actress who he becomes aware is a fan 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:52.560 of like religiously based book movie censoring crusades, you know, 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:55.760 against immorality and film, and so he's just kind of 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:57.879 trying to wind her up. He's like, oh, really, you know, 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:01.359 tell me about all the immorality and film. And apparently 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:04.000 she was like, can you believe this filth they're making? 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:09.040 Like Lawrence of Arabia. Apparently she was incensed because she 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:12.040 believed T. E. Lawrence was gay and thought, how could 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:13.679 you make a film about such a person? 0:22:14.440 --> 0:22:16.199 Yeah, one of the one of the classic films of 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:16.640 all time. 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:16.920 Yeah. 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:22.199 Yeah. But anyway, the book seems like, I don't know, 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:24.639 I would really like to read this book. Harrington seems 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:27.840 like an interesting guy, not just somebody whose work was interesting, 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:31.479 but he had interesting perspective about it and about the 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:35.000 industry that he worked in. So I'm going to come 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:36.280 back and try to read that book. 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:38.760 At some point. Now. One of the things as well, 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:41.960 that Harrington has often given credit for is that he 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:46.400 recognized in Dennis Hopper and already you know, very very 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:49.200 you know, seasoned performer you been working for a number 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:51.840 of years, realized this is a guy whose performance you 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:54.480 could build a movie around. Yeah, and indeed this is 0:22:54.480 --> 0:22:56.800 a lead Yeah, this could be this is a lead 0:22:56.840 --> 0:23:00.080 actor right here. Let's use him like that, because this is, 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:03.640 in fact, Dennis Hopper's first starring role plays Johnny Drake. 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:06.200 We've talked about Hopper before, he of course lived nineteen 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:10.840 thirty six through twenty ten. And since we've discussed Hopper before, 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:13.280 you know, mostly want to situate him within his career 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:17.440 in filmography here and again talking about like the Dennis 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:21.439 Hopper we see in this movie versus performances from Dennis 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.480 Hopper that may more instantly come to mind for you know, 0:23:24.560 --> 0:23:29.239 folks looking back on the totality of his career. So 0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:32.480 Hopper's credits go back to TV roles in the mid fifties. 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:35.720 He also had some early, minor and sometimes uncredited film 0:23:35.840 --> 0:23:38.920 roles in the likes of fifty five's Rebel without a Cause. 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:44.760 He just plays like a random goon in that. I've 0:23:44.800 --> 0:23:46.720 actually never watched Rebel without a Cause, and I certainly 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:49.119 haven't watched it looking for Dennis Hopper, but he's in 0:23:49.160 --> 0:23:53.160 there somewhere. He's also when I Died a Thousand times. 0:23:53.200 --> 0:23:56.879 He's in Giant in fifty six and various other films, 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:00.919 including Key Witness in nineteen sixty that was his credit 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:05.600 right before Nighttide, but again no lead roles until this film. Afterwards, 0:24:05.640 --> 0:24:07.919 he did a great deal more TV work. He played 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:12.040 Tarzan in a nineteen sixty four Andy Warhol movie. He 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:14.240 was in the Sons of Katie Elder in sixty five, 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:17.040 Queen of Blood in sixty six, and then in sixty 0:24:17.080 --> 0:24:20.040 seven he appeared in the Roger Corman directed and Jack 0:24:20.119 --> 0:24:24.080 Nicholson scripted LSD film The Trip, as well as Cool 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:27.600 Hand Luke. And this is around the time that we 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:31.440 generally began to leave behind the scrappy young Dennis Hopper 0:24:31.480 --> 0:24:34.520 and began to deal with the sort of counter culture 0:24:34.520 --> 0:24:37.400 Dennis Hopper. And this is a period of some great 0:24:37.480 --> 0:24:42.080 career high points, but also the beginnings of generally what's 0:24:42.119 --> 0:24:46.359 considered multiple substance struggles that would plague Hopper until he 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:50.520 finally became sober and I believe nineteen eighty five, enabling 0:24:50.680 --> 0:24:54.640 a career comeback that saw him appear in such films 0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:59.480 as Hoosiers, which he received an OSCAR nomination for Blue Velvet, 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:02.760 as well as films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre too. I mean, 0:25:02.760 --> 0:25:05.360 these are all films that came together, you know, because 0:25:05.400 --> 0:25:07.680 he was able to really you know, jump back in 0:25:07.840 --> 0:25:11.440 and and and see his career take back off again. 0:25:12.040 --> 0:25:14.520 I Mean, I like a lot of Dennis Hopper rolls, 0:25:14.560 --> 0:25:16.840 but I got to say there is nothing better than 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:20.439 his chainsaw shopping scene in Texas Chainsaw too, that that 0:25:20.600 --> 0:25:21.840 is an Oscar worthy scene. 0:25:22.160 --> 0:25:24.920 Yeah. Now, at the time period we're talking about here, though, 0:25:25.000 --> 0:25:27.840 is kind of like a period of ups and downs. 0:25:27.920 --> 0:25:31.080 You know, some of the ups are notable. Like you know, 0:25:31.119 --> 0:25:34.560 he directed and co wrote the Oscar nominated nineteen sixty 0:25:34.640 --> 0:25:37.320 nine film Easy Writer, which of course is you know, 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:41.720 considered a classic. He directed seventy one's The Last Movie, 0:25:41.800 --> 0:25:45.239 and nineteen eighties Out of the Blue, a film that 0:25:45.840 --> 0:25:49.240 you know, I don't think it received much attention in 0:25:49.320 --> 0:25:51.719 the States when it came out. There's some distribution issues, 0:25:51.720 --> 0:25:55.359 but there's been there's been a lot of re examination 0:25:55.480 --> 0:25:58.399 of that picture in recent years. And of course he 0:25:58.440 --> 0:26:00.640 also appeared in seventy nine Is of poc Lips Now 0:26:00.720 --> 0:26:03.120 during this time period as well, and that, of course 0:26:03.200 --> 0:26:06.239 is also a very iconic performance that you know, in 0:26:06.240 --> 0:26:08.520 my mind that that's one that really stands out, is 0:26:08.520 --> 0:26:11.160 like Oh, that's Dennis Hopper. That's the sort of crazy 0:26:11.320 --> 0:26:14.280 role that you that you come to expect from exactly. 0:26:14.320 --> 0:26:17.159 So we were talking about this earlier. But when I 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:21.760 think Dennis Hopper, I think of his roles as high 0:26:21.920 --> 0:26:26.320 energy madmen, you know, phrenetic presence dominating the screen, and 0:26:26.440 --> 0:26:31.879 sort of acid rogues, people who have a countercultural, rebellious 0:26:32.200 --> 0:26:37.600 screen presence. And also I just think about his villain roles, 0:26:37.640 --> 0:26:40.560 you know, Blue Velvet Speed in the nineties, that kind 0:26:40.560 --> 0:26:42.560 of thing. I mean, you know, Speed's probably not his 0:26:42.640 --> 0:26:46.840 most artistically significant film, but he's notable in it. Like 0:26:46.880 --> 0:26:51.879 you can't forget Dennis Hopper and Speed. But in Nighttide, 0:26:52.240 --> 0:26:55.320 I just kept thinking, it is hard to believe Dennis 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:59.600 Hopper was ever this cute. The character he plays, named 0:26:59.640 --> 0:27:05.080 Johnny Drake, is naive, soft spoken, a little bit shy 0:27:05.359 --> 0:27:10.199 and helpless, and Hopper plays this role very earnestly without 0:27:10.280 --> 0:27:14.480 any irony that's detectable. And I say that about the 0:27:14.520 --> 0:27:16.639 irony because I would say even in some of his 0:27:16.760 --> 0:27:20.639 other earlier, more straightforward roles that I've seen on the screen, 0:27:20.800 --> 0:27:23.679 like he's kind of a background character in Queen of Blood, 0:27:23.720 --> 0:27:26.600 just playing one of the Astronauts and he's not doing 0:27:26.640 --> 0:27:29.600 anything all that exciting. But I remember thinking in Queen 0:27:29.640 --> 0:27:34.040 of Blood that you could still get this devil in 0:27:34.160 --> 0:27:38.280 disguise energy coming off of him. Like maybe that's my imagination, 0:27:38.440 --> 0:27:41.440 but there's this energy like, if only somebody would let 0:27:41.480 --> 0:27:43.520 me out of the cage of this role, I'd tear 0:27:43.600 --> 0:27:46.800 this place apart. And there's nothing like that here, not 0:27:46.920 --> 0:27:50.640 even a hint. This character is very earnest and reserved, 0:27:51.000 --> 0:27:53.560 and Hopper is fully committed to the character. 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:57.320 Yeah, I agree, Hopper is really really good and Night 0:27:57.440 --> 0:28:01.720 Tide it's fascinating performance on multiple levels. It's it's a 0:28:01.720 --> 0:28:04.520 great performance knowing the sorts of roles and struggles that 0:28:04.520 --> 0:28:07.000 would come to define him later on, but it's just 0:28:07.040 --> 0:28:12.560 a great subdued, vulnerable performance, you know. I think it's 0:28:12.600 --> 0:28:15.560 so nicely. His performance so nicely captures this sort of 0:28:15.680 --> 0:28:19.680 yearning awkwardness of young adulthood, you know, like he he's 0:28:19.760 --> 0:28:21.600 he's he's like, I'm going to get out there, I'm 0:28:21.640 --> 0:28:24.080 gonna I'm going to live my life. But he doesn't 0:28:24.200 --> 0:28:27.320 really know how to do that yet, how to fill 0:28:27.320 --> 0:28:31.000 in such a large blank in the sentence of one's life. Yes, 0:28:31.400 --> 0:28:34.840 and so his his performance is wonderful and again like 0:28:34.960 --> 0:28:38.640 low key and and and he has this and at 0:28:38.640 --> 0:28:41.280 the same time raw and it's kind of painful to 0:28:41.360 --> 0:28:44.000 watch at times in the best of ways, like yeah, 0:28:44.000 --> 0:28:49.240 like in a very subdued way, the exposed nerve endings 0:28:49.240 --> 0:28:53.840 of emotion slightly grazing against the expanding realities of his world. 0:28:53.960 --> 0:28:55.640 You know it, I don't know. It just makes you 0:28:55.680 --> 0:28:58.040 think about being like a young person and not knowing 0:28:58.160 --> 0:29:00.280 how to do any of the things that you feel 0:29:00.280 --> 0:29:01.000 the desire to do. 0:29:01.720 --> 0:29:05.200 That's such a great observation. You're totally right about the Yeah, 0:29:05.280 --> 0:29:08.640 the way that he wants to live a life but 0:29:08.720 --> 0:29:11.000 he doesn't know how to do it. You can see 0:29:11.000 --> 0:29:13.240 that embodied when he tells the story at the beginning 0:29:13.280 --> 0:29:15.959 about how he always wanted to see the world, so 0:29:16.000 --> 0:29:18.200 he joined the Navy so he could see the world. 0:29:18.320 --> 0:29:20.360 But then he tells more like, I haven't really seen 0:29:20.400 --> 0:29:23.120 anywhere yet, you know, I've just been here in California. 0:29:23.400 --> 0:29:26.880 Yeah, I think he mentions Hawaii, so about like he's 0:29:26.880 --> 0:29:28.720 been to a military base in Hawaii and then back 0:29:28.760 --> 0:29:31.120 here and in otherwise he's just been on a ship. Yeah, 0:29:31.200 --> 0:29:34.200 because he's supposed to be from Denver. I believe that's right. 0:29:34.320 --> 0:29:37.920 Yeah, but yeah, and there are other ways that. I mean, 0:29:37.960 --> 0:29:40.400 I think you can say that the way he's pursuing 0:29:40.520 --> 0:29:43.880 romance is like he has a yearning and he knows 0:29:43.960 --> 0:29:46.600 that this is something he's supposed to do and he's 0:29:46.640 --> 0:29:48.719 trying to do it right, but he also doesn't know 0:29:48.760 --> 0:29:51.600 how to do it. He senses there's a gap and 0:29:51.640 --> 0:29:54.280 he's trying to cross it, but he doesn't he doesn't 0:29:54.280 --> 0:29:55.280 know where the bridges are. 0:29:55.840 --> 0:29:59.400 Yeah. Yeah, I was looking up to see, you know, 0:29:59.400 --> 0:30:01.920 outside of that commentary track, which I didn't have access for, 0:30:02.000 --> 0:30:04.880 I was wondering what Dennis Hopper has said about the film, 0:30:05.240 --> 0:30:09.680 and I found a quote from an interview that Amy 0:30:09.760 --> 0:30:14.920 Greenfield did with Hopper for Curtis Harrington's Cinema on the Edge, 0:30:15.400 --> 0:30:17.240 And I'm just going to read a quote from it. 0:30:17.280 --> 0:30:20.040 Here Hopper said, and you know, also, and I think 0:30:20.080 --> 0:30:23.480 Curtis would agree with this also. But I've always equated 0:30:23.680 --> 0:30:26.880 what Jean Cutos was saying. I think it was Jean 0:30:26.960 --> 0:30:29.640 Cutou who said that ninety eight percent of creation was 0:30:29.720 --> 0:30:32.920 accident and one percent was intellect and one percent was logic. 0:30:33.400 --> 0:30:35.720 The art was learning how to make the accident work 0:30:35.800 --> 0:30:38.200 for you. And I think, and when I think of Nighttide, 0:30:38.320 --> 0:30:40.640 I think that Curtis had a very strong script. He 0:30:40.720 --> 0:30:42.960 knew where we were going moment to moment, but within 0:30:43.040 --> 0:30:45.800 that there was the freedom to create and then learn 0:30:45.920 --> 0:30:47.760 to make the accident work for us. 0:30:48.280 --> 0:30:50.280 Yeah, I can see that. I mean, this is a 0:30:50.400 --> 0:30:54.440 very script bound movie. It doesn't feel improvised, like clearly 0:30:54.560 --> 0:30:57.600 the characters are following their lines as written, and the 0:30:57.680 --> 0:31:03.160 story is very coherent as written. But apart from like 0:31:03.320 --> 0:31:06.360 the dialogue and the structure of the story, it does 0:31:06.840 --> 0:31:09.000 it has the energy of one of those movies where 0:31:09.080 --> 0:31:12.080 there was a lot of collaboration from the actors, Like 0:31:12.160 --> 0:31:16.880 the actors are very much informing and contributing to their 0:31:16.920 --> 0:31:21.840 own performances. Doesn't feel like overly controlled in terms of 0:31:21.880 --> 0:31:24.480 how the actors are behaving and acting out their roles. 0:31:24.520 --> 0:31:28.920 If that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. You know another 0:31:28.960 --> 0:31:31.680 thing I just wanted to mention because this hadn't come 0:31:31.720 --> 0:31:37.160 up yet. Apparently Dennis Hopper was a fan of Curtis 0:31:37.160 --> 0:31:40.200 Herrington's short art films, and that was part of the 0:31:40.200 --> 0:31:44.120 reason that he agreed to do Night Tide. Like Curtis 0:31:44.120 --> 0:31:45.920 Harrington tells the story about how they met up in 0:31:46.000 --> 0:31:48.640 a coffee shop and I guess this would have been 0:31:48.680 --> 0:31:51.600 in La and they were talking about doing this project. 0:31:51.640 --> 0:31:53.560 And I don't know how much Hopper got paid for 0:31:53.600 --> 0:31:56.400 this role. I mean, maybe there was just regular ambition involved, 0:31:56.440 --> 0:32:00.160 but clearly he was sold enough on Herrington as an artist, 0:32:00.320 --> 0:32:02.280 on the artistic vision for the film that that was 0:32:02.320 --> 0:32:03.960 a big part in his agreeing to do it. 0:32:04.160 --> 0:32:05.880 Yeah, yeah, I've read the same. 0:32:06.400 --> 0:32:07.760 Yeah. 0:32:15.280 --> 0:32:17.320 All right, Well, let's move on to the love interest 0:32:17.360 --> 0:32:20.880 here and our possible mermaid, and that is Mora, played 0:32:20.920 --> 0:32:23.640 by Linda Lawson, who in nineteen thirty six through twenty 0:32:23.680 --> 0:32:27.360 twenty two American model, singer and actress of Italian descent 0:32:27.480 --> 0:32:32.240 born Linda Gloria Sposiani. Her early career highlights were tied 0:32:32.280 --> 0:32:37.280 to American nuclear weapons testing. She won the Atomic Pageant 0:32:37.440 --> 0:32:40.640 in Las Vegas in nineteen fifty five. This was at 0:32:40.680 --> 0:32:43.600 the time of Operation Q, the Operation Q test, and 0:32:43.640 --> 0:32:47.040 so her nickname was Miss Q. Yes, she was an 0:32:47.040 --> 0:32:48.280 atomic pin up girl. 0:32:49.520 --> 0:32:52.720 Bizarre. It's hard to imagine this was ever really a 0:32:52.760 --> 0:32:57.760 thing like a beauty pageant tied inherently to weapons testing. 0:32:58.000 --> 0:33:00.520 Yeah, the good old days when a test program for 0:33:00.560 --> 0:33:03.680 a weapon of mass destruction had a sexy pr push 0:33:03.760 --> 0:33:06.360 Yeah crazy yeah, so yeah. I think she was a 0:33:06.400 --> 0:33:08.680 showgirl at the Sands Hotel at the time, and then 0:33:08.720 --> 0:33:12.640 she got this gig as the Atomic pin up girl. 0:33:12.640 --> 0:33:15.440 But after this she got into acting with TV roles 0:33:15.440 --> 0:33:18.400 on various shows of the late fifties and sixties, including 0:33:18.440 --> 0:33:22.560 episodes of Sea Hunt and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and her 0:33:22.800 --> 0:33:26.320 first film role was nineteen sixties The Threat, followed by 0:33:26.440 --> 0:33:29.560 Night Tide. Afterwards. She continued to work in TV with 0:33:29.680 --> 0:33:32.640 rolls really into the mid two thousands. Her other credits 0:33:32.680 --> 0:33:35.920 include nineteen sixty six is Let's Kill Uncle? That's from 0:33:35.960 --> 0:33:36.800 William Castle. 0:33:37.200 --> 0:33:40.600 Oh the movie house gimmicks guy like the Tingler? Did 0:33:40.600 --> 0:33:41.400 he do the Tingler? 0:33:41.440 --> 0:33:43.440 He did? Yeah? Yeah, I'm not sure what the gimmick 0:33:43.440 --> 0:33:46.080 would have been for Let's Kill Uncle, like, you know, 0:33:46.120 --> 0:33:49.480 bring your uncle to the movie theater. If someone kills him, 0:33:49.480 --> 0:33:51.680 your ticket, his ticket is on us. I don't know, 0:33:51.760 --> 0:33:56.120 Oh boy. She was also in sixty seven's Magical Mystery Tour. 0:33:56.280 --> 0:33:58.520 I believe that one's generally considered one of the lesser 0:33:58.560 --> 0:34:02.320 Beatles films. Yeah. Also nineteen seventy one sometimes a great 0:34:02.360 --> 0:34:05.680 notion directed by and starring Paul Newman, as well as 0:34:05.760 --> 0:34:10.719 nineteen seventies Miss Stones. Thing. That one actually has ed 0:34:10.800 --> 0:34:14.479 Wood Junior in it as an actor. As an actor, yeah, 0:34:14.520 --> 0:34:16.920 I think he has just a small role and I 0:34:16.960 --> 0:34:20.040 think one of his alter egos there and then oh yeah, 0:34:20.080 --> 0:34:22.040 she also put out a smooth jazz pop album in 0:34:22.120 --> 0:34:23.720 nineteen sixty. Wow. 0:34:25.000 --> 0:34:28.560 I think Linda Lawson is fantastic in this movie. Some 0:34:28.600 --> 0:34:32.680 people have characterized her role as a fem fatale, and 0:34:32.920 --> 0:34:36.760 have also noted that Harrington's movies, especially even his short films, 0:34:36.800 --> 0:34:40.640 the less narratively focused shorter films, had fem fatale like 0:34:40.719 --> 0:34:45.160 figures in them, and in terms of explicit role in 0:34:45.200 --> 0:34:48.600 the plot, you could say fem fatale makes sense because 0:34:48.719 --> 0:34:52.440 we do learn she is suspected of having murdered her 0:34:52.440 --> 0:34:55.960 two previous boyfriends, and the audience has to wonder if 0:34:56.000 --> 0:35:00.920 maybe Johnny is next. But she doesn't play this character 0:35:01.120 --> 0:35:05.239 like the typical film fatale from the era. You know 0:35:05.400 --> 0:35:10.719 that character, I think is often portrayed as dangerous, untrustworthy, 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:16.200 possibly a heartless woman with secrets and hidden designs, to 0:35:16.239 --> 0:35:19.160 the extent that Moura in Knighttide has secrets, and I 0:35:19.200 --> 0:35:21.640 think maybe you are supposed to wonder if she has secrets. 0:35:21.960 --> 0:35:25.040 It feels like she might not be aware of them 0:35:25.120 --> 0:35:29.080 fully herself. They don't feel like schemes. They feel like 0:35:29.520 --> 0:35:33.239 secrets that are operating upon her rather than you know, 0:35:33.360 --> 0:35:38.600 from her desires. And so Lawson is quite mysterious, and 0:35:39.400 --> 0:35:42.919 she has this great, you know, kind of unspoken thing 0:35:43.000 --> 0:35:45.160 that she does in a lot of scenes where it 0:35:45.200 --> 0:35:49.560 looks like she is maybe thinking something very strange that 0:35:49.600 --> 0:35:52.799 she's not ready to say out loud. But she does 0:35:52.800 --> 0:35:55.400 not come off like a villain or like a heartless 0:35:55.400 --> 0:35:59.520 person working a scheme. So despite the structural threat she 0:35:59.600 --> 0:36:03.080 poses within the plot, Maura is very sympathetic and I 0:36:03.120 --> 0:36:05.400 would say even lovable, and a lot of that is 0:36:05.440 --> 0:36:07.760 from Lawson's performance. I think she's great. 0:36:08.400 --> 0:36:12.399 You know, there's probably like a sliding scale when you're 0:36:12.400 --> 0:36:14.400 considering a character in a film that may be a 0:36:14.440 --> 0:36:17.759 mermaid or a siren, where on one hand you've got 0:36:17.800 --> 0:36:21.160 like full fem fatale or even full monster, and then 0:36:21.200 --> 0:36:23.759 on the other end like complete doll person. You know, 0:36:23.760 --> 0:36:25.920 we've all seen films like this often played up for 0:36:25.960 --> 0:36:28.680 comedic effects where it's like, how do I do human? 0:36:28.800 --> 0:36:31.399 You know, how do I behave as a human being? 0:36:31.440 --> 0:36:33.799 How do I eat lobster at dinner table? That sort 0:36:33.840 --> 0:36:35.480 of thing. You know, she doesn't feel like that. She 0:36:35.520 --> 0:36:37.279 doesn't feel like that at all, And she doesn't feel 0:36:37.320 --> 0:36:40.880 like the extreme either. She's somewhere in a nice, comfortable middle, 0:36:41.080 --> 0:36:43.080 which of course is a great place to be because 0:36:43.520 --> 0:36:46.319 that's where everyone is. You know, we can see her 0:36:46.360 --> 0:36:48.719 on the screen, we can have these questions about her 0:36:48.719 --> 0:36:51.719 and even wonder if she's some sort of a supernatural 0:36:51.880 --> 0:36:55.319 entity or other worldly being, but she's still you know, 0:36:55.560 --> 0:36:57.480 everything we see from her we can relate to. 0:36:57.920 --> 0:37:02.360 There's enough about her that is just clearly normally earthy 0:37:02.400 --> 0:37:05.759 and human. We see her enjoying food, we see her 0:37:05.760 --> 0:37:08.319 going out and enjoying music, you know, sitting there and 0:37:08.320 --> 0:37:12.759 trying to listen to music while Johnny's bothering her. There's 0:37:12.880 --> 0:37:15.719 enough about her that does feel human. She is not 0:37:16.440 --> 0:37:19.759 just the terror and the panic that maybe she's being 0:37:19.760 --> 0:37:23.000 called to the sea, but then these mysterious sort of 0:37:23.120 --> 0:37:26.279 waves roll over her and that becomes part of her 0:37:26.360 --> 0:37:29.400 in the moments where it's relevant in the plot. But 0:37:29.800 --> 0:37:31.600 she's very human at other times. 0:37:31.920 --> 0:37:36.640 Yeah. Yeah, all right, we have a character I think 0:37:36.640 --> 0:37:40.720 we referred to m already. Sam Captain Samuel Murdoch also 0:37:40.760 --> 0:37:44.000 an important character. We eventually learn that he is essentially 0:37:44.000 --> 0:37:48.240 her father figure. Yeah, that he had adopted her founder 0:37:48.280 --> 0:37:50.759 on an island at some point and has been her caretaker, 0:37:51.120 --> 0:37:52.640 and he runs the Mermaid Show. 0:37:53.880 --> 0:37:56.319 Yeah, he does also run the Mermaid Show. He is 0:37:56.400 --> 0:37:59.400 her adoptive father, and he also is her boss at 0:37:59.400 --> 0:38:00.359 the Mermaid Show. 0:38:00.520 --> 0:38:04.080 Well. Yeah, he has completely shaped the world that she 0:38:04.200 --> 0:38:07.400 lives in in ways that are particular to this story 0:38:07.480 --> 0:38:09.279 that you know, you could apply to any kind of 0:38:09.320 --> 0:38:12.760 like parental scenario, or you could even view him outside 0:38:12.760 --> 0:38:15.239 of the rental confines and just see him as kind 0:38:15.239 --> 0:38:18.319 of just a general authority figure for what she is 0:38:18.400 --> 0:38:21.400 and how she fits into the world. Yeah. But this 0:38:21.520 --> 0:38:24.719 character is played by Gavin Muir, who lived nineteen hundred 0:38:24.760 --> 0:38:28.879 through nineteen seventy two. Chicago born English educate educated actor 0:38:28.920 --> 0:38:32.000 of the stage, screen, and TV, often affected a British 0:38:32.000 --> 0:38:36.080 accent in his roles. He was a Broadway performer as well. 0:38:36.840 --> 0:38:39.319 This was the tail end of his acting career, his 0:38:39.360 --> 0:38:42.759 final film with only a single TV role. Afterwards in 0:38:42.840 --> 0:38:45.640 sixty five, but his credits go back to nineteen thirty two. 0:38:46.200 --> 0:38:49.480 Other notable films include thirty six's Mary Queen of Scott's, 0:38:49.800 --> 0:38:52.840 forty five's The House of Fear, and Abd and Costello 0:38:52.920 --> 0:38:56.799 Meet the Invisible Man in fifty one. Peter Loriie was 0:38:56.800 --> 0:38:59.560 reportedly the first pick for this role, but was to 0:38:59.640 --> 0:39:04.120 expense and I believe Laurie and Muir once worked together 0:39:04.160 --> 0:39:07.720 in the same episode of nineteen fifty six's Operation Cicero. 0:39:08.840 --> 0:39:12.920 But anyway, as much as I love Peter Lourie, I 0:39:12.960 --> 0:39:16.280 can't picture louri in this role. I feel like Gavin 0:39:16.360 --> 0:39:19.319 Muir does a great job here, and he provides a 0:39:19.400 --> 0:39:25.000 nice theatrical counterpoint to Hopper's naturalistic style. So again, Hopper 0:39:25.080 --> 0:39:30.880 is very subdued and believable. But Sam here is, you know, 0:39:30.920 --> 0:39:33.799 he's a little bit more bombastic and theatrical, you know 0:39:33.880 --> 0:39:38.080 he is. He's literally like a barker at the carnival 0:39:38.120 --> 0:39:42.200 for the Mermaid Show. And this kind of showmanship seems 0:39:42.200 --> 0:39:45.120 to permeate a lot of a number of aspects of 0:39:45.160 --> 0:39:45.680 his life. 0:39:45.840 --> 0:39:50.120 He's on he's playing. I liked this character a lot 0:39:50.200 --> 0:39:54.799 more on second viewing because the first time, I was like, 0:39:54.840 --> 0:39:57.440 when we're getting to know him in his early scenes, 0:39:57.480 --> 0:40:02.000 I'm like, he's I don't know, he kind of buffoonish sometimes. 0:40:02.040 --> 0:40:05.960 But then on second viewing, I realized, like, oh, this 0:40:06.080 --> 0:40:09.200 is not just the actor playing the character. The character 0:40:09.480 --> 0:40:13.040 is an actor. The character is a performer, and he's 0:40:13.080 --> 0:40:16.759 playing a guy who is always performing, like his persona 0:40:16.920 --> 0:40:19.520 is kind of a performance, and he's performing for Johnny 0:40:19.560 --> 0:40:22.960 as well, even when people aren't really watching. Yeah, you know, 0:40:23.040 --> 0:40:28.879 he's playing a kind of familiar, stock, jovial English sea 0:40:28.960 --> 0:40:33.840 captain character and that's the role he plays at the 0:40:33.880 --> 0:40:37.200 Mermaid Attraction for the crowds, and so he's still playing 0:40:37.239 --> 0:40:39.719 it all the time. I guess the question is like, 0:40:39.840 --> 0:40:43.279 is there a division between the persona he uses when 0:40:43.320 --> 0:40:46.239 he's performing at work versus who he is and his 0:40:46.320 --> 0:40:47.800 off time. And then I guess you could ask the 0:40:47.840 --> 0:40:50.879 same question about Mora really is she really the thing? 0:40:51.000 --> 0:40:55.520 She's just acting pretending to be at this attraction? But 0:40:55.719 --> 0:40:58.759 man thinking about this, but anyway, Yeah, so I liked 0:40:58.800 --> 0:41:00.840 this character a lot better this second time. He seemed 0:41:00.960 --> 0:41:04.560 more interesting and more complex the second time. Also, I 0:41:04.600 --> 0:41:08.120 think though I'd love Peter Laurie so much. Peter Laurie 0:41:08.160 --> 0:41:11.160 I think would have brought too much suspicion to this 0:41:11.320 --> 0:41:15.799 character if just by being cast you'd immediately been thinking like, 0:41:15.840 --> 0:41:19.879 what's the Skuy's deal? Whereas Kevin Muir here is very 0:41:19.880 --> 0:41:21.040 disarming at first. 0:41:21.320 --> 0:41:25.359 Yeah, absolutely so I really liked him in this all right. 0:41:26.000 --> 0:41:28.279 Some getting into some of the side characters been in 0:41:28.280 --> 0:41:30.200 this case a very important side character. We have the 0:41:30.280 --> 0:41:34.760 character Ellen Sands, played by Lewana Anders, who lived nineteen 0:41:34.800 --> 0:41:38.040 thirty eight through nineteen ninety six. She is an interesting 0:41:38.080 --> 0:41:41.080 figure in the cinema of the fifties and sixties, especially 0:41:41.320 --> 0:41:44.160 those who was active into the mid nineties. She began 0:41:44.200 --> 0:41:47.600 as a byte messenger at MGM, alongside various other folks 0:41:47.640 --> 0:41:50.359 starting out their careers with small studio roles like this, 0:41:50.800 --> 0:41:55.120 including Jack Nicholson, who she apparently attended an improv class with. 0:41:55.920 --> 0:41:59.040 Her first role was in fifty seven's Reform School Girls 0:41:59.080 --> 0:42:02.160 that was a Samuel ze Arkov production, followed by a 0:42:02.160 --> 0:42:06.320 handful of crime films before Night Tide. Given her connections 0:42:06.320 --> 0:42:09.360 at this point to Nicholson and now Hopper, it should 0:42:09.360 --> 0:42:11.319 come as no surprise that she begins popping up in 0:42:11.360 --> 0:42:15.000 Corman productions there uch as Pitting the Pendulum in sixty one, 0:42:15.120 --> 0:42:18.919 sixty three's The Young Racers, Francis Ford Coppola's debut film 0:42:18.960 --> 0:42:22.160 Dementia thirteen and sixty three, and The Trip in sixty 0:42:22.200 --> 0:42:26.360 seven Wow. She also went on to appear in sixty 0:42:26.440 --> 0:42:29.799 nine's Easy Rider, which again Hopper directed, playing Lisa, one 0:42:29.840 --> 0:42:33.040 of the hippie girls, and she'd also continue to appear 0:42:33.040 --> 0:42:36.120 in various Jack Nicholson films over the years, including seventy 0:42:36.160 --> 0:42:39.880 three Is the Last Detail, seventy six Is Missouri Breaks, 0:42:39.920 --> 0:42:42.520 seventy eight's Going South, and The Two Jakes. 0:42:42.520 --> 0:42:48.160 In nineteen ninety, she brought myself to watch The Two Jakes. 0:42:48.719 --> 0:42:51.320 Two Jake I'm trying trying to remember is Two Jakes 0:42:51.600 --> 0:42:55.080 the sequel to Chinatown. Yes, okay, all right, that's all 0:42:55.120 --> 0:42:58.040 I know about it. Yeah, and it features two Jakes 0:42:58.120 --> 0:43:01.320 one way or another. I don't know. I like films 0:43:01.360 --> 0:43:04.440 that feature two of something like The Big Lebowski has 0:43:04.480 --> 0:43:06.080 two lebowskis. 0:43:05.360 --> 0:43:06.640 Exactly what I was thinking of it. 0:43:06.719 --> 0:43:10.400 Yeah, at any rate, Yeah, maybe it's good right in 0:43:10.520 --> 0:43:12.239 if you have opinions on the Two Jakes, But. 0:43:12.680 --> 0:43:14.799 You're a Jake Kitties, I'm a Jake Kitti. 0:43:15.840 --> 0:43:17.839 Who plays the other Jake. Is it a dual role? 0:43:17.960 --> 0:43:23.360 I don't know, anyways. Andrews also worked with Harrington on 0:43:23.400 --> 0:43:26.520 sixty seven's Games and seventy three is The Killing Kind 0:43:27.040 --> 0:43:29.320 and she pops up in a bizarre horror film in 0:43:29.360 --> 0:43:32.799 which Andy Rooney plays an insane Hollywood makeup artist who 0:43:32.840 --> 0:43:37.400 kidnaps women. That's nineteen seventy one's the Manipulator, Okay, but 0:43:37.560 --> 0:43:40.239 I really liked her here as well. A supporting but 0:43:40.320 --> 0:43:43.520 important role was a kind of She's almost like the 0:43:43.880 --> 0:43:47.480 counter to Mara's siren song. While Mora is often detached 0:43:49.040 --> 0:43:52.640 and you know, and potentially otherworldly, Allen is very much 0:43:52.719 --> 0:43:55.560 positioned as an all American girl, you know, very much 0:43:55.640 --> 0:43:59.319 part of the world. But you know, I think one 0:43:59.320 --> 0:44:01.920 of the interesting questionestion is does she also have her 0:44:01.960 --> 0:44:04.359 own sort of siren song here? Is she presenting kind 0:44:04.360 --> 0:44:08.360 of a compromise to the desires that Johnny in particular 0:44:08.440 --> 0:44:10.960 is feeling. Is she like a safe choice in a 0:44:11.000 --> 0:44:12.960 world that denies your desires? 0:44:13.400 --> 0:44:16.040 That's a very good point. Is She's an interesting character 0:44:16.239 --> 0:44:20.719 in exactly that way. So while Johnny is starting to 0:44:20.920 --> 0:44:24.120 he loves Mara, he's clearly in love with her, but 0:44:24.200 --> 0:44:27.360 he's starting to have all these questions and fears about 0:44:27.520 --> 0:44:29.719 what she is and what, you know, what she might 0:44:29.800 --> 0:44:33.279 mean for him. Here's Ellen over here, who clearly is 0:44:33.320 --> 0:44:37.120 infatuated with him. Ellen clearly likes him, and she seems safe. 0:44:37.200 --> 0:44:40.640 She seems so safe. So there, it's a different kind 0:44:40.640 --> 0:44:44.879 of temptation than we usually see in romance stories. Often 0:44:44.960 --> 0:44:49.200 the temptation is a temptation too danger from what is safer. 0:44:49.520 --> 0:44:51.000 Here it goes the other way around. 0:44:51.600 --> 0:44:54.200 Yeah, yeah, the danger is Yeah, you take the easy road, 0:44:54.320 --> 0:44:56.040 but then where does that lead in the end, Like 0:44:56.080 --> 0:44:59.560 what sort of life for you potentially, you know, intunbeing 0:44:59.600 --> 0:45:00.279 yourself Finn. 0:45:00.680 --> 0:45:03.160 Yeah, I mean to be clear that it doesn't seem 0:45:03.200 --> 0:45:04.680 like there's anything wrong with Ellen. 0:45:04.760 --> 0:45:06.440 No, No, she seems like she seems fine. 0:45:06.680 --> 0:45:10.680 Yeah, she she likes him, she's a nice person all, 0:45:10.719 --> 0:45:13.719 you know, basically everything about her that I can recall, 0:45:13.760 --> 0:45:16.799 I don't recall anything, you know, anything negative coming off 0:45:16.840 --> 0:45:19.479 of her in the movie. But she's not the person 0:45:19.560 --> 0:45:22.239 Johnny loves. And so I guess there's a question of 0:45:22.360 --> 0:45:26.880 like it's like your true love versus just what seems safer. 0:45:27.480 --> 0:45:30.200 Yeah, and you know, spoiler here. Of course we're past spoilers, 0:45:30.200 --> 0:45:32.040 but this is who Johnny's going to end up with. 0:45:32.560 --> 0:45:35.239 And you could certainly watch this film and totally read 0:45:35.239 --> 0:45:37.000 it like, oh yeah, he ended up with the good girl. 0:45:37.040 --> 0:45:39.440 That's great, happy ending. But you can also read it 0:45:39.440 --> 0:45:41.319 the other way. And that's one of the beautiful things 0:45:41.320 --> 0:45:42.000 about this film. 0:45:42.160 --> 0:45:43.920 I think you should read it the other way, or 0:45:44.000 --> 0:45:45.560 maybe should is too strong, and you know, I don't 0:45:45.600 --> 0:45:48.880 want to instruct people how to interpret the film, but 0:45:48.920 --> 0:45:51.719 I mean I think it the loss of Mora is 0:45:51.880 --> 0:45:54.520 the tragedy that is the lost love. You know that 0:45:54.640 --> 0:45:57.200 his love for her was real and her love for 0:45:57.280 --> 0:46:00.400 him was real, and so something is law when he 0:46:00.480 --> 0:46:01.280 ends up with Ellen. 0:46:01.600 --> 0:46:05.719 Yeah, all right. Some other supporting characters of note here, 0:46:05.760 --> 0:46:08.640 we have a character by the name of Madame Romanovitch 0:46:08.719 --> 0:46:12.560 who pops up. She's like a tearro reader that has 0:46:12.600 --> 0:46:14.760 a great scene with Johnny and she's. 0:46:14.920 --> 0:46:17.960 Call her a fortune teller. Oh yeah, romance, that's right. 0:46:18.080 --> 0:46:21.400 She's very particular about that. But she's played by Marjorie 0:46:21.400 --> 0:46:25.240 Eaton with nineteen oh one through nineteen eighty six, American actress, 0:46:25.280 --> 0:46:28.640 perhaps best known at least to many out there in 0:46:28.719 --> 0:46:32.160 a kind of a trivia sense, as the original actor 0:46:32.200 --> 0:46:36.440 to play the Emperor in nineteen eighties, The Empire Strikes. 0:46:36.000 --> 0:46:39.640 Back, unbelievable. Yeah, I think they gave her chimpanzee eyes, 0:46:39.719 --> 0:46:40.320 didn't they. 0:46:40.480 --> 0:46:42.880 Yeah, she's got She's under a whole lot of makeup 0:46:42.920 --> 0:46:45.680 with these giant eyes and a big black robe on, 0:46:47.200 --> 0:46:49.520 and she's also not doing her own voice. She's dubbed 0:46:50.200 --> 0:46:52.840 by a male actor. But it was, you know, originally 0:46:52.880 --> 0:46:56.319 this was the glimpse we had of the Emperor on 0:46:56.440 --> 0:47:02.920 the like the hollow presentation inside of Darth Vader's meditation chamber, 0:47:03.480 --> 0:47:06.239 and it's and of course later that scene ends up 0:47:06.280 --> 0:47:10.840 being replaced with footage of the I mcdarman performance of 0:47:11.360 --> 0:47:13.680 Palpatine that we would get in Return of the Jedi 0:47:13.760 --> 0:47:17.120 in the prequels to follow. Yeah, but anyway, that's what that's, 0:47:17.200 --> 0:47:20.080 you know, one of the things she's known for. But 0:47:20.520 --> 0:47:24.279 as a full performer, she's also known for roles in 0:47:24.360 --> 0:47:27.840 forty nine's The forsyth Woman, sixty three's Monstrosity, and sixty 0:47:27.840 --> 0:47:31.319 four is Mary Poppins. She was also in Harrington's The 0:47:31.400 --> 0:47:34.560 Killing Kind and you know, fun little performance here, you know, 0:47:34.920 --> 0:47:38.279 totally solid you do not get any Emperor Palpatine vibes 0:47:38.320 --> 0:47:38.840 from No. 0:47:39.680 --> 0:47:42.600 She has a fun little scene doing a tarot reading 0:47:42.600 --> 0:47:46.120 for Johnny in this movie, Rob. I wondered, what, though, 0:47:46.120 --> 0:47:48.440 what you made of her rant against tea bags. You're 0:47:48.440 --> 0:47:51.880 a fan of tea bags, right, yeah, I mean I 0:47:53.120 --> 0:47:56.400 generally fill my own tea bags. Oh okay, yeah, but 0:47:56.760 --> 0:48:00.800 I still use them. I've used other methods of straining 0:48:00.840 --> 0:48:03.360 the leaves out. But her main thing is it's just 0:48:03.520 --> 0:48:06.080 difficult to read someone's fortune if you don't have the 0:48:06.120 --> 0:48:08.759 tea leaves in the you know, at the bottom of 0:48:08.800 --> 0:48:11.600 the cup and all. So that's that's not my primary 0:48:11.880 --> 0:48:13.479 ambition in making a cup of tea. 0:48:13.600 --> 0:48:16.400 So you know, we differ in that detail. 0:48:16.800 --> 0:48:22.000 Yeah, she's a professional grudge against tea bags. Yes, but hey, 0:48:22.040 --> 0:48:25.000 this is not the only interesting Marjorie in the cast here. 0:48:25.400 --> 0:48:28.840 Yes, that's right. We also have Marjorie Cameron here credited 0:48:29.120 --> 0:48:33.720 as Cameron, and she plays a figure that is credited 0:48:33.719 --> 0:48:35.680 as the Water, which I believe, but you might just 0:48:35.719 --> 0:48:39.040 more distinctly refer to her as like the mysterious woman. 0:48:39.520 --> 0:48:41.680 There's a mysterious woman that shows up we already mentioned him, 0:48:41.800 --> 0:48:48.080 shows up speaking to Moura in some sort of foreign language. 0:48:48.080 --> 0:48:51.400 I think it is actually Greek, but it's all Greek 0:48:51.480 --> 0:48:55.160 to me. But yes, credited here as Cameron, and she 0:48:55.680 --> 0:48:58.680 was herself a very fascinating counterculture figure of the time, 0:48:59.360 --> 0:49:03.759 an American an artist, poet, actress, and occultist. She was 0:49:03.800 --> 0:49:07.680 a follower of the esoteric religious movement known as the Lima, 0:49:08.080 --> 0:49:11.319 founded in the early nineteen hundreds by Alistair Crowley, who, 0:49:11.400 --> 0:49:13.840 of course lived eighteen seventy five through nineteen forty seven. 0:49:14.200 --> 0:49:17.960 At this point, she was still married to another Thelamite 0:49:18.000 --> 0:49:21.360 of note, American rocket engineer Jack Parsons. 0:49:21.760 --> 0:49:26.719 Man, we are hitting some weird connections with this movie, Yeah, yeah. 0:49:26.360 --> 0:49:28.000 Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is just kind of like 0:49:28.040 --> 0:49:33.040 the counter culture scene in and around LA that this 0:49:33.160 --> 0:49:35.719 movie is rising out of. It's pretty fascinating. 0:49:36.800 --> 0:49:40.560 So would I be correct in assuming that Marjorie Cameron 0:49:41.560 --> 0:49:44.160 was sort of connected to Harrington's world through more like 0:49:44.239 --> 0:49:46.719 the art scene, like avant garde films. 0:49:46.920 --> 0:49:49.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was very much a part of 0:49:49.160 --> 0:49:51.880 the avant garde arts scene. I'm to understand she was 0:49:51.880 --> 0:49:56.360 friends with both Harrington and Kenneth Anger, who we mentioned already. 0:49:56.880 --> 0:50:01.120 She appeared in Harrington's nineteen fifty six short film Wormwood Star. 0:50:01.640 --> 0:50:05.640 She's also in Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome 0:50:05.680 --> 0:50:09.680 from fifty four. Nighttide was her fourth film and also 0:50:09.719 --> 0:50:12.400 her last film, but she remained active as a poet 0:50:12.520 --> 0:50:16.960 and an artist after this. So a nice enigmatic screen 0:50:17.040 --> 0:50:20.120 presence here, and truly she gets to be one of 0:50:20.120 --> 0:50:25.919 the film's real pervasive mysteries. Oh yeah, yeah, all right, 0:50:26.000 --> 0:50:28.799 just a couple behind the scenes notes. The cinematographer on 0:50:28.840 --> 0:50:33.160 this film was Villis Lapinix, who lived nineteen thirty one 0:50:33.239 --> 0:50:37.319 through nineteen eighty seven, Latvian born cinematographer, best known for 0:50:37.360 --> 0:50:40.160 his work on various genre films. He later won a 0:50:40.160 --> 0:50:42.799 Primetime Emmy in seventy five for his work on the 0:50:42.880 --> 0:50:47.200 television series Kojak. His credits include fifty eight's Hideous Sun Demon, 0:50:47.520 --> 0:50:51.120 nineteen sixties, The Little Shop of Horrors, sixty two's Ega, 0:50:51.719 --> 0:50:54.440 sixty five's Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, seventy one's The 0:50:54.440 --> 0:50:58.040 Hellstrom Chronicle, seventy seven's Night Tear, seventy one Cisco Pike, 0:50:58.480 --> 0:51:01.400 and the nineteen eighty one sci fi comedy The Creature 0:51:01.520 --> 0:51:04.040 Wasn't Nice. Starring Leslie Nielsen. 0:51:04.239 --> 0:51:09.080 I'm gonna say the cinematography in Nighttide is significantly better 0:51:09.120 --> 0:51:10.200 than his work in Ego. 0:51:11.840 --> 0:51:14.840 Yeah, ega as I remember very much. A Let's shoot 0:51:14.840 --> 0:51:17.600 this puppy between the hours of like noon and two 0:51:17.719 --> 0:51:23.239 am in California. Lets get as much natural, like oppressive 0:51:23.320 --> 0:51:27.200 light as possible. Yeah, all right? And then finally, the 0:51:27.200 --> 0:51:29.799 composer here is David Raskin, who lived nineteen twelve through 0:51:29.800 --> 0:51:33.000 two thousand and four. Two time Oscar nominee for forty Eights, Forever, 0:51:33.080 --> 0:51:36.720 Amber and fifty nine separate tables. His work in film 0:51:36.760 --> 0:51:39.640 goes back to the thirties, but often in uncredited form. 0:51:39.960 --> 0:51:42.799 His other work includes thirty nine to Gorilla, sixty three 0:51:42.920 --> 0:51:46.240 Scorpio Rising, that's the Kenneth Anger work, and eighty three's 0:51:46.320 --> 0:51:49.120 The Day After. That's Nicholas Meyer, who talked about on 0:51:49.200 --> 0:51:52.000 the show before. He also worked with Harrington on What's 0:51:52.040 --> 0:51:52.920 the Matter with Helen? 0:52:01.320 --> 0:52:03.400 All Right, would you like to talk about the plot? 0:52:03.640 --> 0:52:06.680 Let's do it, Okay. I think the best way to 0:52:06.719 --> 0:52:08.720 do this is we're not going to narrate the whole 0:52:08.800 --> 0:52:11.520 movie scene by scene, but we are going to focus 0:52:11.560 --> 0:52:13.840 more closely on some stuff in the first half and 0:52:13.880 --> 0:52:16.000 then maybe talk in a more summary way about the 0:52:16.040 --> 0:52:19.239 second half of the film. So I especially want to 0:52:19.280 --> 0:52:21.680 look at the opening few minutes in a lot of 0:52:21.719 --> 0:52:24.040 detail because I think there's a lot of subtlety here 0:52:24.080 --> 0:52:28.000 and they establish some interesting things. So the credits play 0:52:28.120 --> 0:52:32.040 over crashing waves on the beach and there's eerie obo music, 0:52:33.320 --> 0:52:35.880 and in between the credits we see a young man 0:52:36.040 --> 0:52:39.759 Dennis Hopper. Again. This is you know, it might be 0:52:39.840 --> 0:52:42.080 hard to picture Dennis Hopper this way if you've never 0:52:42.120 --> 0:52:46.840 seen him before. Like easy rider, but very smooth, super 0:52:46.920 --> 0:52:50.799 clean cut in a navy uniform. He's leaning on the 0:52:50.840 --> 0:52:54.560 wooden railing at the boardwalk and smoking a cigarette. And 0:52:54.560 --> 0:52:57.080 it's nighttime and we can see the glare of theater 0:52:57.239 --> 0:52:59.440 Marquee is flashing behind him, and. 0:52:59.400 --> 0:53:02.640 This is nighttime. Yes, this is like that's one of 0:53:02.680 --> 0:53:05.080 the reasons this film I think really should be seen 0:53:05.080 --> 0:53:07.680 in black and white. These early scenes especially, you have 0:53:07.760 --> 0:53:11.000 just a great play between the darkness and the light. 0:53:11.520 --> 0:53:14.480 Yeah, the bright lights on the Marquees and at the 0:53:14.920 --> 0:53:17.160 games that we're going to see in a minute. So 0:53:17.239 --> 0:53:19.480 this is our main character, Johnny Drake. He's a young 0:53:19.600 --> 0:53:23.160 Navy recruit, we will find out he's originally from Denver, Colorado, 0:53:23.200 --> 0:53:27.160 and he's currently on shore leave in Santa Monica, California. 0:53:27.600 --> 0:53:30.600 So in this first shot, he is smoking a cigarette 0:53:30.640 --> 0:53:33.960 by himself on the pier, and I would say something 0:53:34.000 --> 0:53:38.279 about him conveys loneliness. I think it's kind of there. 0:53:38.320 --> 0:53:40.560 And the way he takes a puff and then he 0:53:40.760 --> 0:53:43.279 cradles his chin in the palm of his hand and 0:53:43.360 --> 0:53:46.440 just looks out over the water. He seems sweet, also 0:53:46.560 --> 0:53:49.080 kind of bored and be like he doesn't know what 0:53:49.160 --> 0:53:53.239 he should be doing. Johnny finishes his cigarette and then 0:53:53.280 --> 0:53:56.040 he goes out, wandering past the arcade games on the 0:53:56.040 --> 0:53:59.520 pier and past a shooting gallery. He stops in a 0:53:59.560 --> 0:54:02.400 store and tries out a guess your Weight machine. It 0:54:02.440 --> 0:54:05.239 says like, you know, game is free if you guess correctly. 0:54:05.280 --> 0:54:07.400 We never see if he guesses right. He puts a 0:54:07.440 --> 0:54:12.279 coin in and checks it out. Then he straightens out 0:54:12.280 --> 0:54:15.800 his uniform and goes by himself into a photo booth, 0:54:16.160 --> 0:54:19.040 and the camera follows him inside the booth and we 0:54:19.080 --> 0:54:22.440 see him going from this kind of slack straight face 0:54:22.560 --> 0:54:25.040 to suddenly cocking his face up in a smile. When 0:54:25.080 --> 0:54:28.080 the flash goes bright, and then he comes out and 0:54:28.080 --> 0:54:30.759 he studies the pictures that get printed out, and he 0:54:30.920 --> 0:54:34.360 seems to take them as feedback. He like adjusts the 0:54:34.400 --> 0:54:37.800 tilt of his hat as if that might address something 0:54:37.880 --> 0:54:40.239 that is lacking in the way he looks in the photos. 0:54:40.280 --> 0:54:41.480 And I love that little moment. 0:54:41.880 --> 0:54:43.919 Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot more expensive than just buying 0:54:43.960 --> 0:54:46.879 a mirror, but yeah, so it's a nice moment. Yeah, 0:54:46.880 --> 0:54:49.200 there's very much the same, the sense that you know, 0:54:49.239 --> 0:54:53.000 he is out there looking for life, he wants to 0:54:53.040 --> 0:54:56.160 experience life. But you know, ironically he is you know, 0:54:56.200 --> 0:54:59.600 at a carnival environment, you know, at the pier where 0:55:00.520 --> 0:55:02.600 everything is being like very much sold to you, the 0:55:02.680 --> 0:55:04.919 idea of like, this will be fun, guessing your weight 0:55:05.000 --> 0:55:07.520 up via machine. That's fun, right, give it a go, 0:55:07.680 --> 0:55:09.480 give us some money for it, and then you know, 0:55:09.520 --> 0:55:11.120 inevitably it's going to be disappointing. 0:55:11.960 --> 0:55:16.040 So next Johnny wanders into a jazz club called the 0:55:16.040 --> 0:55:19.680 Blue Grotto. We see it outside. It's rob Do you 0:55:19.680 --> 0:55:22.160 know what this light thing is? There's like a light 0:55:22.200 --> 0:55:25.560 bulb above and then below the light bulb there is 0:55:25.640 --> 0:55:30.000 what looks like a dangling eggsack full of translucent glass. 0:55:30.040 --> 0:55:32.960 Spheres or something, but I guess it creates an interesting 0:55:33.760 --> 0:55:36.120 way of reflecting all the light. I don't know. I 0:55:36.200 --> 0:55:37.560 kind of want one of these for my house. 0:55:37.640 --> 0:55:42.160 Whatever it is, Yeah, yeah, it's not at first thought 0:55:42.200 --> 0:55:44.040 that it was going to be like, you know, glass 0:55:44.040 --> 0:55:47.480 floats from from you know, the kind they used to 0:55:47.560 --> 0:55:49.319 use with fishing nets and all. But I don't think 0:55:49.360 --> 0:55:50.919 that's what it is. It's just some sort of weird 0:55:50.960 --> 0:55:55.759 diffuser and also not a mirror ball, but yeah, something else. 0:55:55.880 --> 0:55:58.120 I don't know. I've never seen this before anyway. 0:55:58.360 --> 0:56:01.640 Johnny goes into the Blue Grotto where a hip jazz 0:56:01.719 --> 0:56:05.800 combo is playing. It is a very flute forward jazz band. 0:56:05.840 --> 0:56:08.879 You don't, at least I don't. Maybe I'm not worldly enough. 0:56:09.120 --> 0:56:12.160 I don't often think of flute forward jazz, but that's 0:56:12.200 --> 0:56:13.040 what's going on here. 0:56:13.320 --> 0:56:15.680 Do you have a little jazz flute? Yeah? I think 0:56:16.080 --> 0:56:17.200 Howard Moon would approve. 0:56:17.640 --> 0:56:21.560 Okay, So the club is in a basement, and when 0:56:21.640 --> 0:56:24.160 Johnny enters from the street level, he has to go 0:56:24.200 --> 0:56:27.520 in by descending down a staircase like he's going into 0:56:27.520 --> 0:56:31.080 an underworld, and he stops on the stairs to look 0:56:31.120 --> 0:56:34.120 out over the crowd, and then the camera pans over 0:56:34.160 --> 0:56:36.360 the people to kind of give us a flavor. And 0:56:36.400 --> 0:56:39.160 I think it's interesting because Rob, I don't know, maybe 0:56:39.200 --> 0:56:41.880 you've got a different impression, but to my eyes, this 0:56:42.040 --> 0:56:45.120 is not the kind of crowd that a movie usually 0:56:45.239 --> 0:56:49.839 picks to fill a club scene because and the reason is, 0:56:50.000 --> 0:56:53.160 this crowd seems kind of culturally mixed. Like you've got 0:56:53.200 --> 0:56:56.640 young and old. You've got some hips in sunglasses and 0:56:56.680 --> 0:56:59.840 cool clothes who are very on frequency with the band, 0:57:00.280 --> 0:57:02.080 and then you've got other people who just look like 0:57:02.239 --> 0:57:04.719 squares who wandered in off the street. Do you know 0:57:04.719 --> 0:57:05.799 what I'm talking about here? 0:57:06.080 --> 0:57:07.919 Yeah, I know what you mean. Oftentimes, though we'd see 0:57:07.920 --> 0:57:10.040 this sort of setting in far lesser films, we have 0:57:10.120 --> 0:57:12.719 like some sort of a club scum right where we 0:57:12.800 --> 0:57:16.240 want to get a very clear idea apart across that 0:57:16.320 --> 0:57:19.000 this is like a bad place and it's full of scoundrels. 0:57:19.400 --> 0:57:22.280 Here though, it kind of feels like, oh, Johnny has 0:57:22.320 --> 0:57:25.960 finally found a place of authentic interest. You know, it's 0:57:26.000 --> 0:57:28.800 not just some sort of carnival trick, Like this is 0:57:28.880 --> 0:57:31.560 actual art going on and people were here to experience it. 0:57:31.800 --> 0:57:34.880 Yeah, So Johnny pauses while he's coming down the stairs. 0:57:35.240 --> 0:57:37.560 It seems like he feels drawn to this place, but 0:57:37.600 --> 0:57:40.560 maybe he doesn't know how he fits in. And you 0:57:40.600 --> 0:57:45.640 can see these subtle signs of anxiety and Hopper's body language, 0:57:45.800 --> 0:57:48.640 like in the way he keeps folding and kneading his 0:57:48.720 --> 0:57:51.640 sailor's cap and his hands while he's walking around looking 0:57:51.640 --> 0:57:55.840 for a place to sit. And then also after he did, 0:57:55.880 --> 0:57:58.200 you know, as after he gets a beer, he pours 0:57:58.240 --> 0:58:00.800 half of it out into so he's got the bottle. 0:58:00.840 --> 0:58:03.080 He pours half of the bottle into this class mug, 0:58:03.120 --> 0:58:05.360 but he pours it badly, so it's got this huge, 0:58:05.400 --> 0:58:08.640 massive head on top. And then you see him not 0:58:08.800 --> 0:58:11.080 knowing which to take a sip out of, so he's 0:58:11.120 --> 0:58:14.680 like bottle, no weight glass, So he's watching the band 0:58:14.800 --> 0:58:17.760 awkwardly alternating which thing he's trying to take a sip 0:58:17.800 --> 0:58:20.200 out of. And then he goes to sit down and 0:58:20.440 --> 0:58:23.520 finds a place with his back to the wall, basically 0:58:23.560 --> 0:58:27.560 sitting beside the band, looking out over the crowd, and 0:58:27.640 --> 0:58:30.320 he sees a man and a woman sitting together, with 0:58:30.440 --> 0:58:33.200 the man kind of gallantly lighting a cigarette for the woman. 0:58:33.800 --> 0:58:36.920 He sees a lonely looking old man sitting by himself 0:58:36.960 --> 0:58:39.400 in a dark alcove with the light of a lamp 0:58:39.440 --> 0:58:42.600 reflecting off of his bald head. And then he sees 0:58:42.640 --> 0:58:45.560 a meaty looking guy in a square haircut who looks 0:58:45.600 --> 0:58:47.760 like he could maybe be in the Armed forces himself, 0:58:47.800 --> 0:58:50.080 and he's sitting at a table with two women, with 0:58:50.120 --> 0:58:52.560 one of the women stroking his hair while they talk. 0:58:53.480 --> 0:58:56.600 Then he sees another man sitting alone, haggard, staring at 0:58:56.600 --> 0:58:58.960 the floor, with a bunch of empty bottles at his table. 0:58:59.080 --> 0:59:02.600 This guy's in a night of heavy drinking. And then 0:59:02.640 --> 0:59:05.920 finally a couple sitting nestled together, with the man's arm 0:59:05.960 --> 0:59:08.520 around the woman, and they're whispering to each other intently 0:59:08.520 --> 0:59:12.280 while their faces are just a few inches apart. I 0:59:12.320 --> 0:59:16.720 feel like the effect of this pan across the room 0:59:17.160 --> 0:59:22.400 is almost like, just in very quick successions, seeing lots 0:59:22.400 --> 0:59:27.160 of different ways your life could go. Yeah, like seeing 0:59:27.160 --> 0:59:29.440 people who look like they're happy and in love, and 0:59:29.480 --> 0:59:32.680 seeing people who look like they're they're you know, crashed 0:59:32.720 --> 0:59:35.400 out and in a terrible place, and then maybe other 0:59:35.520 --> 0:59:40.200 kind of strange positions somewhere in between. But I feel 0:59:40.240 --> 0:59:42.840 like it fits in very much with the we see 0:59:42.840 --> 0:59:45.480 the way Johnny looks at the world in this scene, 0:59:45.600 --> 0:59:48.520 and it's very much one of not knowing how he 0:59:48.680 --> 0:59:51.200 fits in or what kind of course his life is 0:59:51.240 --> 0:59:51.760 going to take. 0:59:52.280 --> 0:59:55.720 Yeah, but with the suspicion that it's like companionship is important, 0:59:55.800 --> 0:59:59.560 and like the people who have companionship their lives seem active. 1:00:00.280 --> 1:00:03.600 In those who are not attached, they seem lonely, and 1:00:03.640 --> 1:00:05.360 I don't want to be one of them. How are 1:00:05.400 --> 1:00:07.880 people looking at me alone in this club? 1:00:08.200 --> 1:00:11.960 Yeah? So finally the camera pans over to land on 1:00:12.360 --> 1:00:14.960 Linda Lawson playing the character that we will come to 1:00:15.000 --> 1:00:18.880 know as Maura. She is sitting by herself, looking beautiful, 1:00:19.120 --> 1:00:23.320 mysterious and very intense. But I would also say inscrutable. 1:00:24.920 --> 1:00:26.800 I don't know exactly what the word for this is, 1:00:26.840 --> 1:00:29.640 but Rob, I hope you'd agree. Like she has a 1:00:29.680 --> 1:00:34.120 way of looking very intense without looking very emotional. 1:00:35.000 --> 1:00:37.680 Yeah, Like you almost expect her to have a notebook 1:00:38.280 --> 1:00:40.479 at the hand and she's like maybe taking notes about 1:00:40.480 --> 1:00:41.160 the performance. 1:00:41.360 --> 1:00:45.760 Yeah. So the other people we saw were mostly quite 1:00:45.800 --> 1:00:49.120 emotionally readable, like they were happy or at least content, 1:00:49.280 --> 1:00:52.120 or they looked lonely and run down, and Maura's face 1:00:52.160 --> 1:00:56.120 doesn't tell us much. Maybe there is a sense that 1:00:56.720 --> 1:01:01.360 she is practiced at hiding emotional information, which might make 1:01:01.480 --> 1:01:06.160 more sense later on. But she's watching the band mouth flat, 1:01:06.400 --> 1:01:10.400 bobbing her head slightly to the music. And I only 1:01:10.440 --> 1:01:12.440 noticed this on the second viewing. I didn't pick it 1:01:12.520 --> 1:01:15.080 up the first time. But the way she's dressed here 1:01:15.160 --> 1:01:18.320 is interesting. Everybody else is dressed in what looks like 1:01:18.400 --> 1:01:22.240 fairly normal kind of sixties club clothes or just sixties 1:01:22.240 --> 1:01:26.080 street clothes. Maura is wearing a white dress that is 1:01:26.360 --> 1:01:29.439 draped in a way that looks a lot like how 1:01:29.480 --> 1:01:33.320 they would dress women to be ancient Greeks or Romans 1:01:33.440 --> 1:01:34.920 in the movies of this time. 1:01:35.240 --> 1:01:36.840 Yes, yeah, she really does. 1:01:37.240 --> 1:01:41.040 Yeah, there is nothing about looking at her that gives 1:01:41.040 --> 1:01:43.680 her away as being of the twentieth century. She's not 1:01:43.720 --> 1:01:47.040 wearing a watch or any modern fashion or anything that 1:01:47.160 --> 1:01:49.800 looks twentieth centuries like. She looks like she could be 1:01:49.840 --> 1:01:53.160 a Greek goddess. And then another thing I would say 1:01:53.200 --> 1:01:56.080 is that she does not look approachable. She is giving 1:01:56.080 --> 1:02:00.520 off big, leave me alone energy, which Johnny promptly ignores. 1:02:00.760 --> 1:02:05.080 Yeah. Yeah, it's like awkwardly sets across from the hottest 1:02:05.080 --> 1:02:08.600 woman in the entire venue and then proceeds to think 1:02:08.640 --> 1:02:10.240 that he can talk to her during the middle of 1:02:10.240 --> 1:02:10.840 the performance. 1:02:10.960 --> 1:02:14.320 Hi, what's up. Yeah, so Johnny, he comes across the room. 1:02:14.720 --> 1:02:16.560 He takes a moment to work up his courage, and 1:02:16.600 --> 1:02:19.520 then he asks if he can sit down at her 1:02:19.560 --> 1:02:21.720 table because he says he can't see the band from 1:02:21.760 --> 1:02:25.480 where he's sitting, and she says that's fine. She's being polite, 1:02:26.120 --> 1:02:28.800 and he's so nervous and cute here. He kind of 1:02:28.880 --> 1:02:32.040 laughs at himself while he's asking to sit, And then 1:02:32.080 --> 1:02:35.040 after he sits down, he tries to make conversation with her, 1:02:35.080 --> 1:02:37.280 but she's like, I'd like to listen to the band please, 1:02:37.400 --> 1:02:40.000 So he's like, oh, okay, and then he offers to 1:02:40.000 --> 1:02:42.120 buy her a drink. She says no, thank you. He 1:02:42.160 --> 1:02:45.360 offers again, she says no, thank you again. Seems like 1:02:45.400 --> 1:02:47.840 this is going nowhere, like she's being polite but she's 1:02:47.880 --> 1:02:52.560 not looking for company. But then everything changes because suddenly, 1:02:52.800 --> 1:02:56.280 in the back of the club, a woman emerges from 1:02:56.440 --> 1:03:00.600 behind a curtain and walks into the crowd. She's dressed 1:03:00.600 --> 1:03:03.920 in all black, in a gown with black sheer sleeves 1:03:04.000 --> 1:03:07.640 and a long dangling gold necklace. She has heavy eye 1:03:07.680 --> 1:03:11.400 makeup on, and there's something instantly ominous and kind of 1:03:11.520 --> 1:03:15.200 enchanted looking about her. This is the character that I 1:03:15.200 --> 1:03:17.680 think in the credits maybe is called water Witch or 1:03:17.800 --> 1:03:21.160 people called the sea Witch. But again, you could think 1:03:21.200 --> 1:03:23.280 of her at this point as just a mysterious woman. 1:03:23.840 --> 1:03:26.960 So she steps into view and she locks eyes on Maura. 1:03:28.360 --> 1:03:31.680 Mara sees her and then looks back, and it's kind 1:03:31.720 --> 1:03:34.560 of like they know each other, but somehow the shared 1:03:34.600 --> 1:03:38.680 gaze is not friendly. It is threatening and hypnotic. She 1:03:38.760 --> 1:03:41.760 approaches the table and she begins to speak to Maura 1:03:41.800 --> 1:03:44.640 in another language. There are no subtitles, so we have 1:03:44.680 --> 1:03:48.560 no idea what she's saying. I read online. I don't 1:03:48.560 --> 1:03:50.920 know if this is true, but I read online like 1:03:50.960 --> 1:03:54.280 a user comment somewhere saying that she is speaking in 1:03:54.320 --> 1:03:57.160 Greek and she's saying something along the lines of you 1:03:57.240 --> 1:04:00.800 will come and join us soon. Yeah, So, whether or 1:04:00.840 --> 1:04:03.600 not that's true, that feels like what she could be 1:04:03.720 --> 1:04:05.640 saying in this scene, and I think it is not 1:04:06.160 --> 1:04:09.400 something that the audience is supposed to understand. It's unclear actually, 1:04:09.440 --> 1:04:13.080 if Maura understands what she's saying. The tone of the 1:04:13.120 --> 1:04:16.160 speech is not friendly. It feels like a piece of 1:04:16.240 --> 1:04:21.000 maybe threatening information is being delivered, and then Mara's eyes 1:04:21.040 --> 1:04:23.840 flare and she looks disturbed, and the woman walks away. 1:04:24.560 --> 1:04:27.959 So Johnny's just oblivious this whole time. He's like, huh, 1:04:27.960 --> 1:04:31.560 who was that? And Mora says she doesn't know. She's 1:04:31.560 --> 1:04:35.280 already like trying to get out, like this has alarmed her, 1:04:35.320 --> 1:04:38.240 and she's like nervously collecting her things and trying to leave, 1:04:38.720 --> 1:04:41.160 and Johnny's like, hey, what did that woman say to you? 1:04:41.600 --> 1:04:45.479 Morris says nothing and then hurriedly asks Johnny if he'll 1:04:45.480 --> 1:04:48.080 pay for her check, and then she bolts for the exit, 1:04:48.640 --> 1:04:51.400 so Johnny follows. On his way out the door, he 1:04:51.480 --> 1:04:54.120 looks back and he makes eye contact with the Sea Witch, 1:04:54.160 --> 1:04:56.640 who is now sitting at a table, just stroking the 1:04:56.680 --> 1:05:00.800 stem of a cocktail glass, very impassive, but she doesn't 1:05:00.800 --> 1:05:03.560 look away. She just like stares straight back at Johnny. 1:05:03.680 --> 1:05:06.120 She stares him down and he has to turn and run. 1:05:07.240 --> 1:05:10.440 So after this, Johnny follows Mora out into the streets, 1:05:10.440 --> 1:05:13.520 which are now lonely and deserted. Earlier they were full 1:05:13.560 --> 1:05:16.160 of people going around to the different games and shops 1:05:16.200 --> 1:05:19.280 and stuff. And I guess now it's late, so Mara 1:05:19.440 --> 1:05:21.760 tries to tell Johnny to leave her alone, but Johnny 1:05:21.800 --> 1:05:24.720 is persistent, and eventually Mara agrees to let him walk 1:05:24.720 --> 1:05:28.600 her home. When they get to her apartment, Johnny realizes 1:05:28.680 --> 1:05:32.400 that the building houses a Merry Go Round, and he 1:05:32.520 --> 1:05:35.400 laughs at this and asks if she lives inside a 1:05:35.440 --> 1:05:39.880 wooden horse. It's unclear to me if the character Johnny 1:05:40.000 --> 1:05:43.000 is supposed to be aware of the trojan horse implications 1:05:43.000 --> 1:05:46.320 of this question. I think the writer, like Curtis Harrington, 1:05:46.440 --> 1:05:48.520 is aware, and I think the audience is supposed to 1:05:48.560 --> 1:05:51.240 be aware, But I don't know whether Johnny is supposed 1:05:51.240 --> 1:05:54.000 to understand what he's saying there. I don't know if 1:05:54.040 --> 1:05:55.200 you had an opinion. 1:05:54.840 --> 1:05:59.160 On that, But no, I mean I think yet Johnny 1:05:59.480 --> 1:06:01.520 doesn't really pick up on it. And yeah, I think 1:06:01.560 --> 1:06:03.840 we as the audience are to pick up on it 1:06:03.880 --> 1:06:04.640 to some degree. 1:06:05.040 --> 1:06:07.480 Johnny not super familiar with the classics, as we will 1:06:07.520 --> 1:06:11.160 learn from a later scene. Yeah, but the question breaks 1:06:11.200 --> 1:06:14.720 through and Mara laughs at this, and she says, no, 1:06:14.880 --> 1:06:17.560 her apartment is upstairs, it's above the Merry Go Round. 1:06:17.760 --> 1:06:19.760 They talk about the pros and cons of living over 1:06:19.800 --> 1:06:23.360 a Merry Go Round. Cons include It's noisy pros include 1:06:23.360 --> 1:06:25.840 the music reminds her of when she was a child, 1:06:26.200 --> 1:06:29.120 and you can see in this exchange that despite you know, 1:06:29.200 --> 1:06:31.600 she was not interested at first, now she's starting to 1:06:31.680 --> 1:06:36.360 like Johnny. Johnny then tries some inappropriately aggressive cording. He 1:06:36.480 --> 1:06:38.760 tries to get her to invite him upstairs, but she 1:06:38.840 --> 1:06:42.920 says no. He tries to kiss her. She's not ready. However, 1:06:43.000 --> 1:06:45.600 she does eventually tell him that they can see each 1:06:45.600 --> 1:06:47.560 other again, and she invites him to come over in 1:06:47.600 --> 1:06:50.919 the morning so she can cook him breakfast, which seems 1:06:51.000 --> 1:06:54.080 like a weird date. I don't know is that, but anyway, 1:06:54.160 --> 1:06:57.440 Johnny is thrilled, so she goes upstairs and he is 1:06:57.600 --> 1:07:01.040 just so related. He climbs up on the handrailing of 1:07:01.040 --> 1:07:03.320 the boardwalk and walks along the top of it like 1:07:03.360 --> 1:07:03.800 a kid. 1:07:04.200 --> 1:07:08.240 Yeah. I think it's a great scene here, because in 1:07:08.280 --> 1:07:10.320 all of this you get the sense that neither of 1:07:10.360 --> 1:07:12.960 them really know how any of this really works. They 1:07:13.000 --> 1:07:16.520 just kind of have vague ideas about how courtship is 1:07:16.560 --> 1:07:19.680 supposed to work. And Johnny, we might we can I 1:07:19.720 --> 1:07:22.320 think very much assume that Johnny has maybe just is 1:07:22.400 --> 1:07:25.480 just acting on stories that he's heard from Navy buddies 1:07:25.680 --> 1:07:27.480 to a large extent, like this is how it works. 1:07:27.520 --> 1:07:31.000 And then maybe more doesn't really know either, And so yeah, 1:07:31.040 --> 1:07:32.960 they're gonna end up having this weird second date where 1:07:32.960 --> 1:07:33.800 they have breakfast. 1:07:34.200 --> 1:07:37.120 Yeah, but I love this second date scene, actually the 1:07:38.040 --> 1:07:41.400 fish breakfast scene. So Johnny comes back brighton early, and 1:07:41.440 --> 1:07:43.520 you can tell he really set his alarm clock for 1:07:43.560 --> 1:07:47.560 this one. He is still wearing his navy uniform. I 1:07:47.600 --> 1:07:49.960 don't know exactly what we're supposed to read into this, 1:07:50.040 --> 1:07:52.439 like are these the only clothes he has or the 1:07:52.560 --> 1:07:57.080 nicest clothes? Is he trying to impress her? I'm not 1:07:57.240 --> 1:08:00.880 quite sure, but like he's often wearing this this navy 1:08:01.000 --> 1:08:02.960 uniform and scenes where he's not on duty. 1:08:03.480 --> 1:08:05.840 You know, you may have read this as well, but 1:08:06.000 --> 1:08:09.760 I read that in order to properly shoot the navy 1:08:09.840 --> 1:08:12.600 uniform that Dennis Hopper is wearing, they had to like 1:08:12.680 --> 1:08:16.200 have a slightly dingy navy uniform, So like a pure 1:08:16.240 --> 1:08:18.240 white one would I guess maybe just be too bright 1:08:18.320 --> 1:08:20.800 on the screen or it wouldn't read didn't look good, 1:08:20.880 --> 1:08:22.680 it didn't look the way they wanted to, So they 1:08:22.680 --> 1:08:24.880 had to have him in a slightly dingy one, but 1:08:25.000 --> 1:08:27.760 then like they were out shooting and like somebody, like 1:08:27.840 --> 1:08:31.719 somebody actually in the navy like reprimanded Hopper on wearing 1:08:31.760 --> 1:08:33.680 such a dingy uniform and they'd be like, no, no, no, 1:08:33.680 --> 1:08:35.559 it's for a movie Justice. Yeah. 1:08:35.640 --> 1:08:37.680 Yeah, some navy guys tried to get him for not 1:08:37.720 --> 1:08:40.639 being up to dress code, which is hilarious imagining him 1:08:40.680 --> 1:08:44.080 being like impressed back to sea or something grabbed Dennis 1:08:44.080 --> 1:08:48.479 Hopper and take him to the boat. Yeah, but anyway, 1:08:49.680 --> 1:08:52.080 Dennis Hopper, he comes back. So Johnny has a nice 1:08:52.120 --> 1:08:54.680 introduction to the older man who runs the Merry Go 1:08:54.840 --> 1:08:58.200 Round downstairs, and he takes some time to admire the 1:08:58.240 --> 1:09:01.280 hand carved wooden horses. You can tell he's just over. 1:09:01.439 --> 1:09:03.559 He's just so excited to be coming back to have 1:09:03.600 --> 1:09:06.519 breakfast with Mora. He's like, you know, the whole world 1:09:06.600 --> 1:09:11.320 is bright. And Johnny also meets Ellen, the granddaughter of 1:09:11.360 --> 1:09:14.240 the Merry Go Round. Grandpa Ellen is about Johnny's age, 1:09:14.640 --> 1:09:17.519 and they're getting along well. But when the Merry Go 1:09:17.680 --> 1:09:21.160 Round man finds out that Johnny is here to visit Mora, 1:09:21.560 --> 1:09:24.760 his mood kind of darkens and he seems a little concerned. 1:09:25.360 --> 1:09:28.040 He asks if Johnny just met her for the first time, 1:09:28.560 --> 1:09:31.479 and for some reason, Johnny gets kind of sheepish and 1:09:31.520 --> 1:09:34.160 he lies. He says, no, no, I've known her for 1:09:34.200 --> 1:09:36.960 a while. I don't know exactly why he lies here, 1:09:37.040 --> 1:09:39.519 And maybe he doesn't really understand either. He just kind 1:09:39.520 --> 1:09:42.240 of feels off guard and like maybe something's wrong or 1:09:42.640 --> 1:09:45.160 I don't know, or maybe I don't know if there's 1:09:45.160 --> 1:09:47.640 a thing about propriety, like should he be visiting her 1:09:47.680 --> 1:09:49.080 apartment if you just met her. 1:09:49.360 --> 1:09:51.200 Yeah, that's kind of the vibe I got from it, 1:09:51.240 --> 1:09:53.320 where he's like, oh, you just meet this woman, and 1:09:53.560 --> 1:09:55.280 you know, if he were to say, yeah, I just 1:09:55.360 --> 1:09:57.920 met her last night, and you know, this is just 1:09:57.960 --> 1:10:00.479 some stranger and he didn't know what the strange getting 1:10:00.479 --> 1:10:00.960 at either. 1:10:01.360 --> 1:10:05.120 Yeah, you can hear church bells tolling while Johnny had 1:10:05.280 --> 1:10:07.800 upstairs to see her. By the way, on the way 1:10:07.880 --> 1:10:10.519 up the stairs, Johnny crosses paths with the guy who 1:10:10.600 --> 1:10:13.479 I am pretty sure is the same actor who played 1:10:13.479 --> 1:10:16.000 the night watchman from The Wasp Woman, Remember the guy 1:10:16.000 --> 1:10:19.439 who likes radio programs And then Susan Cabot eats. 1:10:19.320 --> 1:10:22.599 Yes, yes, yeah, I didn't clock that, but but it's 1:10:22.640 --> 1:10:23.800 so good connection. 1:10:24.200 --> 1:10:27.200 Anyway, Johnny goes up to Mora's apartment. Of course, this 1:10:27.280 --> 1:10:31.439 would be another Roger Corman connection. So Johnny goes up 1:10:31.479 --> 1:10:36.000 to Mora's apartment. She welcomes him inside. Her mood seems 1:10:36.040 --> 1:10:39.120 a lot happier than the night before. She shows him around. 1:10:39.160 --> 1:10:42.840 Her apartment is decorated with sea stars and other things 1:10:42.840 --> 1:10:45.120 she's collected from the ocean, and you can hear the 1:10:45.160 --> 1:10:48.519 waves outside the window. So it's an overwhelming presence of 1:10:48.560 --> 1:10:52.360 the sea in this apartment, both from within and from without. 1:10:52.640 --> 1:10:55.400 And so they go out to eat breakfast on the balcony, 1:10:55.439 --> 1:10:57.519 which looks out over the beach. Her balcony has an 1:10:57.560 --> 1:11:01.280 amazing view of the sea and you can see people 1:11:01.280 --> 1:11:05.040 swimming down below. And they sit down. Johnny suggests that 1:11:05.120 --> 1:11:07.479 they make a toast. He says, to you and me 1:11:07.800 --> 1:11:11.720 and to the beautiful Pacific that had more significance the 1:11:11.720 --> 1:11:13.640 second time I saw it, Like you might want to 1:11:13.680 --> 1:11:16.880 reconsider inviting the Pacific Ocean to be a third party 1:11:16.920 --> 1:11:21.599 in their relationship. Notably, Mora just says to us, Johnny, 1:11:21.880 --> 1:11:25.120 she does not mention Pacific. But so what are they 1:11:25.120 --> 1:11:29.759 having for breakfast? Just fish? Yeah, that's it. Fish, nothing else. 1:11:30.479 --> 1:11:33.160 It's two mackerel she has cooked. She says she got 1:11:33.200 --> 1:11:35.719 them this morning. She doesn't say where she got them. 1:11:35.800 --> 1:11:37.639 Did she get them at the market or. 1:11:38.080 --> 1:11:39.600 I mean at this point in the movie. If you 1:11:39.600 --> 1:11:41.360 go into this movie at all, you know that there's 1:11:41.439 --> 1:11:44.639 some possibility of mermaids. So yeah, I was like wondering, 1:11:44.920 --> 1:11:46.960 did she just dive in and she caught all of 1:11:47.000 --> 1:11:49.320 these or these caught them with their bare hands and 1:11:49.360 --> 1:11:52.040 brought them up, you know. And I was also wondering, 1:11:52.040 --> 1:11:54.840 how much of a kind of like Splash Mermaid out 1:11:54.880 --> 1:11:56.599 of water scenario are we going to get it. She's 1:11:56.600 --> 1:11:58.920 gonna start eating like fish heads and stuff, but now 1:11:59.000 --> 1:12:01.320 we don't get any of that. Love moreplash. 1:12:01.439 --> 1:12:02.400 Have you seen Splash? 1:12:02.520 --> 1:12:04.760 Yeah, it's been on. This is one that me and 1:12:04.800 --> 1:12:07.520 my sisters used to watch. We had it on VHS, 1:12:07.640 --> 1:12:09.360 probably like taped off a TV or maybe it was 1:12:09.360 --> 1:12:11.640 an actual VHS. We watched it a lot because they 1:12:11.640 --> 1:12:14.720 were super into Mermaids. And it's just a really good movie. 1:12:14.960 --> 1:12:17.760 As I recall, I have not seen it in decades, 1:12:17.800 --> 1:12:19.599 but I probably should revisit it. 1:12:19.720 --> 1:12:24.719 Is the premise, is it Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah? Yes, yeah, yeah, Okay, 1:12:24.720 --> 1:12:27.040 and like she's a mermaid, and if she's a legit. 1:12:26.840 --> 1:12:29.720 Mermaid, yeah, and then you know there are all these 1:12:29.920 --> 1:12:31.880 It's very much a Mermaid out of Water film, with 1:12:31.920 --> 1:12:35.599 some hilarious sequences, including a scene where they get lobster 1:12:35.640 --> 1:12:38.080 at a restaurant and she begins to like eat the 1:12:38.120 --> 1:12:41.599 lobster whole, like shell and all like a sea animal wood. 1:12:42.200 --> 1:12:43.200 And it's a great scene. 1:12:43.400 --> 1:12:46.200 Well, some excellent overlap with Night Tide because more here 1:12:46.280 --> 1:12:48.400 goes on about how she loves food from the ocean. 1:12:48.479 --> 1:12:52.160 She's like, I love lobster, crab, sea urchin. She described 1:12:52.160 --> 1:12:54.639 sea urchin as like a beautiful fruit from the sea 1:12:54.720 --> 1:12:57.840 that you just scoop up and eat. Johnny's never had it, 1:12:57.920 --> 1:13:02.000 of course, I get the feeling. Johnny's Johnny's very chicken 1:13:02.080 --> 1:13:05.840 nuggets guy. Like he's not not tried a lot of foods. 1:13:05.520 --> 1:13:07.599 But he wants to and that's and that's a great thing. 1:13:07.680 --> 1:13:10.000 Like he wants these news new experiences and he's open 1:13:10.040 --> 1:13:10.679 to try anything. 1:13:10.840 --> 1:13:14.759 Yeah. So also I think maybe he does not like fish, 1:13:14.800 --> 1:13:16.840 but he doesn't say anything about it. You see him 1:13:16.840 --> 1:13:19.120 take a tiny bite of his mackerel and then he 1:13:19.200 --> 1:13:20.759 pauses for a minute and he goes. 1:13:21.080 --> 1:13:25.000 Hmm, yeah, I mean, do we know that the fish 1:13:25.040 --> 1:13:26.720 is indeed cooked? That was I think I thought I 1:13:26.760 --> 1:13:30.160 had When it flakes, yeah, I think, yeah, flakes. It's okay. 1:13:31.240 --> 1:13:34.639 But they make conversation. So in the scene, Johnny learns 1:13:34.680 --> 1:13:40.160 about Mara's job. Maura works at a carnival attraction out 1:13:40.160 --> 1:13:43.040 on the pier, the Santa Monica Pier, where she performs 1:13:43.160 --> 1:13:46.160 as a mermaid. So she puts on an artificial fish 1:13:46.240 --> 1:13:49.040 tail that covers her legs and then she lies down 1:13:49.120 --> 1:13:52.320 in a tank that makes it look like she's underwater 1:13:52.520 --> 1:13:55.000 and people pay twenty five cents to come look at her. 1:13:55.200 --> 1:13:58.919 More of the mermaid, and then Johnny tells her about himself. 1:13:58.960 --> 1:14:01.520 He tells her that he grew up in Denver, Colorado. 1:14:02.280 --> 1:14:04.559 His father left his family when he was a baby, 1:14:04.600 --> 1:14:06.800 so he grew up very close to his mother. He 1:14:06.880 --> 1:14:09.439 always wanted to travel and see the world, but he couldn't, 1:14:09.560 --> 1:14:12.160 And then after his mother died, he figured out that 1:14:12.280 --> 1:14:13.960 he could see other parts of the world if he 1:14:14.080 --> 1:14:16.479 joined the navy, So that's what he did. Though he 1:14:16.520 --> 1:14:18.800 hasn't been much of anywhere really, like you said, I think, 1:14:18.880 --> 1:14:21.040 he says, maybe he's only been to Hawaii so far, 1:14:22.400 --> 1:14:24.960 but more is encouraging. She's like, I think you'll you'll 1:14:25.000 --> 1:14:29.080 get to travel yet. But then from here, they're eating 1:14:29.120 --> 1:14:32.759 their food and there are seagulls circling and they're suddenly 1:14:32.800 --> 1:14:37.080 menaced by gulls, and strangely, one of them flies down 1:14:37.200 --> 1:14:40.960 and lands right in Mora's arms, and then she holds 1:14:41.000 --> 1:14:44.960 it like a cat, stroking its feathers, and Johnny is 1:14:45.000 --> 1:14:48.000 a little He's like, wow, where'd you learn to do that? 1:14:48.280 --> 1:14:51.200 And Mora says she does not remember. She maybe learned 1:14:51.200 --> 1:14:53.519 it on the island where she was born, and she's 1:14:53.600 --> 1:14:56.040 kind of muttering, sweet little bird, don't be afraid. 1:14:56.520 --> 1:15:00.000 So she's basically like a Disney princess here. Yes. Yeah, 1:15:00.160 --> 1:15:03.120 the wild birds are landing in her lap and she's 1:15:03.320 --> 1:15:04.520 treating them kindly. 1:15:04.400 --> 1:15:06.880 Like snow white. Yeah, bird's coming down land on the hand. 1:15:07.760 --> 1:15:10.920 But in this conversation, Mara tells Johnny that he can 1:15:10.920 --> 1:15:13.000 come see her where she works because she's gonna be 1:15:13.000 --> 1:15:14.880 working later that day. You get the sense that he's 1:15:15.000 --> 1:15:18.080 very excited to see her in mermaid mode, and so 1:15:18.240 --> 1:15:21.120 later that day she takes him out to the pier 1:15:21.160 --> 1:15:23.280 where she works, and they go to the Mermaid House 1:15:23.320 --> 1:15:26.080 before it opens, where Johnny meets an older man that 1:15:26.200 --> 1:15:30.040 Mara calls Sam. Sam is also known as Captain Murdoch. 1:15:30.080 --> 1:15:33.519 This is Captain Sam Murdoch, a retired sea captain with 1:15:33.560 --> 1:15:37.000 a British accent. He seems to be maybe sleeping off 1:15:37.000 --> 1:15:39.320 a hangover behind the booth in front of the building. 1:15:40.560 --> 1:15:43.519 Sam is the owner and operator of the Mermaid attraction, 1:15:44.360 --> 1:15:47.080 and he sits out front of the building with a 1:15:47.080 --> 1:15:50.040 megaphone running a spiel. He's like, come see the amazing 1:15:50.080 --> 1:15:52.720 half woman, half fish. It's the thrill of a lifetime. 1:15:53.800 --> 1:15:56.760 And we learn not in this scene, but we learn 1:15:56.880 --> 1:15:59.600 later that Sam is not just Moraa's boss, he is 1:15:59.640 --> 1:16:03.640 her a optive father. So when Sam and Johnny are 1:16:03.720 --> 1:16:06.920 left alone, Mora goes to get dressed and Sam kind 1:16:06.920 --> 1:16:09.080 of tries to bond with Johnny as they are both 1:16:09.120 --> 1:16:11.880 men of the sea, but of course Johnny just started 1:16:11.920 --> 1:16:14.200 being a man of the sea. And we learn in 1:16:14.240 --> 1:16:17.240 this conversation that Sam was once in the English Navy. 1:16:17.600 --> 1:16:21.040 After that he was captain of a private vessel, and 1:16:21.520 --> 1:16:24.479 we find out eventually that it was while sailing the 1:16:24.520 --> 1:16:27.799 world that he found a moura orphaned on an island 1:16:27.840 --> 1:16:30.240 near Greece. I think they say the island of Mikonos, 1:16:30.280 --> 1:16:33.320 and he adopted her and raised her there after. But 1:16:33.720 --> 1:16:36.320 after a bit, Mora calls out to Johnny from inside. 1:16:36.479 --> 1:16:38.599 She's like, I'm ready now, so Johnny has to come 1:16:38.640 --> 1:16:42.599 see her. And Johnny goes into the darkened room around 1:16:42.600 --> 1:16:45.160 the corner and he looks down into the tank and 1:16:45.200 --> 1:16:48.479 there are sparkles reflecting the spotlights, and so there are 1:16:48.640 --> 1:16:51.560 you know, reflected lights dancing up on the ceiling. And 1:16:51.640 --> 1:16:54.559 Johnny looks down and he sees more inside and she 1:16:54.880 --> 1:16:59.280 is beautiful, mesmerizing but haunting, and the music swells with 1:16:59.400 --> 1:17:03.240 these these strange tones. And when he's looking down on her, 1:17:03.320 --> 1:17:06.479 her eyes are closed, and there's this feeling that maybe 1:17:06.520 --> 1:17:08.760 she could be dead, but you could see her, you 1:17:08.760 --> 1:17:10.840 could see her moving ever so slightly, so you know 1:17:10.920 --> 1:17:14.439 she's alive. She's combing her long, dark hair while she 1:17:14.520 --> 1:17:16.439 lies there with the fishtail. 1:17:16.680 --> 1:17:19.639 Yeah, and so you know, this is the first scene 1:17:19.720 --> 1:17:23.559 with the interior of the Mermaid Attraction where we can 1:17:23.600 --> 1:17:26.200 already begin to contemplate this in a number of ways, 1:17:26.240 --> 1:17:30.559 like the Mermaid as the object of desire and affection, 1:17:31.040 --> 1:17:35.640 but also as desire itself, like it's desire taking on 1:17:35.720 --> 1:17:39.640 this like strange form as it is imprisoned really and 1:17:39.720 --> 1:17:43.160 also ultimately kind of entombed in this exhibit. 1:17:43.439 --> 1:17:46.439 Yeah, imprisoned behind glass in a ways, stuck in there 1:17:46.439 --> 1:17:49.360 in a kind of suspended animation. Almost. The way she 1:17:49.400 --> 1:17:53.639 looks like she's not fully alive inside is kind of 1:17:53.680 --> 1:17:57.520 like listless, lethargic combing of the hair while being observed 1:17:57.600 --> 1:17:59.880 by the people who pay money to come and look down. 1:18:00.160 --> 1:18:03.080 Yeah, so it's very much a specimen sort of display, 1:18:03.560 --> 1:18:05.559 you know, going into this, I was I was imagining 1:18:05.640 --> 1:18:07.840 up to this point that the Mermaid presentation would be 1:18:07.920 --> 1:18:09.720 kind of like the Mermaid shows that you see in 1:18:09.800 --> 1:18:13.599 various places, like the witchy watchy sort of thing. I've 1:18:13.640 --> 1:18:15.400 never seen that, oh well, you know, the old fashioned 1:18:15.439 --> 1:18:18.200 shows where you're generally going to be looking at a fish, 1:18:18.280 --> 1:18:19.760 like a big fish tank or some sort of a 1:18:19.800 --> 1:18:24.560 tank straight ahead, and there'll be women in Mermaid costumes 1:18:24.960 --> 1:18:28.600 that are performers using like a breathing hose apparatus and 1:18:28.640 --> 1:18:31.920 then swimming around, you know, very much alive, creating and 1:18:31.960 --> 1:18:34.599 maybe even you know, as the ones I've seen before, 1:18:34.720 --> 1:18:37.280 putting on some sort of a show like reenacting, like 1:18:37.400 --> 1:18:40.200 The Little Mermaid that sort of thick some sort of 1:18:40.560 --> 1:18:42.479 to the degree that you can truly act when you 1:18:42.520 --> 1:18:44.559 have to breathe through a hose in between tanks. Right, 1:18:44.920 --> 1:18:47.040 But it's not that it's not a live again. It 1:18:47.080 --> 1:18:50.160 feels more like a specimen, almost like some sort of 1:18:50.240 --> 1:18:52.719 a you know, a freak show sort of environment. 1:19:01.479 --> 1:19:03.960 So anyway, some time passes, we cut ahead and we 1:19:04.000 --> 1:19:06.880 see Johnny and Mora are continuing their romance over the 1:19:06.920 --> 1:19:09.599 following days. So they like each other more and more 1:19:09.640 --> 1:19:12.160 and they are starting to fall in love. There's a 1:19:12.160 --> 1:19:14.360 scene where they go to the beach together. They frolic 1:19:14.400 --> 1:19:16.519 in the water and then they lie out in the sun. 1:19:17.439 --> 1:19:19.519 There's a funny boat where they argue about whether you 1:19:19.600 --> 1:19:22.840 can go swimming right after you eat. Johnny says no, 1:19:23.080 --> 1:19:26.120 can't do it, it's dangerous, and Maura doesn't believe it. Rob, 1:19:26.160 --> 1:19:27.240 do you have a ruling. 1:19:26.880 --> 1:19:31.240 On this as a swimmer, I mean, I generally don't 1:19:31.960 --> 1:19:34.240 swim right after eating. I rarely think about it, just 1:19:34.240 --> 1:19:39.519 because it rarely comes up as a possibility. But yeah, 1:19:39.640 --> 1:19:42.400 I would probably have this if I were in Johnny's shoes, 1:19:42.400 --> 1:19:43.800 I would probably have this moment where I'd be like, 1:19:44.080 --> 1:19:46.200 is that true or is that a misnomer? And then 1:19:46.200 --> 1:19:47.479 I'd probably have to research it. 1:19:47.680 --> 1:19:50.960 Well, Johnny has no such self doubt full confidence, you 1:19:51.000 --> 1:19:57.880 can't do it. Mara tells Johnny about her relationship with Sam. 1:19:58.360 --> 1:20:00.240 You know, this is where we learn that he found 1:20:00.280 --> 1:20:02.640 her orphaned on the island of Mikonos. He raised her, 1:20:02.680 --> 1:20:05.040 He's been like a father to her. And she says 1:20:05.040 --> 1:20:07.599 she knows he's a strange man, but he's been good 1:20:07.600 --> 1:20:11.439 to her. And then Johnny there apologizes for thinking poorly 1:20:11.520 --> 1:20:14.800 of Sam at first and maybe saying some things that 1:20:15.000 --> 1:20:18.519 kind of was like what's the sky's deal? But then 1:20:18.720 --> 1:20:22.400 there's one part here, it's not the only part of 1:20:22.439 --> 1:20:27.439 the movie like this, where suddenly she starts describing a 1:20:27.520 --> 1:20:32.360 kind of mystical emotional relationship with the forces of nature, 1:20:32.400 --> 1:20:36.200 and especially the ocean. So Mora lies back and she 1:20:36.280 --> 1:20:38.479 feels the sun on her skin, and she says, I 1:20:38.520 --> 1:20:41.800 love the sun and the moon and the stars, and 1:20:41.880 --> 1:20:45.120 Johnny says, and the sea, and she says, yes, I 1:20:45.160 --> 1:20:47.760 love the sea most of all. But I'm afraid of 1:20:47.800 --> 1:20:51.559 it too. Johnny says, I guess we're all a little 1:20:51.560 --> 1:20:56.000 afraid of what we love, and that moment seems a 1:20:56.040 --> 1:20:57.880 little out of character for Johnny. I was like, what 1:20:58.080 --> 1:21:00.760 is Johnny suddenly wise? But I think it actually it 1:21:01.320 --> 1:21:04.040 scans the more I think about it, Like it makes sense. 1:21:04.120 --> 1:21:06.799 It's an out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom 1:21:07.000 --> 1:21:11.200 stuff like Johnny is not stupid, but he's not very experienced, 1:21:11.200 --> 1:21:14.479 and he's not very wise about the world. It just 1:21:15.040 --> 1:21:16.840 it just kind of feels like it's a thing he 1:21:16.880 --> 1:21:19.240 says because it feels like a thing to say in 1:21:19.280 --> 1:21:21.479 the moment, but actually there's a lot of truth to it, 1:21:21.560 --> 1:21:23.520 and it's relevant to the story. 1:21:23.240 --> 1:21:25.560 And I think it's lived in as well, like he 1:21:25.560 --> 1:21:28.559 he has experience already of being a little afraid of 1:21:28.600 --> 1:21:31.839 the things that he loves that he feels desire towards. 1:21:31.880 --> 1:21:34.400 And Yeah, this is just a beautiful line in the 1:21:34.400 --> 1:21:36.799 film that really feels more or less like its thesis statement, 1:21:36.920 --> 1:21:42.040 you know, and very very key to this contemplation on 1:21:42.560 --> 1:21:46.280 love and desire in a world that may push you 1:21:46.320 --> 1:21:47.240 in different directions. 1:21:47.439 --> 1:21:49.720 Yeah, totally, And I think there are multiple ways to 1:21:49.800 --> 1:21:51.519 read it in which it's true. I mean, I think 1:21:51.520 --> 1:21:54.640 you can say from Johnny's perspective. It's true, and it 1:21:54.680 --> 1:21:59.280 makes sense because he's head over heels for Moura, but 1:21:59.479 --> 1:22:03.719 also she's strange, Like he's already had these strange moments 1:22:03.760 --> 1:22:06.120 where he feels like he doesn't really understand her, maybe 1:22:06.120 --> 1:22:08.439 worries that he's never going to be able to understand her. 1:22:08.479 --> 1:22:11.519 There's something different about her than she He's not on 1:22:11.560 --> 1:22:15.120 her level. But then I would say the second thing 1:22:15.280 --> 1:22:19.120 is the inevitable aspect of it. It's almost like a 1:22:19.160 --> 1:22:22.320 self fulfilling statement, which is that anytime you love something, 1:22:22.400 --> 1:22:25.559 you inevitably fear losing what you love, So like love 1:22:25.640 --> 1:22:29.720 can't exist without fear, right right, Yeah, almost some kind 1:22:29.720 --> 1:22:31.679 of Jedi sort of wisdom there. 1:22:32.120 --> 1:22:35.959 Yeah. And then also like the transformative nature of desire, 1:22:36.080 --> 1:22:38.479 like if I get the thing that I desire, does 1:22:38.520 --> 1:22:40.800 it change who I am? And yeah, does change who 1:22:40.840 --> 1:22:42.120 you are? And that's life. 1:22:43.479 --> 1:22:46.640 So that night, Johnny and Maura go out listening to 1:22:46.720 --> 1:22:49.439 music on the beach and Maura begins to dance to 1:22:49.479 --> 1:22:53.360 the music. But in the middle of the performance, actually 1:22:53.439 --> 1:22:56.040 quick aside, there are a couple of moments in Maura's 1:22:56.120 --> 1:22:59.599 dance where it the dance as a whole is interesting 1:22:59.640 --> 1:23:01.280 and cool. But there is a moment where it looks 1:23:01.320 --> 1:23:04.280 like she's doing the robot. This seems very pre the 1:23:04.280 --> 1:23:06.360 invention of the robot as the robot. 1:23:06.439 --> 1:23:08.160 But oh yeah, I don't know the full history on 1:23:08.200 --> 1:23:11.200 the robot. When the robot was fully unveiled as a 1:23:11.320 --> 1:23:12.000 dance move. 1:23:12.000 --> 1:23:14.439 I don't know either. But there's a couple of moves 1:23:14.479 --> 1:23:17.559 that look like the robot. It's very transient. But then 1:23:17.920 --> 1:23:21.080 while she's dancing in the middle of the performance, Johnny notices, 1:23:21.320 --> 1:23:24.080 standing at a distance on the rocks in the dark 1:23:24.439 --> 1:23:27.360 is the Sea Witch, the woman from the club, the 1:23:27.400 --> 1:23:30.559 woman who confronted Maura before. And so she's out on 1:23:30.560 --> 1:23:33.080 this rock and the wind is whipping at her silk 1:23:33.200 --> 1:23:36.479 veil and she's making these intense eyes at them, and 1:23:36.560 --> 1:23:39.880 the sea Witch appears to have some kind of power 1:23:40.080 --> 1:23:44.559 over Maura. Maura sees her and then gasps with terror 1:23:44.600 --> 1:23:47.439 and then collapses in the sand. Johnny goes to her 1:23:47.520 --> 1:23:49.840 and helps her up, and he asks it was that woman, 1:23:50.040 --> 1:23:54.559 wasn't it, And Mora says, what woman? More mystery is 1:23:54.640 --> 1:23:59.200 Maura hiding something? Is Maura not aware herself? We don't 1:23:59.200 --> 1:24:03.080 really know. After this, there is a scene where Johnny 1:24:03.160 --> 1:24:05.800 hangs out with Ellen, who works downstairs in the Merry 1:24:05.800 --> 1:24:10.960 Go Round, remember her, her grandfather, and their friend Madame Ramanovich, 1:24:11.080 --> 1:24:12.960 the fortune teller, though she does not like to be 1:24:13.080 --> 1:24:18.080 called that she's a chiromancer, so Madame Ramanovitch. This is 1:24:18.120 --> 1:24:19.840 the scene where she goes on a rand against tea 1:24:19.880 --> 1:24:23.679 bags because she says, you know, if everyone was using 1:24:23.680 --> 1:24:26.320 these bags, I'd never be able to read anybody's tea leaves. 1:24:27.200 --> 1:24:30.200 She also explains that she can read other people's fortunes, 1:24:30.240 --> 1:24:34.479 but not her own. In this scene, it's very obvious 1:24:34.520 --> 1:24:39.120 that Ellen is taken with Johnny. Like Johnny, She's kind 1:24:39.120 --> 1:24:41.280 of looking up at him like, oh, isn't he dreamy? 1:24:41.680 --> 1:24:43.960 But Johnny only has eyes for more. He seems to 1:24:44.000 --> 1:24:47.120 not even notice that Ellen is interested in him, and 1:24:47.400 --> 1:24:49.960 in this scene Johnny starts to get the first hints 1:24:49.960 --> 1:24:53.120 of danger. There is a visit from a police detective 1:24:53.200 --> 1:24:57.439 that leads to Ellen sharing gossip with Johnny, which is 1:24:57.520 --> 1:25:03.240 that Mora's last two boyfriends both died under mysterious circumstances. 1:25:04.000 --> 1:25:06.360 The line she says is a quote. In the past 1:25:06.360 --> 1:25:09.400 two years, Mora had two boyfriends and they're both dead 1:25:09.479 --> 1:25:12.760 now They were both nice boys. They went with her, 1:25:12.960 --> 1:25:16.320 then suddenly they disappeared. A few days later, their bodies 1:25:16.360 --> 1:25:20.160 were found washed up on shore, drowned. Now there's no 1:25:20.439 --> 1:25:24.200 proof that Mara did anything wrong, but does seem suspicious, 1:25:24.240 --> 1:25:27.040 doesn't it like two boyfriends in a row, both disappeared 1:25:27.040 --> 1:25:30.320 and then showed up drowned. H and Ellen says, I 1:25:30.320 --> 1:25:32.960 bet she didn't tell you about those boys, did she? 1:25:33.320 --> 1:25:37.360 And no, she didn't tell him. Then the scene gets 1:25:37.400 --> 1:25:40.320 even more interesting. The payphone at the other end of 1:25:40.360 --> 1:25:43.559 the room rings. The old man answers it and then 1:25:43.600 --> 1:25:47.040 calls to Johnny says it's for him. Johnny says, that's 1:25:47.080 --> 1:25:52.800 funny because nobody knows I'm here. It's interesting. He goes 1:25:52.840 --> 1:25:54.960 to answer it, but there's nobody there on the phone. 1:25:55.560 --> 1:25:57.840 And then while he's standing at the phone, he looks 1:25:57.840 --> 1:26:00.360 out the window and he sees down below on the 1:26:00.360 --> 1:26:03.800 street the Sea Witch. She is walking briskly and she 1:26:03.880 --> 1:26:07.439 goes around the corner, so Johnny runs off to follow her, 1:26:07.520 --> 1:26:10.680 and he's trying to figure out who this woman is 1:26:10.720 --> 1:26:13.920 and why she keeps bothering Moura. And this leads to 1:26:13.960 --> 1:26:16.719 a very interesting sequence that this part to me felt 1:26:16.720 --> 1:26:19.479 like film noir, the part where Johnny is following her 1:26:19.520 --> 1:26:23.240 around town, going between these houses and over a wooden bridge, 1:26:23.560 --> 1:26:28.439 past the railroad, tracks, under electrical pylons, and eventually into 1:26:28.600 --> 1:26:31.280 this strange neighborhood that kind of looks like it's from 1:26:31.320 --> 1:26:35.040 a different world. I don't know exactly how to describe 1:26:35.040 --> 1:26:37.320 the weirdness of how this house looks, but they come 1:26:37.360 --> 1:26:41.000 to this old house with shuttered windows that seems like 1:26:41.040 --> 1:26:45.240 a kind of antique building. As Johnny goes around the corner, 1:26:45.240 --> 1:26:47.360 he sees there's a rocking chair on the porch that 1:26:47.520 --> 1:26:50.120 is rocking by itself with no one in it. Maybe 1:26:50.120 --> 1:26:53.240 it's just rocking in the wind. There's a child holding 1:26:53.240 --> 1:26:56.120 a doll standing in the road who doesn't speak, and 1:26:56.200 --> 1:26:58.519 Johnny asks her did you see a woman go by here? 1:26:58.560 --> 1:26:59.880 But the child just runs away. 1:27:00.320 --> 1:27:03.439 Yeah, he's far off the boardwalk at this point for sure, totally. 1:27:03.640 --> 1:27:07.439 And then Johnny finally realizes this house it is the 1:27:07.479 --> 1:27:10.400 address that old Sam gave him, telling him to come 1:27:10.479 --> 1:27:14.640 visit sometime. So Johnny approaches the door, he knocks, and 1:27:14.680 --> 1:27:18.559 he goes in, and Sam is quite drunk and intent 1:27:18.680 --> 1:27:23.080 on getting drunker, but he says, oh, you know, Johnny, 1:27:23.080 --> 1:27:25.360 I'm glad you came. I've got something important to tell 1:27:25.400 --> 1:27:27.720 you about. He's very jovial at first, but then he 1:27:27.760 --> 1:27:30.639 starts to turn serious and he tells Johnny that he 1:27:30.760 --> 1:27:35.639 is in grave danger from Maura. At first, he's vague 1:27:35.640 --> 1:27:38.320 about it. He's talking about how Maura has a certain 1:27:38.439 --> 1:27:42.919 compulsion which could put Johnny's life at risk, and Johnny's 1:27:42.920 --> 1:27:45.599 trying to understand what he's talking about. He's like, are 1:27:45.640 --> 1:27:49.160 you saying she's insane, that she's gonna hurt me? And 1:27:49.200 --> 1:27:52.599 he's like, well, you know, not exactly that she's insane, 1:27:52.640 --> 1:27:54.439 but take my word for it. You've got to break 1:27:54.439 --> 1:27:57.679 off this acquaintance. And then he sends in a funny party, 1:27:57.720 --> 1:28:00.240 sends Johnny to get another bottle of liquor for him, 1:28:00.920 --> 1:28:04.200 and then starts telling telling the strange backstory behind a 1:28:04.240 --> 1:28:06.120 severed hand he's got on the shelf. 1:28:07.200 --> 1:28:10.280 I really love this bit with the severed hand because 1:28:10.680 --> 1:28:13.120 this is I mean, first of all, there's just like 1:28:13.160 --> 1:28:16.160 the idea that this guy's just getting ripped on just 1:28:16.320 --> 1:28:20.920 room temperature gin from the bottle. But then also to 1:28:20.960 --> 1:28:24.720 the idea, like you quickly begin to realize Sam is 1:28:25.960 --> 1:28:29.080 he is a collector, and he's not just a collector. 1:28:29.120 --> 1:28:33.559 He's a collector of perhaps strange things or even dangerous things, 1:28:33.680 --> 1:28:36.559 which we get from this hand that he has bottled 1:28:36.640 --> 1:28:38.680 up there and preserved in the cabinet. 1:28:38.640 --> 1:28:40.400 A hand in a jar that I think, he says, 1:28:40.479 --> 1:28:43.000 was given to him as a gift by the ruler 1:28:43.120 --> 1:28:45.599 from some other nation who I think it was cut 1:28:45.640 --> 1:28:50.600 from a thief. Yeah so Sam, But anyway, eventually he 1:28:50.640 --> 1:28:55.160 gets around to the issue of Mara again. Sam says 1:28:55.200 --> 1:28:58.519 to Johnny, you've read the Greek myths, haven't you. Johnny 1:28:58.520 --> 1:29:02.560 has not. Sam asks Johnny if he's heard about the Sirens. 1:29:02.880 --> 1:29:07.880 Johnny's like, maybe, sort of. Sam says the Sirens were 1:29:07.920 --> 1:29:11.719 a strange race of sea people, half human, half creatures 1:29:11.760 --> 1:29:14.840 of the sea. The female of the species were known 1:29:14.920 --> 1:29:18.880 popularly as mermaids, women of the Sea. And then he 1:29:18.920 --> 1:29:21.240 goes on to explain that the show they run on 1:29:21.320 --> 1:29:23.920 the Pier where they have Maura as the mermaid is 1:29:23.960 --> 1:29:27.120 a fake. It's an illusion. He says. You wouldn't believe 1:29:27.200 --> 1:29:31.360 mermaids actually exist, would you. Johnny says no, he wouldn't 1:29:31.400 --> 1:29:34.559 believe that. Then Sam says, let me tell you, young man, 1:29:34.600 --> 1:29:37.400 that things happen in this world never dreamt of in 1:29:37.439 --> 1:29:41.519 your philosophy? Where do you think myths come from? Do 1:29:41.600 --> 1:29:45.240 you think they're just made up? No? They spring from truth, 1:29:45.800 --> 1:29:51.240 ancient truth, living truth. Then, as he's getting drunker, Sam 1:29:51.680 --> 1:29:53.800 he continues to talk, but he starts to become a 1:29:53.800 --> 1:29:56.719 little less coherent and a little more kind of rambling 1:29:56.760 --> 1:30:00.040 into different subjects. He starts saying, Maura, she lived with. 1:30:00.320 --> 1:30:02.880 That was her room up there behind that door. I 1:30:02.920 --> 1:30:04.840 found her on an island, but I didn't know what 1:30:04.920 --> 1:30:07.400 she was to become. I didn't know she belonged to 1:30:07.479 --> 1:30:11.040 that ancient race. She's a monster. I warned you. That's 1:30:11.080 --> 1:30:14.479 all I can do. And he starts to pass out, 1:30:14.479 --> 1:30:16.519 but Johnny's trying to get the information. It's like, wait 1:30:16.560 --> 1:30:18.960 a minute, what about that woman who's been following Mara? 1:30:19.120 --> 1:30:21.760 Does she live here? I saw her come here? And 1:30:21.800 --> 1:30:25.280 Sam says, there isn't any woman. I'm all alone. Then 1:30:25.280 --> 1:30:28.720 he passes out completely and Johnny climbs the stairs to 1:30:28.760 --> 1:30:32.200 see Mora's old room and inside it's decorated like her 1:30:32.240 --> 1:30:34.880 apartment with the sea stars and the shells. But this 1:30:35.000 --> 1:30:38.320 window is hanging ominously open, with the wind rushing in 1:30:38.360 --> 1:30:42.519 from the outside, blowing the curtains. Nothing really happens here, 1:30:42.560 --> 1:30:44.160 but it's fabulously spooky. 1:30:44.520 --> 1:30:47.400 Yeah, almost a sense of cosmic horror, you know, like 1:30:47.640 --> 1:30:53.120 trying to like discovering the sort of terrestrial like homeye 1:30:54.280 --> 1:30:57.400 origin of Maura. But there's much more beyond that. It 1:30:57.439 --> 1:30:59.960 just seems to like open up into the greater world, 1:31:00.120 --> 1:31:01.479 even the void. Yeah. 1:31:02.080 --> 1:31:06.080 So, eventually Johnny confronts Mara about what Sam said to him, 1:31:06.640 --> 1:31:10.000 and her reaction is so strange. Mora says, no, she 1:31:10.120 --> 1:31:14.439 did not hurt her previous boyfriends, but she also says, 1:31:14.840 --> 1:31:18.640 it's true they're waiting for me to join them. So 1:31:18.840 --> 1:31:22.479 she actually believes the part about her being one of 1:31:22.560 --> 1:31:25.840 the people of the sea. She thinks that she must 1:31:26.000 --> 1:31:29.320 belong to the sirens in some way and they are 1:31:29.320 --> 1:31:32.720 calling to her. Johnny tells her he doesn't believe it. 1:31:32.800 --> 1:31:35.680 He's like, that can't be true. You're confused about that, 1:31:36.160 --> 1:31:39.559 And Moras says to Johnny, quote, you Americans have such 1:31:39.560 --> 1:31:41.839 a simple view of the world. You think that everything 1:31:41.880 --> 1:31:44.920 can be seen and touched and weighed and measured. You 1:31:44.960 --> 1:31:48.120 think you discovered reality, but you don't even know what 1:31:48.240 --> 1:31:52.280 it is. And Johnny asks Okay, if it's true that 1:31:52.320 --> 1:31:53.920 you're one of the people of the sea, how do 1:31:54.000 --> 1:31:56.920 you know? And then Mora says, and I love this part, 1:31:57.000 --> 1:31:59.799 she says, because I feel the sea water in my veins, 1:32:00.040 --> 1:32:02.360 because I listened to the roar of the sea, and 1:32:02.400 --> 1:32:05.400 it speaks to me like a mother's voice. The tide 1:32:05.439 --> 1:32:08.439 pulls at my heart. The face of the moon fills 1:32:08.479 --> 1:32:12.519 my soul with a strange longing. So I think we 1:32:12.600 --> 1:32:14.639 can step back and be a little more summary about 1:32:14.640 --> 1:32:16.040 the rest of the movie. You know, this is a 1:32:16.120 --> 1:32:19.439 little past the halfway point here, but for the rest 1:32:19.439 --> 1:32:23.080 of the story, Johnny is really in a difficult position 1:32:23.160 --> 1:32:26.160 where he I feel like for Johnny it would be 1:32:26.680 --> 1:32:30.280 he's not so afraid of Maura because part of him 1:32:30.360 --> 1:32:33.760 trusts her, but he's really so like if it had 1:32:33.920 --> 1:32:37.080 just been Sam and the other people warning him, like 1:32:37.160 --> 1:32:41.480 her previous boyfriend's disappeared, you know, you got to protect yourself, 1:32:42.280 --> 1:32:44.760 that would be one thing. He could probably ignore that, 1:32:44.800 --> 1:32:46.920 But I feel like he's really shaken by the fact 1:32:46.960 --> 1:32:50.080 that Mora seems to believe it herself, and he doesn't 1:32:50.120 --> 1:32:51.280 know how to deal with this. 1:32:51.960 --> 1:32:54.280 Yeah, in very much a sense that he is perhaps 1:32:54.680 --> 1:32:58.120 over his head at least, I don't know. If not emotionally, 1:32:58.200 --> 1:33:03.679 then it just we're I guess we're we're we've entered 1:33:03.680 --> 1:33:06.360 a complex phase of the relationship, definitely. It's a it's 1:33:06.439 --> 1:33:09.000 complicated level of the relationship here. 1:33:09.520 --> 1:33:12.720 Yeah. So there is a scene where Johnny's trying to 1:33:12.800 --> 1:33:16.920 understand what happens, and he goes to visit Madame Madame Romanovitch, 1:33:17.320 --> 1:33:20.640 the tarot reader, and he gets a reading where she 1:33:20.720 --> 1:33:24.000 warns him of many different kinds of different dangers. I 1:33:24.000 --> 1:33:28.160 don't remember everything exactly, she says, but she explains the 1:33:28.200 --> 1:33:30.720 whole like they do a full explanation of like the 1:33:30.760 --> 1:33:33.760 tarot layout. You know, here's what's here, here's what's across you, 1:33:33.840 --> 1:33:37.040 here's what's behind in front of you. Remember, the hanged 1:33:37.080 --> 1:33:38.839 man plays a significant role. 1:33:38.680 --> 1:33:41.400 And she mentioned something we mentioned before on the show. 1:33:41.439 --> 1:33:43.920 I think that the hanged man is a it comes 1:33:43.920 --> 1:33:46.439 from a place of serenity and wisdom and so forth. 1:33:46.520 --> 1:33:50.040 So she's yeah, the tarot sequence, and I'm no expert 1:33:50.080 --> 1:33:53.439 on taro. It feels very authentic and well well written out. 1:33:53.960 --> 1:33:56.439 There's also a scene later which I think is not 1:33:56.800 --> 1:33:59.120 super significant to the plot, but it's just a scene 1:33:59.160 --> 1:34:02.360 where Johnny goes to a bathhouse and happens to run 1:34:02.520 --> 1:34:06.080 into Sam who's they're getting a massage later. Some reviewers 1:34:06.120 --> 1:34:08.519 have singled this out just because they read it as 1:34:08.600 --> 1:34:13.479 including intentional a sort of queer coded or homo erotic 1:34:13.600 --> 1:34:15.679 jokes in there, Like there's a joke about a masseewer 1:34:15.880 --> 1:34:17.599 talking about like, oh, I'll pound you later. 1:34:19.080 --> 1:34:21.519 Yeah. Yeah, this is often singled out, but it is 1:34:21.760 --> 1:34:24.680 again not like super important to the plot, but it 1:34:24.760 --> 1:34:28.040 is also very well shot. You get the steam, oh yeah, 1:34:28.080 --> 1:34:31.960 you know, and there's exposed flesh. It does create this. Yes, 1:34:32.800 --> 1:34:36.519 it has a fascinating vibe. So it is interesting to 1:34:36.560 --> 1:34:39.200 sort of like, you can't help but take this and 1:34:39.360 --> 1:34:41.559 to some degree sort of factor it into the film's 1:34:41.600 --> 1:34:43.879 overall exploration of desire. 1:34:44.280 --> 1:34:48.639 Yeah, it does definitely have effective spooky elements. But yeah, 1:34:48.680 --> 1:34:51.600 I think also it seems people think that Harrington was 1:34:51.640 --> 1:34:53.080 just trying to get some in jokes in. 1:34:53.400 --> 1:35:02.519 Yeah. 1:35:02.680 --> 1:35:06.160 Now, there's there's a really freaky scene later on where 1:35:06.800 --> 1:35:09.680 where Johnny comes home and he has a nightmare that 1:35:09.840 --> 1:35:13.120 he's like imagining kissing Maura, but then she's turning into 1:35:13.160 --> 1:35:16.040 a mermaid, and then she goes even further and suddenly 1:35:16.040 --> 1:35:18.720 he's having some kind of liaison with an octopus. 1:35:19.120 --> 1:35:21.760 Yeah. Yeah, and it's pretty good. It's like, this is 1:35:21.800 --> 1:35:24.920 not like when Bella Lagosi wrestled that octopus. It looks 1:35:25.280 --> 1:35:27.599 looks creepy, and there's a lot of tension to it. 1:35:28.040 --> 1:35:31.400 A great nightmare slash dream sequence, to be sure, and 1:35:31.479 --> 1:35:33.880 certainly the most monstery this film gets. 1:35:34.120 --> 1:35:37.320 Yeah, there's also a scene where Johnny wakes up and 1:35:37.360 --> 1:35:41.680 discovers Maura having stepped out of the bathtub and wandered 1:35:41.720 --> 1:35:44.719 out of the apartment in the night, and he follows 1:35:44.720 --> 1:35:46.800 her wet footsteps on the ground trying to figure out 1:35:46.840 --> 1:35:49.880 what's going on, and she's like down under the pier, 1:35:50.040 --> 1:35:52.880 having gone walking into the water, and now she's up 1:35:52.920 --> 1:35:53.280 out in. 1:35:53.240 --> 1:35:55.000 The waves coming in. 1:35:55.200 --> 1:35:59.559 Yeah. Oh, so it's a frightening scene and so like 1:35:59.600 --> 1:36:02.519 you can tell they're both overwhelmed. They don't really understand 1:36:02.560 --> 1:36:05.799 what's going on. Johnny doesn't fully believe that she's a siren, 1:36:05.880 --> 1:36:07.479 but maybe he doesn't know what to believe. 1:36:08.920 --> 1:36:11.280 So much of this too, though, it just feels so 1:36:12.200 --> 1:36:15.920 authentic to like what it's like to like you enter 1:36:16.000 --> 1:36:18.360 into some sort of early relationship and you reach that 1:36:18.439 --> 1:36:20.599 point where you have to realize that the other person 1:36:21.479 --> 1:36:24.960 is indeed another person that's pulled by their own different 1:36:25.040 --> 1:36:29.480 motivations and desires and things within and outside of their control, 1:36:30.040 --> 1:36:33.000 and the overwhelming feeling you might get from that, you know. 1:36:34.160 --> 1:36:36.719 So there's so much of this film that just works 1:36:36.760 --> 1:36:39.080 on a very relatable level without even getting into the 1:36:39.120 --> 1:36:39.880 heavier stuff. 1:36:40.760 --> 1:36:43.680 That's true, You're right like that. I think a lot 1:36:43.760 --> 1:36:46.400 of people have this early realization. It's like the first 1:36:46.439 --> 1:36:48.320 time it ever happens to them in their life that 1:36:49.040 --> 1:36:53.080 they realize, oh, you're dating somebody, and it's like either 1:36:53.360 --> 1:36:56.679 their problems are also your problems or you just can't 1:36:56.800 --> 1:37:02.760 stay together, like and you know, like you gotta yeah, 1:37:03.320 --> 1:37:06.679 and so so clearly something like that is going on there, 1:37:06.720 --> 1:37:10.720 and he's Johnny is he does He's not doing this 1:37:10.760 --> 1:37:14.000 from a malicious place, but he's also like he doesn't 1:37:14.040 --> 1:37:16.719 know how to process this stuff. So like a couple 1:37:16.720 --> 1:37:19.240 of times he's just trying to get her to forget 1:37:19.280 --> 1:37:20.519 all about it and move on. 1:37:20.960 --> 1:37:23.200 He's not getting a lot of great help from anyone 1:37:23.200 --> 1:37:26.679 else either, to be clear, Like other people have been like, hey, 1:37:26.720 --> 1:37:28.760 I think she might be a murderer, might want to 1:37:28.800 --> 1:37:32.280 be careful about that relationship, you know, including her father. 1:37:32.520 --> 1:37:34.840 So you know, he's I feel like, in a way, 1:37:34.880 --> 1:37:37.479 he's doing the best he can with like zero support 1:37:37.880 --> 1:37:40.840 from you know, other humans outside of the relationship. 1:37:41.040 --> 1:37:44.439 That's right. But eventually we get to a climactic scene 1:37:44.840 --> 1:37:48.080 where she decides that she needs to go out diving. 1:37:48.240 --> 1:37:50.960 She wants to go out scuba diving, and she wants 1:37:51.000 --> 1:37:53.720 Johnny to come with her, and so there will be 1:37:53.720 --> 1:37:56.360 a big twist coming here. They go out on a 1:37:56.360 --> 1:37:59.080 boat and they swim down to a reef and while 1:37:59.240 --> 1:38:02.479 they are under the water, Johnny is looking at something 1:38:02.600 --> 1:38:04.800 on the reef. He's got his mask on and he's 1:38:04.800 --> 1:38:08.559 got his breathing apparatus, and Maura comes up behind him 1:38:08.640 --> 1:38:11.879 with a knife and she's menacing him with this knife. 1:38:12.280 --> 1:38:16.040 Now she doesn't kill him. It seems maybe she's meaning 1:38:16.080 --> 1:38:20.280 to do something, but she stops herself or I think 1:38:20.320 --> 1:38:24.040 she does, like his breathing hose gets cut or disconnected 1:38:24.040 --> 1:38:26.559 in some way. Yeah, And I think I couldn't tell exactly, 1:38:26.600 --> 1:38:28.960 like does she cut his breathing hose? 1:38:29.080 --> 1:38:30.800 That's what I took from it. Yeah, I think the 1:38:30.840 --> 1:38:33.320 scenario is they go out to go scuba diving, and 1:38:33.360 --> 1:38:35.479 he's already like, do we really need to go that 1:38:35.560 --> 1:38:38.400 deep to see some neat stuff? You know, which I 1:38:38.400 --> 1:38:40.800 think is a reasonable question to ask. And she's like, 1:38:40.840 --> 1:38:43.280 oh no, there's the beautiful stuff down there. So they 1:38:43.320 --> 1:38:45.240 go down there. She cuts the air hose and then 1:38:45.320 --> 1:38:48.200 that forces him back up. This kind of like forcing 1:38:48.240 --> 1:38:50.840 this separation between the two of them. You can see 1:38:50.840 --> 1:38:53.080 a sort of like two fold like sort of like 1:38:53.160 --> 1:38:56.160 pushing him beyond his boundaries in an attempt to force 1:38:56.240 --> 1:38:59.120 him away from her, and then like then being more 1:38:59.160 --> 1:39:01.559 direct with it, you know, this is where I belong, 1:39:01.640 --> 1:39:03.719 this is not where you belong, and pushing him away. 1:39:03.880 --> 1:39:06.000 She has to stay below and he stays above so 1:39:06.400 --> 1:39:10.479 she doesn't stab him. So you see, you could interpret 1:39:10.479 --> 1:39:13.240 it different ways. What happens there when she cuts his hose, 1:39:13.360 --> 1:39:15.800 Like yeah, but he goes he has to swim back 1:39:15.840 --> 1:39:18.040 up to the boat and then he's in the boat 1:39:18.560 --> 1:39:21.040 and so he's like she coming up? Is she gonna 1:39:21.280 --> 1:39:24.920 he can't go back down because his hose doesn't work anymore? Uh, 1:39:25.200 --> 1:39:29.120 And then she never comes up. So what has happened 1:39:29.160 --> 1:39:31.200 to her? I think her fate is ambiguous for a 1:39:31.240 --> 1:39:35.080 time until Johnny goes after he gets back to shore, 1:39:35.760 --> 1:39:38.840 he goes back to the Mermaid House, the attraction on 1:39:38.880 --> 1:39:44.559 the pier and haunting, a terrifying scene. He goes inside 1:39:44.680 --> 1:39:48.080 and finds her body dead in the mermaid display. 1:39:48.439 --> 1:39:50.679 Yeah, she was already presented kind of like a corpse 1:39:50.760 --> 1:39:54.040 under there anyway, and now it seems that she is 1:39:54.080 --> 1:39:58.240 indeed a corpse beneath the glass. And this leads to 1:39:58.400 --> 1:40:03.519 just a phenomenal scene, great drama, great symbolism, building on 1:40:03.560 --> 1:40:07.400 these ideas of alienation and uh yeah, the exhibit is 1:40:07.400 --> 1:40:10.040 is now, you know, not merely a prison at all, 1:40:10.080 --> 1:40:13.600 but also a tomb. And Sam here confronts him with 1:40:13.720 --> 1:40:16.160 a gun, and so here we get into some like 1:40:16.200 --> 1:40:18.040 some real tension and some confrontation. 1:40:18.560 --> 1:40:21.479 That's right. I didn't make this connection when I was 1:40:21.520 --> 1:40:24.000 watching it, actually, but when you said that this prison 1:40:24.320 --> 1:40:27.080 the tank has become a tomb, it reminded me of 1:40:27.200 --> 1:40:29.639 like actual glass coffins in the world, like the tomb 1:40:29.640 --> 1:40:32.120 of Linen or whatever, you know, or people go up 1:40:32.160 --> 1:40:34.040 and look at a body preserved. 1:40:33.560 --> 1:40:36.960 In beauty even yeah, yeah, or snow white. Which one 1:40:37.000 --> 1:40:39.600 is it that ye bites the apple? Yeah, and is 1:40:39.640 --> 1:40:41.479 under sometimes depicted as being under class. 1:40:41.560 --> 1:40:44.240 Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, so he goes and looks and 1:40:44.880 --> 1:40:47.759 Johnny is distraught but also distraught. Now, yes, is Sam 1:40:47.840 --> 1:40:50.120 the father who comes in with a gun? 1:40:50.479 --> 1:40:52.040 He can you killed her? Yes? 1:40:52.120 --> 1:40:56.640 Yes, uh, And there's this confrontation. He begins shooting, but 1:40:56.680 --> 1:40:59.360 there's a struggle, and eventually the police arrive, Like there's 1:40:59.400 --> 1:41:02.080 some policemen outside, they hear the shooting. They come inside 1:41:03.040 --> 1:41:06.120 and Sam is arrested, and that leads into kind of 1:41:06.200 --> 1:41:10.160 like the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho, we get a post 1:41:10.439 --> 1:41:14.400 arrest kind of explanation scene, except in this movie it 1:41:14.520 --> 1:41:20.839 comes directly from Sam himself, who confesses and explains what happened. 1:41:21.680 --> 1:41:27.040 So his confession is essentially that as he grew up 1:41:27.160 --> 1:41:31.040 raising Mora, and as much as she needed him initially 1:41:31.120 --> 1:41:34.519 he was a father figure to her, he realizes also 1:41:34.720 --> 1:41:38.160 that he needs her and it was one of those 1:41:38.160 --> 1:41:41.800 cases where he just really couldn't accept that she was 1:41:41.840 --> 1:41:43.960 going to have to grow up and live her own 1:41:44.000 --> 1:41:47.599 life and live her life separate from him, and I 1:41:47.640 --> 1:41:52.439 think he just wanted to continue always being her father 1:41:52.600 --> 1:41:55.040 and sort of being the only person in her life 1:41:55.080 --> 1:41:57.840 and her being the person in his life, and so 1:41:58.000 --> 1:42:02.400 he decided, as a way of sabotage all other future relationships, 1:42:02.640 --> 1:42:05.240 that he was going to implant this idea on her 1:42:05.680 --> 1:42:07.400 that she was one of the sea. 1:42:07.200 --> 1:42:11.280 People, and so he essentially like raised her to have 1:42:11.360 --> 1:42:15.040 this strange worldview where she sees herself as a mermaid 1:42:15.320 --> 1:42:17.800 whose bound return to the sea and can never have 1:42:18.280 --> 1:42:21.240 like a no true human love, that sort of thing, 1:42:21.280 --> 1:42:24.080 which is, you know, pretty monstrous. But then he also 1:42:24.640 --> 1:42:27.960 has he confesses that he killed her two previous boyfriends 1:42:27.960 --> 1:42:31.599 as well, so that that was him as well. So 1:42:31.680 --> 1:42:35.120 he does get Johnny off the hook for that, but yeah, 1:42:35.439 --> 1:42:36.920 confesses to those murders. 1:42:37.479 --> 1:42:41.680 But there's a twist. He confesses to all that, and 1:42:41.720 --> 1:42:43.960 so Johnny's like, so, who was the woman that you 1:42:44.080 --> 1:42:45.200 had as part of this scheme? 1:42:45.280 --> 1:42:47.400 Yeah, Johnny's present for this scene as well, So don't 1:42:47.439 --> 1:42:50.360 you know, I don't know how much how realistic this 1:42:50.479 --> 1:42:52.920 is in terms of police work, but you know works dramatically. 1:42:53.439 --> 1:42:55.920 Who was the woman that you had pretending to be 1:42:56.120 --> 1:42:58.720 the queen of the Sirens, the sea witch that was 1:42:58.760 --> 1:43:02.360 calling her back to the And Sam's like, there wasn't 1:43:02.400 --> 1:43:05.560 any woman. Now, the police try to explain that to 1:43:05.640 --> 1:43:07.880 Johnny they're like, don't worry about the Johnny. He's just 1:43:07.920 --> 1:43:10.439 protecting his accomplices. You know, we'll figure out who his 1:43:10.479 --> 1:43:14.280 accomplices were eventually. But I think it's the audience were 1:43:14.920 --> 1:43:17.880 there to wonder like who was that? 1:43:17.920 --> 1:43:18.200 Really? 1:43:18.280 --> 1:43:21.200 Is human accomplice or is there something else going on, 1:43:21.360 --> 1:43:23.880 Like are we actually getting the full story now through 1:43:23.920 --> 1:43:27.320 this confession or is that some kind of misdirection too. 1:43:28.240 --> 1:43:31.599 Yeah, I got the impression that this is left here 1:43:31.680 --> 1:43:35.000 to leave the hatch open for the mystery, so that 1:43:35.280 --> 1:43:37.200 even though we have had this almost kind of like 1:43:37.240 --> 1:43:41.920 Scooby doing moment here where the killer's mask is revealed 1:43:41.920 --> 1:43:44.160 and he fesses up to everything, but this one thing 1:43:44.240 --> 1:43:47.000 cannot be explained, and by not being able to explain 1:43:47.080 --> 1:43:50.200 the mystery woman, it leaves open the possibility that, yes, 1:43:50.200 --> 1:43:52.719 maybe she was actually one of the sea people, maybe 1:43:52.760 --> 1:43:57.080 she was bound to return to the sea, and leaving 1:43:57.360 --> 1:44:01.400 all of these dreamlike and mysterious supernatural aspects of the 1:44:01.400 --> 1:44:03.920 film very much in play, because I think it would 1:44:03.920 --> 1:44:07.280 that have would have been disappointing if we'd reached the 1:44:07.400 --> 1:44:10.640 end and everything that felt dreamlike and superstitious was just 1:44:10.680 --> 1:44:14.200 completely explained away, just completely Scooby Dude at the end. 1:44:15.000 --> 1:44:17.120 This way we keep that mystery alive. 1:44:17.840 --> 1:44:21.639 I agree. I like it that some questions are left unanswered. 1:44:21.640 --> 1:44:23.880 I mean I tend to like endings like that. I 1:44:23.920 --> 1:44:26.439 know some people get very annoyed when there are questions 1:44:26.439 --> 1:44:28.799 that are left unanswered at the end, but I almost 1:44:28.840 --> 1:44:32.000 always prefer that as long as it doesn't feel like 1:44:32.040 --> 1:44:35.480 you're just getting jerked around to no kind of planned resolution. 1:44:35.760 --> 1:44:39.040 You know, you want some important resolution but also some 1:44:39.200 --> 1:44:41.599 mystery to remain. That's kind of my sweet spot. 1:44:41.760 --> 1:44:44.160 Yeah, give me something to think about and contemplate later on. 1:44:44.360 --> 1:44:46.799 But you know, I think it's not just the presence 1:44:46.880 --> 1:44:50.440 of the Sea Witch that leaves some things kind of mysterious. 1:44:51.200 --> 1:44:54.240 I do think we're still to wonder like what explained, 1:44:55.080 --> 1:44:58.040 Like why did Mourra cut Johnny's air hose, Like what 1:44:58.280 --> 1:45:02.320 exactly was happening there? Her understanding of what she was 1:45:02.360 --> 1:45:06.040 doing there? Yeah, I don't know. I think I think 1:45:06.120 --> 1:45:08.840 there are other tensions. But then, as we've mentioned, uh, 1:45:09.439 --> 1:45:12.800 you know, throughout there is this other character Ellen who 1:45:12.880 --> 1:45:15.720 kind of appears there at the end and is like, 1:45:15.880 --> 1:45:19.160 you know, he just making her presence known, Like, Hey, Johnny, 1:45:19.160 --> 1:45:20.040 I'm still around. 1:45:20.240 --> 1:45:24.200 Yeah, yeah, I hear your single. Now, so, hey, do 1:45:24.240 --> 1:45:26.840 you want to get you a coke float sometime or something? 1:45:26.880 --> 1:45:30.599 And yeah, so we get the sense that they are 1:45:30.640 --> 1:45:34.599 going to begin a relationship. Now, is it a true 1:45:34.600 --> 1:45:37.840 happy ending sort of scenario here, I don't. I don't 1:45:37.840 --> 1:45:40.640 know that that's necessarily the case. There seems to be 1:45:40.880 --> 1:45:44.519 a compromise here, and you know, his his true desire 1:45:44.560 --> 1:45:47.360 and his true love has has been lost, and this 1:45:47.439 --> 1:45:51.240 is very much, very much a diversion. Yeah. 1:45:51.320 --> 1:45:53.160 Yeah, I don't see it as a happy ending. I 1:45:53.200 --> 1:45:56.920 see clearly like we have established Sam as the villain 1:45:56.960 --> 1:46:00.680 of the story, a complicated villain, but the villain of 1:46:00.720 --> 1:46:03.040 the story behind all of the loss and the suffering 1:46:03.120 --> 1:46:05.519 and the manipulation of Mora that led to her death. 1:46:05.840 --> 1:46:08.439 But despite the fact that the villain has been caught 1:46:08.479 --> 1:46:12.080 and has confessed, it still doesn't feel resolved, if that 1:46:12.200 --> 1:46:12.719 makes sense. 1:46:13.120 --> 1:46:16.559 Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and that the air of tragedy remains. 1:46:16.920 --> 1:46:22.560 Yeah. Okay, Well that was Curtis Harrington's Night Tide. I 1:46:22.880 --> 1:46:24.800 stand up for this one. I think this is a 1:46:24.840 --> 1:46:29.040 really interesting, really cool movie. Gives you a Dennis Hopper 1:46:29.120 --> 1:46:31.800 unliked any Dennis Hopper I'd ever seen before. I like 1:46:31.880 --> 1:46:35.080 the acting across the board really, Linda Lawson is great, 1:46:35.479 --> 1:46:39.520 a strong script, a good good directing hand by Harrington 1:46:40.000 --> 1:46:43.639 makes me want to read Harrington's book. And yeah, bravo, 1:46:43.760 --> 1:46:45.439 bravo do all involved. I liked it. 1:46:45.720 --> 1:46:49.760 Yeah, absolutely definitely worth checking out. All right, we're going 1:46:49.800 --> 1:46:53.080 to go and close out this episode of Weird House Cinema. 1:46:53.120 --> 1:46:55.360 But we'll just remind everyone out there that Stuffed to 1:46:55.360 --> 1:46:57.599 Bow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast 1:46:57.600 --> 1:46:59.839 with core episodes and Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays, 1:46:59.800 --> 1:47:02.080 with set aside most serious concerns to just talk about 1:47:02.120 --> 1:47:05.240 a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. 1:47:05.360 --> 1:47:05.960 If you run. 1:47:05.880 --> 1:47:08.559 Letterbox dot com, look us up there, we're Weird House. 1:47:08.800 --> 1:47:11.120 We have a nice list of all the movies that 1:47:11.160 --> 1:47:13.160 we've covered over the years there and sometimes a peek 1:47:13.160 --> 1:47:16.120 ahead at what comes next and wherever you happen to 1:47:16.240 --> 1:47:18.479 listen to this show or watch this show, because if 1:47:18.479 --> 1:47:20.320 you're on Netflix you get to get the video portion 1:47:20.400 --> 1:47:23.200 as well. 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