In these two aquatic tales, our protagonist has found the object of his desire and the feeling's mutual, but both are hounded by some sex-negative femme d'un certain âge who -- contrary to the original connotations of the phrase -- believes il faut qu'on bloque le coq.
Night Tide (1961)
Grade: C-
Dennis Hopper: a good actor, sure. A great actor? Maybe. But what he isn't is right for the part of Johnny, the ingenuous sailor smitten with mysterious carnie Mora (Linda Lawson), who may or may not be the mermaid she impersonates for a living.
Johnny insistently presses his attentions on Mora, who's standoffish at first but eventually caves and joins him for an awkward oceanside meal, complete with unexpected gull-stroking.
Soon enough the couple are lounging on the beach, with hugs, kisses, implied sex, and a bit of ass-gazing to boot.
But rumors of trouble persistently swirl around Mora, and local girl Ellen (Luana Anders) is only too happy to pass those rumors along, seeing as how she too wants to get some of that sweet Hopper ass.
Funny to see Anders, so sexy in Dementia-13, play mousy here, and quite convincingly too: whatever sensuality Ellen has is latent and implicitly mired in subservience.
Night Tide has good bones, but Hopper hits all the wrong notes, sorry to say. Instead of wide-eyed and open-hearted, he just seems confused and vaguely distracted -- like a stoner, or a recent TBI patient.
Or if he's trying for brooding and obsessed, that intensity isn't exactly apparent in his body language or line reading, so maybe the guy just needed better direction and more time to hone his acting chops. And if Hopper's Johnny is just meant to be yet another emotionally stunted child of WWII and the Fifties...well, who cares?
In the plus column, Night Tide is equipped with attractive scenery, evocative set-pieces, a decent script, and a plot which isn't altogether predictable. With one or two exceptions, it never embarrasses itself in the many ways such films often do.
But if it's trying to be one of those understated, haunting films whose imagery and characters stick with you for years afterward -- like, say, a Carnival of Souls -- well, that just didn't happen for Night Tide. In a way, it's a good reminder that plausible ingredients don't always yield a compelling result; not every record with Fender Rhodes and funky drums was a winner, after all, nor does every dish with truffle oil, crème fraîche, and chipotle win its chef a James Beard award.
But if blame for Night Tide's non-classic status has to be assigned, it must go squarely on Dennis Hopper's shoulders. His manly, massageable, yet curiously expressionless shoulders.
She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)
Grade: D-
For its first few minutes, She Gods of Shark Reef conjures some real interest. The opening set-piece -- which features, among other things, an impressive-looking assassin who clutches his blade between his teeth as he swims toward his target -- is taut and intriguing, though a bit hard to make out.
Alas, these things don't often last in the land of Mill Creek box sets, and soon a bit of voiceover narration -- that dreaded saboteur of all things action -- escorts us to the small Pacific island where the remainder of She Gods of Shark Reef is to take place. True, we still have POC adroitly transporting blades in the water:
But Corman et al. decided this Shark needed a WASP injection, provided in the form of recently shipwrecked brothers Chris and Lee Johnston (Bill Cord and Don Durant, respectively). No points for guessing that the blond is the good one!
This idyllic Pacific island -- which definitely isn't Hawaii, how dare you even think that? -- is populated exclusively by moderately attractive, intermittently Polynesian women of marriageable age. When they're not making a living as pearl divers for "The Island Company", they sing, dance, do crafts...
...and practice religious ceremonies involving various combinations of gods, sharks, human sacrifice, and underwater statuary.
If all this sounds like paradise, you haven't reckoned with the presence of Queen Pua (Jeanne Gerson), a hatchet-faced woman who makes some effort to accommodate the unexpected visitors, but whose dedication to the blockage of cockage is nonpareil.
Why, in the midst of all this swarth, she's also as white as baking soda is -- as far as we could tell -- left unexplained.
Does one of the natives (Lisa Montell) fall in love with the "good" brother? Of course she does!
Does Queen Pua do her best to raise a red flag against the indecent writhing of hips and commingling of fluids? Of course she does!
Is there pearl thievery, breaking of taboos, and other trouble in paradise? And is the fattest character the target of humor and/or comic violence? You'd better believe it!
Do these and other events lead to mounting tension, and ultimately violence, between the brothers? Of course they do!
And did we care? Eh, not really. Have a shark.
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