Sirens go off: A figure of speech, as it were.
Spoiler Theater: In Curtis Hanson’s beautiful, haunting and unsettling romantic thriller, it’s a case of Boy meets Girl, Boy gets Girl and Boy, Oh Boy, does Boy lose Girl, But That’s Sort Of A Good Thing? Night Tide is a dark and moody film set by the Pacific, with an old pier carnival and its seaside surroundings as the main setting and what could be seen by some today as a few problematic elements in some of its troubled characters. I still think it’s an excellent film, mind you. But after watching it with a few friends recently, I see it’s also a film where some viewers applying more modern thoughts to its story may find an issue with their overall enjoyment. You’ll see.
A young sailor on leave named Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) goes to a seaside amusement park at night. He pops into a jazz club where he sees a lovely woman (Linda Lawson) sitting alone enjoying the music. He crosses the room, asks her if he can sit at her table because he can’t see the musicians from where he is, then proceeds to sit facing the woman, not the musicians. He tries to strike up more conversation, but she asks him to let her listen to the tunes instead. He then tries to buy her a drink twice, but she refuses both times. Suddenly, a strange, middle-aged black-clad woman (Marjorie Cameron) comes into the club, approaches the other woman and starts speaking an untranslated foreign language (Greek?) to her. The young woman is upset by this and quickly hands Johnny some cash to pay for whatever she was drinking and rushes out of the club.
I first saw this really awful and brilliantly bad sci-fi flick very late at night some years ago and again recently after overhearing someone in a diner hilariously recast the Avengers movies as period pieces set in the early 60’s. Yes, Tor Johnson was The Hulk in that person’s version. While you roll that around in your noggin, be warned that The Beast of Yucca Flats is a pretty horrible movie with only three redeeming factors:
Yet another Charles H. Schneer/Ray Harryhausen production featuring a brilliant Bernard Herrmann soundtrack, 1961’s Mysterious Island is another classic fans of the master stop motion animator cite as some of his best work of the decade as well as a pretty solid genre entry. It’s certainly got a nicely varied cast of creatures going for it from a giant crab, an very angry and huge prehistoric bird, a few huge bees in their cliffside hive and a majorly over-sized cephalopod near the end. You also get a nice balloon escape at the beginning that gets most of the cast to that titular island, a few ladies tossed into the mix courtesy of a shipwreck and a surprise appearance by Captain Nemo that adds another layer of the fantastic to the film…
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 