Night Tide

Don't get me wrong... I don't think this is a great achievement in film making.

I stumbled across this movie on late night TV, back in the early days of UHF, when, at 13 or 14, it was very exciting to me to have new channels that were so low budget that they showed things that, in the light of mainstream, 3 channel, VHF programming, seemed very much like they were being beamed in from another galaxy.

Through the lens of adolescent angst that I saw it through, this is a movie about unbearable loneliness, brilliantly captured by Dennis Hopper, whose only way out of his loneliness is through a beautiful woman from another world that he can't fully understand.

Like Kabuki theater on Darvon, he moves through the shadows of this overfiltered dreamworld of seaside 1960. The real monster is loneliness, and unlike most horror movies, the monster wins this one.

The setting, the off season seaside resort (and it could have been any, not just Venice Beach) was perfect, being there by oneself is possibly the loneliest experience one could have, hinting at a livelier, fun=filled world that, because of time, is unattainable.

It represents to me, maybe the first "indie" film I saw and recognized as one, "indie" in the original sense of a movie that was not made to be a box office hit, but because someone HAD to make a movie about something they felt strongly about, or had an artistic vision that had to be shared. Many of the earlier examples of these movies found their way onto UHF, because they were cheap to rent. But they got me hooked, and as soon as I could drive, sought out the art theaters in nearby towns that showed what was then called "underground" cinema, Kenneth Anger, John Waters (pre-flamingoes) I am Curious (Yellow and Blue.) These films are not as enchanting to me now, but then, none of them ever lived up to Night Tide for me.

For sentimental reasons, this has always been, and will always be, one of my very favorite movies.