166 Night Tide

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MichaelB
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166 Night Tide

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 07, 2019 5:04 am

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NIGHT TIDE
(Curtis Harrington, 1961)
Release date: 27 January 2020
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK premiere)


Pre-order here.

Presented by Nicolas Winding Refn in a new 4K restoration, Curtis Harrington’s acclaimed fantasy-thriller, featuring Dennis Hopper (The Last Movie) in his first starring role, is an offbeat classic of American cinema. Hopper plays a sailor on shore leave, when he meets a young woman (Linda Lawson) who may not be as she seems…

Exclusive to this two-disc set is a bonus Blu-ray devoted to Harrington’s short films, encompassing his seven decades as a filmmaker and featuring experimental works, documentaries, and the two adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher that bookended his career.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION 2x BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

DISC ONE: NIGHT TIDE


• New 4K restoration
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with writer-director Curtis Harrington and actor Dennis Hopper (1998)
• Audio commentary with writer and film programmer Tony Rayns (2020)
Harrington on Harrington (2018, 25 mins): wide-ranging archival interview with the filmmaker
Sinister Image: Curtis Harrington (1987, 57 mins): two episodes from David Del Valle’s series devoted to cult cinematic figures in conversation, featuring a career-spanning interview with the director
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: publicity and promotional material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

DISC TWO: DREAM LOGIC: THE SHORT FILMS OF CURTIS HARRINGTON (LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE DISC)

• High Definition remasters
• Original mono audio
• Eight short films spanning Harrington’s seven decades as a filmmaker, including experimental works, documentaries and his career-bookending Edgar Allan Poe adaptations: The Fall of the House of Usher (1942, 10 mins); Fragment of Seeking (1946, 14 mins); Picnic (1948, 23 mins); On the Edge (1949, 6 mins); The Assignation (1953, 8 mins); The Wormwood Star (1956, 10 mins); The Four Elements (1966, 13 mins); Usher (2002, 37 mins)
• Image gallery: production photography and a rare selection from Harrington’s personal collection
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

• Limited edition exclusive 80-page book featuring new writing on Night Tide by Paul Duane, Curtis Harrington on Night Tide and the short films, archival articles by Harrington on horror cinema, experimental films and the making of Picnic, an overview of critical responses, Peter Conheim on the restoration of Night Tide, and film credits
• Limited edition exclusive set of five facsimile lobby cards
• UK premieres on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies

#PHILTD166
BBFC cert: PG
REGION FREE
EAN: 5060697920161

GoodOldNeon
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#2 Post by GoodOldNeon » Thu Nov 07, 2019 6:17 am

What is Nicolas Winding Refn's connection to this film?

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MichaelB
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#3 Post by MichaelB » Thu Nov 07, 2019 6:37 am

Obviously he wasn't even born when the film was actually made, but the restoration wouldn't have been possible without his input - in fact, it's thanks to him that the original negative survives at all, because it was his acquisition of it and swift realisation that it needed urgent attention (vinegar syndrome isn't just the name of a cult film label) that permitted this project to go ahead.

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tenia
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#4 Post by tenia » Thu Nov 07, 2019 7:19 am

Refn started about 5 years ago to fund or curate some movies restorations (outside his own movies). He notably helped Andy Milligan's Nightbirds to be restored, for instance, but also Joseph L. Anderson's Spring Night, Summer Night, Saul Resnick's The Maidens of Fetish Street, Bert Williams' The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds or Joselito Rodríguez's Santo contra cerebro del mal, usually in 4K. He usually funds through his own money those restorations.
Note that some (most ?) of these are available on free streaming on Refn's own platform.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#5 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Nov 07, 2019 8:11 am

He also put out that book The Act of Seeing collecting exploitation film posters from the era.

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Altair
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#6 Post by Altair » Thu Nov 07, 2019 2:26 pm

tenia wrote:
Thu Nov 07, 2019 7:19 am
Refn started about 5 years ago to fund or curate some movies restorations (outside his own movies). He notably helped Andy Milligan's Nightbirds to be restored, for instance, but also Joseph L. Anderson's Spring Night, Summer Night, Saul Resnick's The Maidens of Fetish Street, Bert Williams' The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds or Joselito Rodríguez's Santo contra cerebro del mal, usually in 4K. He usually funds through his own money those restorations.
Note that some (most ?) of these are available on free streaming on Refn's own platform.
I've been mixed on his films, but it's wonderful to see a younger filmmaker following in the footsteps of Scorsese et al, and really putting the money where his mouth is on film history, especially with restorting films which fall outside of the canon.

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tenia
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#7 Post by tenia » Thu Nov 07, 2019 4:00 pm

I had the opportunity to tell him exactly this at a signing event in 2015 and that made him smile a lot before he answered me "you should in which state some of these movies are".
He really seems to care about movies as a cultural thing and is really going all out on doing what he can for movies he like and wants to show around to other people. He came at Lyon a couple of years to accompany these movies' restorations too. He's indeed rare to see filmmakers this young doing this.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#8 Post by M Sanderson » Fri Jan 03, 2020 5:40 am

This could be the release of the year. Harrington is an important Director, culturally, due to his willingness to experiment. Have to say his late Usher short is a remarkable little film.

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The Curious Sofa
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#9 Post by The Curious Sofa » Fri Jan 03, 2020 6:19 am

I’ve always found Harrington’s films more intriguing to read about, then to watch. Night Tide is a film I was long looking forward to, due to comparisons to Carnival of Souls and Cat People, two films I love. I thought it was as flatly directed as the other films I’d seen if his, lacking the atmosphere and poetry of those two films. I was similarly underwhelmed by Queen of Blood (obviously limited by the task at hand), his two hag-horror films and Ruby. I saw very little of a filmmaker who started in experimental cinema in those films, they look like TV movies to me. Never got round to Games, which has a great cast.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#10 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jan 03, 2020 4:58 pm


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Re: 166 Night Tide

#11 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 08, 2020 3:44 am


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Re: 166 Night Tide

#12 Post by alacal2 » Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:17 am

I had a completely different and far more positive reaction to this than The Curious Sofa (having just discovered I already had the Kino version in my Kevyip pile) which is best reflected in the Mondo Digital review. There is a real, nagging melancholic feel to this film and the 'out of kilter mood' is enhanced by its coastal (it really is 'Cat People by the Sea'!) setting and the fact that most of the scenes of what is still essentially a 'horror' film are shot in daylight rather than at night.
Dennis Hopper gives a surprisingly sensitive performance (Mondo Digital describes it as 'restrained' but I think its more natural than that) of someone totally caught up in something both beyond his control or understanding. I can appreciate how some may find the pace way to slow and without focus but I think its very 'aimlessness' is its strength.
Indicator's cover could easily mislead some into thinking this was a 'monster movie' but the packaging really is superb and the whole set has the potential to be this year's Night of the Demon. May its collaboration with Refn continue.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#13 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jan 21, 2020 6:23 pm


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HitchcockLang
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#14 Post by HitchcockLang » Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:32 am

Received my copy yesterday here in the US. Package is gorgeous! It does have the same sticky tape residue issue that Scum had but Night of the Demon did not. I also noticed a teensy-tiny typo in the booklet with the table of contents having a section listed for page 53 but it actually begins on page 43. Minor quibbles and not real complaints. I mention them here only in the odd chance that they may be of use to the Indicator insiders who read these things.

Mostly, it looks like another phenomenal package from my favorite little boutique label, and I can't wait to dive in and explore Harrington's oeuvre.

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tenia
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#15 Post by tenia » Thu Jan 23, 2020 12:09 pm

While I've seen Indicator releases more loaded in terms of extras (audio commentaries aside, I felt there weren't so many things focused directly on the movie itself), it does feel like a very complete package around Harrington, and the inclusion of the short features previously released by Flicker Alley is tremendous. I've been on the verge of ordering them, but they're just so expensive to import I never bit the bullet, so including them here and keeping the price relatively low really makes it feel like a 2-in-1 package.

The 4K restoration is indeed gorgeous, though it does have quite a tendency to blown highlights. I wasn't particularly looking at this in-motion, though it did look obvious to me it was using the whole 0-255 range, but when I did a bunch of relatively random screencaps for my French review, I ended up having a third of them showing blown highlights.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#16 Post by M Sanderson » Thu Jan 30, 2020 4:52 am

Fabulous stuff. Very rich in detail. I enjoyed the film far more this time. This hadn’t been among my favourite Harringtons. Commentators before me have cited how it acts as a link between the Corman gothics & the New Horror of Carnival of Souls and Night of the Living Dead. The focus on deadly romance and monstrous femininity over rationality/logic of the former; the mix of realism and expressionism (minus the industrial roots and style of Romero & Harvey) of the latter.

For me, I’d recently bought Arrow’s Vincent Price in 6 Gothic Tales and Indicator’s Dietrich and Von Sternberg at Paramount. And Night Tide, especially in all the glorious detail of this 4k scan, brought together my interests in both. There is a really sensual shooting style, in particular exquisite lighting filtering through fish nets, curtains, windows in some of the more romantic scenes. Obviously we know that Harrington loved Von Sternberg’s use of mise en scene.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#17 Post by M Sanderson » Thu Jan 30, 2020 4:53 am

Any more Harringtons on the cards?

Is there a restoration of Queen of Blood out there, for instance?

Anyone anywhere interested in restoring Ruby to its director’s exact version (including his own ending) with a fresh scan?

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The Curious Sofa
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#18 Post by The Curious Sofa » Thu Jan 30, 2020 7:10 am

M Sanderson wrote:
Thu Jan 30, 2020 4:53 am
Any more Harringtons on the cards?

Is there a restoration of Queen of Blood out there, for instance?

Not counting a 4K release, I'm not sure how much better it could look than the Kino Lorber release. One technical problem which is impossible to overcome is that AIP built Queen of Blood around the special effects footage from the Soviet science fiction film Mechte Navstrechu (A Dream Come True) which it had acquired. The Soviet original was shot in 1.33:1 and got cropped to 1.85:1 to make it fit the aspect ratio of Queen of Blood. The US portion of the Kino Lorber release looks excellent, but the Soviet footage, which is the most visually beautiful aspect of the film, looks grainy and washed out. I've seen Mechte Navstrechu on the big screen and it's a gorgeous looking (if rather plodding) film. I suppose the way a future blu-ray release of Queen of Blood could improve on the current one, is to include the Soviet original.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#19 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:26 am

I made my way through Curtis Harrington’s shorts on the second disc prior to the feature to contexualize his progression and potential auteurism, a strategy I recommend as they helped me appreciate Night Tide more than I likely would have without the base.

Starting things off, his adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher is notably very amateurish and choppy (but let's give the kid a break, he was only 14-year-old when making it); however the editing techniques at times indicate an understanding of film language, and there are moments of uncomfortable suspense that linger unexpectedly after a series of abrupt edits, which suggests effective results stemming from a willingness to explore ways to manipulate the image. It's clearly inspired by the earlier film and one gets the sense that he saw it enough times to dream it, with an experimental feel that recalls more modern surrealist filmmakers like Jarman in form, though more likely because of a lack of resources and skills rather than intentionally obscure.

Fragment of Seeking was a fun little construction of eerie tension in watching: voyeurism towards voyeurs. I was swept up in this from the first few minutes where perspective is panned back in jagged cuts rather than camera movement, and the interest of a mysterious person in another mysterious person was an exciting exercise in enveloping the audience through provocative castration of mastery. The main characters’ glasses shining light off of them functioned like an alien in some moments and further barred him from audience alignment (the bright light amplifies to obstruct his face when he first removes them too!) The use of lighting in general is clearly what is being played with here as well as orchestrating the rhythms of pacing to build tension. The short was a strong success for me with a looming score breeding anxiety and some impressive imagery. For an early, amateurish film, it functioned incredibly well and earned its genre delivery. By far my favorite of the included shorts.

Picnic was less successful but I get what he was going for by drawing out the tension with extra fat to establish a range for pacing. The long shots of the image he’s seeking work for a minute but it gets old quick and isn’t very compelling as a whole, though I do appreciate Harrington’s style in following and approaching people, creating an unsettling stalker-ish vibe in attempting to forge connections. This follows the previous film as a step deeper in blending narrow zombified perspective with the pursuit of connection, which of course is ill-fitting, and another score that unpacks the anxiety inherent in this futile yet compulsive need. The ideas aren’t entirely fleshed out but there are some clever visual achievements towards the end that remind me of the types of films Lynch was inspired by, just not as good. As the film goes further off the rails it does get better though.

On the Edge is a very short picture that serves as an opposing effort to the prior film that was too ambitious for the skills available. This is like an anti-fable with a message that is a puzzle, expertly paced and existing in a strange dreamlike milieu like a tempered Lynch film. It was slight but well-realised by biting off just as much as it can chew, and probably ranks as my second favorite of the bunch.

The Assignation: More cryptic stalker voyeurism, this time in color on a riviera in garb.

The Wormwood Star: An eclectic palpitating score sets up this oddball that’s more assaultive than the other pictures, partly due to the use of sound and finally language, which is installed for the first time to chant cultish jargon over images of abnormal figures in drawn art. The focus on drawings is a nice change of pace and in step with Harrington’s interest in mysterious imagery without feeling the need to do more than pan across these pages. It’s an uneven shift that ventures away from the polar bookends and loses itself for the bulk, but I can’t say I minded too much. If only Harrington used his willingness to abrasively cut with sharp editing tools here instead of meandering around, which would have made this more wildly experimental, but it’s still different and cool pictures are nice to look at for a few minutes.

The Four Elements had me laughing about a minute in when the by now typically enigmatic style on narrating about the mysticism of nature was revealed to be
SpoilerShow
a documentary on man’s banal mechanics of natural resources.
Otherwise it was a slog, but mostly because I just didn’t care or recognize the point except as a self-reflexive joke.

Usher is a modern outlier, shot in 2002 but still in the tone of the earlier, and stronger, shorts. The production value and acting matches that of an amateur work though, just updated and longer. This quasi-Usher adaptation is played with a sense of self-awareness in contextual tinkering but not elsewhere. This is straighter without much experimental filtering or eccentric threads woven in, and unfortunately I found it completely uninspired and dull. Too bad it’s also the longest, running nearly 37 minutes, and only gets cheesier as it goes along, sadly not on purpose. The silver lining is that some of the beats hit unintentional comedy very similar to The Room, so that was a treat, especially the Ouija board scene that made me laugh harder than I’d like to admit at the horrendous perfs, and the silent panning of apathetic figures at a deadpan party that may have actually been purposed as such. Either way, I won’t be watching this one again anytime soon, unless some people are in the mood for the pleasures of campy exposition once this quarantine is over.


As for the main feature, I have to give credit where credit is due: NWR and co. have put a lot of effort into this mostly dazzling restoration. Night Tide starts out with the typical male hypnotized by enigmatic alluring female, and soon finds himself inexplicably drawn to her. It’s interesting watching this following his shorts because the thread that binds at least half of those to this isn’t subtle at all. No wonder Refn loves this, as the directors both find something authentic about their paralyzed captivation with sex, and really the denominator of beauty, as well as anxiety around its inescapable pull that has a menacing side to it. There are similar slow pans too here especially across stunning natural settings and close ups on the beautiful mermaid, whether she's conscious or not. This obsession with beauty feels shallowly superficial compared to Refn’s capability to ask more probing questions with his Tarkovsky-inspired philosophical side to balance out the grindhouse artifice, but there is something more organic about Harrington's exhibition of the beautiful. There is an existential element to this film as well though, filtered through rigidly fixed emotions of love and fear, emanated in passion and attention to the stakes of life. It’s not as deep as it sounds, but it sure is pretty to look at.

While the film sets itself up to be a horror romance, it transforms into something even more hybrid, with noir vibes - especially the notion of fatalism - imposing on both sexes: his through sexual gravity and hers through a forceful linkage in her identity to other, potentially cursed, forces of oppression that contain her natural free spirit that Hopper doesn’t possess. The film also plays with lighting just as his early shorts do, taking place mostly in daylight and even the indoor spaces are bright or have a lighting effect - to comical degrees at times if operating under the impression that Harrington is obsessed with lighting, like the strobe lights in Mora’s apt! The final act veers strictly into that noirish territory
SpoilerShow
revealing all to be a criminal ruse of jealousy and manipulation perpetrated by the "mermaid's" patriarch- including literally constructing her own false identity to own her... sick stuff. This flipping of the gender roles around against the femme fatale trope gives some food to chew on about sexual politics and those oppressive forces hinted at earlier without explaining the same-sex ominous threat in the female siren from the beginning!
Overall I liked this fine, and the genre-bending lands in a space that carries dark implications, is ripe with its awareness of gender expectations in cinema and life, and still retains cryptic mystery. Unfortunately it's all still very thin, but as an atmospheric exhibit that plays like a B-horror/noir/romance with some analytical alterations, Harrington's film still exudes originality. There are some beautiful and memorable scenes and scenery and the man is clearly passionate about an interest in the allure of beauty, which everyone can relate to, I hope.

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jazzo
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#20 Post by jazzo » Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:28 am

therewillbeblus, I just wanted to thank you for the always thoughtful and empathetic takes that you eke time out to write on each and every film. Honestly, I don't know where you find the time, but I'm sure glad that you do.

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knives
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#21 Post by knives » Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:48 am

If I remember correctly from the Flicker Alley notes The Four Elements was a commission job so there's not really a joke there.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#22 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:58 am

It's certainly not a joke of a film, but the way everything is introduced in the context of how Harrington operates throughout the earlier shorts struck me as funny. Even if it wasn't intentional (it may not have been), that he cannot remove himself from that cryptic buildup even in something as monotonous as this is droll. But yeah, nothing about the actual film beyond this observation indicates any playfulness or intention to insert himself into the film, and there's no way he's being self-reflexive as if anyone would know his 'auteurist' touches, it's more subtle if anything. Either way the sharp contrast and deadpan delivery in the reveal of the doc was humorous to me, and doesn't hinge on whether this was intentional, but I'll die on that hill alone.
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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knives
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#23 Post by knives » Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:04 pm

I'd agree with that overall assessment; I was just trying to build context to it.

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Re: 166 Night Tide

#24 Post by A man stayed-put » Sat Apr 04, 2020 6:32 am

This is, at time of writing, available for £19.99 on Amazon UK.

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rapta
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Re: 166 Night Tide

#25 Post by rapta » Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:56 am

A man stayed-put wrote:
Sat Apr 04, 2020 6:32 am
This is, at time of writing, available for £19.99 on Amazon UK.
I'd be quick on this too - just noticed there will be a standard edition released next month so they must be confident this has properly gone OOP. Sold out at HMV, Zoom, Zavvi...

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