Blood Tide (1982)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

In ancient times, the inhabitants of a small Greek island appeased an evil sea monster in the age old tradition: with the offer of sacrificial virgins. Thousands of years later, the long dormant creature is awoken from its slumber when hard-drinking archaeologist Frye (James Earl Jones) blasts open its underwater cavern in search of treasure. With the beast once again on the prowl for innocent young women (with whom it intends to mate and then presumably eat), and with the locals reverting to their old customs, honeymooners Neil and Sherry Grice (Martin Kove and Mary Louise Weller) fear that Neil's little sister Madeline (Deborah Shelton) might become the next virgin to make the monster's acquaintance.Co-written by Island of Death director Nico Mastorakis, co-produced by Aussie exploitation legend Brian Trenchard-Smith, and starring a great cast (which also includes José Ferrer as the island's mayor), Blood Tide definitely had the potential to be one nifty little monster flick. It certainly benefits from decent scenery, good underwater photography, solid performances, and some decent eye candy (in the shapely forms of Weller, Shelton and Lydia Cornell as Barbara, Frye's squeeze) but the lacklustre direction, slow pacing and lack of decent monster action make the film a frustratingly dull experience for the most part.After way too much boring chit-chat and not nearly enough gruesome encounters with the underwater creature (the disappointing gore tally is a couple of body parts in the surf and some blood in the water, while the beast is only seen for a brief few seconds), Frye ends the terror with the help of some high-explosives, which begs the question 'If the thing could be defeated all along, why didn't the islanders try trapping and killing it thousands of years earlier and save on a few virgins?'.

Something went horribly wrong. It's 1982, and we have a long list of positives, that should have delivered a good creature feature. Start with Technicolor exotic Greek island locations, add some slight feeling of cinematography, artistic set up shots, add to this some outstanding actors and some scantily clad females frolicking on the sunlit beach. It's a long list of pluses. How did it fail? As mentioned before, there are a solid troupe of actors led by James Earl Jones, and Jose Ferrer. They sit, talk and react, almost all in this movie would do a "Actors Studio" improv session proud. They think about their parts, and try to guess their motivation. That is what many of the scenes feel like. The only thing missing is a comprehensible scrip. As stated, the individual elements are good, The Archaeologist who discovers the Islands "dark secret" The ancient monastery with kindly Nuns who fear the "dark secret" The Islanders, a superstitious bunch led by Jose Ferrer, who want the intrusive island visitors to be gone, The brash young newlyweds seeking the lost sister, and the treasure hunter, James Earl Jones who unleashes the islands "dark secret". Given these elements a screenwriter with half a sense of direction could churn out an acceptable product. But no, that was not to happen. I feel the director hired someone to design the monster, the key to the movies action, but in the end was unhappy with the creatures design, and decided not to use it, the "hokey" creature shows on screen for a total of four seconds. I think it shows up as a costume in the islanders "folk dance" The problem is, without a monster, the show has no anchor for all the fine acting, as was stated by a finer poet then me, "The center can not hold, things fall apart!".On the plus side, the actress who played the ditsy Barbara was fun to watch, and had some good lines, The actress who played Marylin, the "conflicted" sister, did not have a convincing grasp of what she was suppose to be doing, archaeologist, or sacrificial maiden. The lack of logic, not usually a stumbling point in creature features, here became an insurpassable obstacle. I was never aware of James Earl Jones characters reasoning, but he sure sounded good. The ending was a confusing, poorly plotted attempt to bring the elements together. Thats the reason for the major "fail" The stronger the good points, the harder the fall.

Considering the talent involved, Blood Tide is a total disappointment. The film follows the emergence of a legendary sea monster after an unethical treasure hunter dynamites the wall that held it in its den for thousands of years. (Why didn't it starve to death?)The acting is truly abysmal. James Earl Jones spends most of his time muttering quotes from Othello, while Jose Ferrer spends his time translating for the other Greek characters. (The film has no subtitles, even in scenes where all the characters speak Greek.) The supporting cast is completely useless, with terrible line deliveries. This is especially true of the virginal heroine.The gore is extremely limited, and the monster is only seen very briefly. There is a rather interesting hint that the monster molests the women sacrificed to it, but this is never explored. In the hands of a more talented director such as David Cronenberg, it might have been interesting.

Can anyone believe I was actually looking forward to seeing this one? No? Well, me neither. It must have been the combination of James Earl Jones and a demon Fish-creature in a Greek movie. And God knows I wanted to like this one, but it's just a slightly abominable movie. Quite tedious too, on several occasions. But still, it wasn't a total waste for me. At least it's got that authentic, gritty shot-on-real-film look, instead of that cheap SOV-look nowadays. The opening-scene was very promising. It almost had me convinced this was going to be a good, obscure, creepy horror-flick set on some eerie Greek islands. The musical score also was pretty captivating and re-newed my interest in the movie every time it came on (it sorta felt like an early Carpenter synthesizer-score on acid , sometimes cheesy, sometimes plain weird). It also has creepy nuns and a gorgeous looking leading lady (Mary Louise Weller). Some blond bimbo's ripped apart torso and limbs are found on a beach. And the Sea Creature is shown in very brief but promising flashes in two scenes of the movie... But in the end, we don't get to see anything more from it. Just when it's about to rise out of the water, it gets blown to pieces. Damn, what a let-down! OK, so I did mention some good things there, didn't I? Well that's only about 20% of the movie. The rest is totally boring, uneventful ugly-looking crap. James Earl Jones is just laughable in this one, citing Shakespeare and ripping open water-melons with his bare hands... To me, it wasn't a total waste of time perhaps (don't really remember why, frankly), but I can imagine to others it will be.