Blood Tide (1982) is a low-rent The Deep crossed with something like Up From The Depths. It’s not that good. Yet, I couldn’t look away…Some spoilers will happen.
Blood Tide
Blood Tide came to us via the British people. Despite this, it is directed by Richard Jefferies, who is American. Jefferies also directed Scarecrows, Cold Creek Manor and did uncredited work on Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Tron: Legacy.
Greek writer Nico Mastorakis provided the screenplay. Mastorakis worked exclusively in the realm of cheap thrillers: The Zero Boys, The Wind and Nightmare at Noon.
Together, Jefferies and Mastorakis take us on a journey to an isolated island village in Greece. Its people have a secret that is neither ancient nor Chinese. Many moons ago, these people sacrificed virgins to an underwater monster. They also insisted on giving the virgins coins for Charon.
Apparently, their mythology is a series of loose appropriation rather than any hard and fast traditions. So, basically, they are like liberal white woman. They just take what they need from a variety of sources to satisfy their own perception of victimhood.
To this village come a husband and wife seeking the man’s sister. They find her, along with a rugged, Othello-quoting diver, his floozy and a monster!
First Blood Tide
Martin Kove portrays the husband. I haven’t seen Kove since my review of Steele Justice. Others may know him from Cobra Kai. Regardless, Kove is basically what you end up with if you drain William Shatner of all irrational confidence.
What does Kove bring to Blood Tide? A swarthy chest and some really incredible hair. It seems like his hair becomes slightly more voluminous with each passing scene.
Mary Louise Weller plays the wife. She has a familiar face and realizing where one has seen her before causes a forehead slap. Of course! She was Mandy Pepperidge in Animal House. And, if you are Chuck Norris fan, she was the love interest in Forced Vengeance.
Ethereal beauty Deborah Shelton (Body Double) is the sister. Some might say her main acting talent is presenting her big green eyes to the camera…and that’s about it. To those people I say, sometimes that is all you need, bigots.
James Earl Jones plays the diver. Jones seems to be having a lot of fun in this role, and it makes a person realize that we maybe missed out on some adventure films featuring Jones as a leading man. He is usually relegated to talky, mentor roles, but he possesses a physicality that does quite well inhabiting the shoes of a rugged character.
Lydia Cornell is Jones’s floozy. She is a poor-man’s Sydney Sweeny and showed up in a lot of 1980s TV shows. She even appeared in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
One other name worth mentioning is Jose Ferrer, father of the great Miguel. Ferrer plays the leader of the Greek island community.
Blood Beach Tide
Blood Tide is currently streaming on Prime. I gave it a chance because its poster is wonderfully garish and lurid. I figured it would be terrible. Maybe I would make it about five minutes into it…at the most. Instead, I watched the entire thing from beginning to end.
Watching an entire movie from beginning to end is a rare and wonderful thing these days. I usually have to take them in thirty-minute chunks in between episodes of real-life, which lack a laugh track and seem to always end with things worse instead of exactly the same.
Sorry…the white liberal woman inside me escaped for a moment.
As I watched, I kept wondering, why am I still watching this? Eventually, I reached a conclusion. I enjoyed how much Blood Tide looked like a movie.
Blood Tide contained no washed-out colors. It didn’t have snippet editing. Nothing onscreen had the fuzzy weightlessness of CGI. The movie was simply there, man. Cinematographer Aris Stavrou knew how to lens a film. No one told him this was schlock. Stavrou rolled up his sleeves and approached Blood Tide with pride in his profession. It shows.
There Will Be Blood Tide
All of the images in Blood Tide were a treat for my eyeballs.
The women were genuinely pretty, with real faces and forms — no plastique and carefully-cut wardrobes to create a hyper-realistic fantasy. None of the men were carefully-groomed. They looked rugged, sweaty and had faces seemingly etched from wood (ebony in Jones’s case).
Except Kove, of course. His hair has never looked more luxurious.
The scenery popped from the screen with vibrant colors. The blue sky and sea nicely contrasted the white and yellows of the stone and brick town. Whatever film stock they used captured soul.
Blood Tide contains nothing to complain about visually. As for the story and effects…weeellll…
Okay, problems exist here. The story is a bit disconnected, and the characters are a bit lost in it. The plot is more a collection of ideas than a clockwork mechanism. Yet, some charm is found in found in that regardless. Blood Tide projects a tone of dreamy, fairy-tale logic, which works well with the story presented.
Blood Tide Diamond
Oh yeah, and the monster looks terrible. Blood Tide is roughly eighty-four minutes long. I would estimate the monster is visible for perhaps seven seconds, all told. When I could see it, it reminded me a bit of Jerry Dandridge’s final form in Fright Night (1985). You know, when he transformed into that skeleton thing at the end and blew up. Total wonkiness in that department.
One would think that would be the end of it, but Blood Tide has one more trick up its sleeve. It goes out on a total what-the-heck-was-that-about moment. Kove rescues Shelton in the end. They are brother and sister. Yet, Shelton kisses Kove on the lips in a way that is not sibling affection.
On a movie like this, one has to ask themselves…did the people making this movie forget the characters were brother and sister? Did this movie get recut into something after the fact?
I don’t think so. Blood Tide contained a blurry, sexual subtext. The kiss seemed to be deliberate choice. Upon reflection, one could interpret it as a fairly unsettling ending.
The Tide Is Out
Blood Tide — total guilty pleasure for me. I cannot in good conscious recommend it. That didn’t stop me from having a good time with it, though. I present myself for mockery, unafraid. Let the tide of it wash over me. It’s in my blood to accept responsibility for my shame…
