The Dennis Hopper movie buried by the studio: “We couldn’t get a theatre”
When he died in 2010, the world remembered Dennis Hopper as a phenomenal actor. After appearing in two movies with James Dean, a rare instance of someone having multiple shared credits with the fallen icon, he made his name with the likes of The Gunfight at the OK Corral, Cool Hand Luke, and Easy Rider, which he also directed. More modern audiences will know him as the villain from Speed and a part of the infamous Waterworld.
Back in the early days of his career, before he was a major star, Hopper appeared in a number of smaller productions that would later become of immense interest to movie nerds. One of his earliest roles was in a fantasy film called The Story of Mankind, in which he played Napoleon Bonaparte of all people. He was also in The Young Land, a western designed as a vehicle for John Wayne’s son, Patrick. Then there’s the curious case of Night Tide.
Released in 1961, Night Tide is a fantasy horror inspired by the Edgar Allen Poe poem Annabel Lee. Starring Hopper in his first lead role, the film centres around Johnny Drake, a sailor who, while on shore leave, falls in love with the beautiful Mora (Linda Lawson). However, just when things are looking good, Drake grows suspicious of his new squeeze, panicking that she may, in fact, be a mermaid attempting to lure him to a watery grave.
“That was a wonderful, wonderful film,” Hopper told Vulture. “We made that film for $28,000. It was on Time Magazine’s ‘Ten Best Films’ to see the year it was distributed – or more accurately, the year it wasn’t distributed.” This cryptic line betrays the reason why Night Tide isn’t more of a classic. After a strong showing at the Spoleto Film Festival in Italy, plans were made to distribute the picture in the US. Unfortunately, Virgo, the production company behind it, defaulted on a loan they’d received from Pathé Lab. As a result, the film’s release was delayed, and its momentum was severely halted.
It was only thanks to the efforts of the great Roger Corman that Night Tide was ever released at all. The legendary B movie director persuaded Pathé to let a different company distribute the film, so they could get their money back. Unfortunately, he chose to release it as part of a double bill with Battle Beyond the Sun, an unpopular Soviet sci-fi film that had been ‘Americanised’ by a young Francis Ford Coppola. This was two years after Night Tide’s original release, by which point it had been almost entirely forgotten.
According to Hopper, there may have been another reason why Night Tide wasn’t picked up. “We couldn’t get anyone to show the film because we didn’t have the union logo on our film,” he said. “We didn’t have approval. We couldn’t get a theatre.” Hopper then proclaimed that Night Tide was “the beginning of the independent cinema movement in this country,” which isn’t strictly speaking true, but it was certainly part of a larger movement.
Hopper’s career was full of stumbling blocks, some of which he created himself. It’s a credit to the man’s tenacity and drive to succeed that he managed to make something of himself, in spite of so many negative circumstances.
