After playing second fiddle to doomed mentor James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, a baby-faced Dennis Hopper landed his first leading role in Curtis Harrington’s independent Night Tide. As Johnny, Hopper’s a naive Navy serviceman spending his shore leave on the Santa Monica Pier. Inside a jazz club, he meets the mysterious Mora. How mysterious? The woman lives above a merry-go-round, calls eating at 11 a.m. “breakfast” and works at the boardwalk’s carnival as a “lovely siren of the sea.” That’s a euphemism for “mermaid.”

The longer the sailor courts Mora (Linda Lawson of William Castle’s Let’s Kill Uncle), the more Johnny suspects she may be an actual mermaid. After all, she’s skittish and vague about her background, and followed around by a witch (Marjorie Cameron, subject of Harrington’s The Wormwood Star). Then there’s the matter of Mora’s boss (Sherlock Holmes film series veteran Gavin Muir, in his final big-screen appearance) warning Johnny that dating her is literally dangerous, what with the dead boyfriends in her wake.

The first full-length movie from iconoclast writer/director Harrington (Queen of Blood), this is your basic story of boy meets girl, girl might have a smelly fish tail. Causing barely a ripple upon release, the black-and-white SoCal Gothic is revered today as a masterpiece of mood — recognition no doubt accumulated from its longstanding residence in the public domain.

So dreamy is Harrington’s visual spell, any shortcomings — like the phony arms of the octopus Johnny wrestles — tend to fall from a critical eye’s line of sight. Numerous examples of true art can be found among this rinky-dink production’s frames. Although Night Tide is streamable in color, don’t; seriously, it kills a considerably intoxicating vibe. —Rod Lott

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Poor Veronica Lake. The Hollywood icon starred in Preston Sturges’ classic Sullivan’s Travels, burned brightly opposite Alan Ladd in several films noir and earned screen-siren status thanks to That Hair. Yet her career ended as no one anticipated: looking 20 years older than she was, applying maggots to the screaming face of Adolf Hitler.

I speak of the ignoble Flesh Feast. Despite the title, it’s not the doing of H.G. Lewis; if it were, it wouldn’t be so forgotten. Flesh Feast is, however, the first film for writer/director Brad Grinter, who soon enough served up an even bigger turkey — in more ways than one — with Blood Freak.

Lake’s Dr. Frederick uses the aforementioned maggots as the Botox of the day. By manipulating the color spectrum or some bullshit like that, she’s able to make the larvae munch on that savory human skin, effectively de-aging her patients.

While most of the movie takes place in a house — Dr. F does her magic in the basement, as her lady clients bunk upstairs — but begins at an airport where some poor schmo in a phone booth is fatally stabbed by the end of a passing janitor’s mop.

Confused? You should be. It all ties to Dr. Frederick’s arms-dealing boyfriend, which is how the flaccid Führer eventually gets involved. Cadavers are stolen. Limbs get sawed. Corn liquor is suspected. Don’t try to wrap your head around it, because I don’t believe Grinter bothered to. This thing is as scrambled as eggs in a Category 5 hurricane. Let’s put it this way: It sure could use a turkey man-monster.

At one point, the good doctor is asked what a noise was, which she explains away with, “Oh, just alley cats and trash cans.” The same applies to Flesh Feast: That racket? Why, p’shaw, it’s nothing. Pay it no mind. —Rod Lott

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