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

Get it at Amazon.

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

Get it at dvdrparty.

Part of the Crown International Pictures library, Terrified is one of those movies where 30-something teenyboppers carry a flashlight and ask “What was that?” In other words, I dug it, even though there’s not much to it.

Rumors abound of a ski-masked maniac haunting a nearby ghost town and committing various felonies and misdemeanors. He’s also known to make people lose their minds, turning them “into a slobbering oyster.” And yet the script gives characters wonky reasons to go check the place out, especially at night. A college student (Rod Lauren, Black Zoo) is writing a midterm on fear .. and gets some firsthand learning! A hostess (Tracy Olsen, Journey to the Center of Time) just wants to talk to caretaker Crazy Bill … and finds him impaled to death on spikes!

In his final directorial gig, Lew Landers (1935’s The Raven) wrings all the mileage possible from the ghost town setting. With rotted floors and flooded rooms, its wooden buildings function as traps for our madman’s unlimited use. His all-black balaclava presages several slashers, from 1978’s The Toolbox Murders to 2009’s The Collector, but don’t go looking for gore.

Terrified’s lack of names in the cast (the biggest, Denver Pyle, comes fifth-billed as the sheriff) should work to its advantage, but the killer’s identity is simple to surmise. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Although made in New Zealand, The Tank is set on the coast of Oregon, U.S. of A. There stands a dilapidated house Ben has inherited from his late mother. Since he never knew it existed, Ben (Matt Whalen, Hugh Hefner in TV’s American Playboy) drives up with his wife (Luciane Buchanan, TV’s The Night Agent) and their daughter (Zara Nausbaum) to see the property.

Accessible by movable tile in the yard is a dark, spacious well with nipple-deep water. And, as they come to find, an oily, amphibious, turd-shaped creature with a vaginal mouth baring teeth like stubby needles. As played by circus performer Regina Hegemann in a suit, this thing keeps The Tank from sinking and viewers on their toes; CGI simply would immediately neuter the suspense that writer/director Scott Walker (The Frozen Ground) skillfully builds.

The monster’s attacks are forceful and furtive, sometimes stemming from a crouch like a spider, waiting to pounce. Scenes where characters slosh through the titular tank prove especially effective, as if Jaws were in an enclosed space. Er, let’s make that Jaws 2, lest you read that as a top-to-bottom endorsement. Walker hasn’t built The Tank to perform like a lightning-bolt blockbuster; it’s a slow burn that runs hot when it needs to. Remember, patience is a virtue. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

If you think the title of The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is clumsy, wait until you see the movie. No, really — as the crosswalks for the blind warn aloud every few seconds, wait!

The final film (at least that weren’t X-rated) for Western director Oliver Drake, the tacky Jackals finds archaeologist Dave (Anthony Eisley, The Doll Squad) obsessed with the well-preserved corpse of an Egyptian princess (belly dancer Marliza Pons) with a breastplate apparently made of Cinnabons. Dave asks his pal, Bob (Robert Alan Browne, Psycho III), to lock him inside for the night: “What could possibly happen?” Dave says. “This is Nevada, good ol’ USA.”

Yeah, even though a full moon is out (I see a bad movie rising), it’s not like he’s gonna catch the curse of the jackals.

Dave catches the curse of the jackals. This means his hands turn into paws that appear inflated to 45 psi and he dons the werewolf head from the same year’s sexploitation oddity, Dracula (the Dirty Old Man), which shares writer/producer William Edwards. On his first outing, Jackal Dave slays a couple of cops who scream out of sync.

On the plus side, the princess resurrects! Although her face looks like an unfinished clay sculpture, Human Dave is entranced and informs her of double-date plans: “You better change. Bob and Donna want to have dinner with us,” he says, before teaching her about bras. Meeting Bob and Donna (TV actress Maurine Dawson) at a steakhouse, he introduces the pharaoh’s daughter using the nom de plume of Connie: “She’s not from here. She comes from … back east.”

Meanwhile, a pop-eyed mummy (Saul Goldsmith) in grubby bandages awakens, strangles a stripper, busts through a paper-thin wall, interrupts the steakhouse’s stage show, kidnaps Connie and limps down the Vegas strip without a film permit as onlookers laugh. You’ll relate.

With John Carradine cameoing as a professor and painfully inert flashbacks to 4,800 years prior, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is a howl and a half. That’s in spite of — or because of — slapdash editing and snuff-film lighting that look paid for by a bucket of coins swiped from Marge from Boise at the penny slots. —Rod Lott

Get it at dvdrparty.