Blood Tide(1982)
 AKA Demon Island
AKA The Red Tide

Reviewed By-Sean Patrick Dolan
Director:  Richard Jefferies
Cast:  James Earl Jones, Jose Ferrer, Lila Kedrova, Mary Louise Weller, Martin Kove, Lydia Cornell, Deborah Shelton



An Americans couple, Neil (Martin Kove) and Sherry (Mary Louise Weller) are taking their honeymoon on the isolated Greek isle of Cineron.  It seems they have decided to kill two birds with one stone, as this is the last place that Neil's sister, Madeline (Deborah Shelton), was known to have stayed before falling out of touch with her family several months earlier.  They instantly meet a hostile reception led by the island's mayor (Jose Ferrer), who makes it clear that tourists are not welcome-perhaps not even tolerated.  Although the mayor claims not to have seen or heard of Madeline, Neil and Sherry meet another American couple, Frye (James Earl Jones) and Barbara (Lydia Cornell), who tell them that Madeline has been staying with the nuns at the island's convent.  An artist, she has been painstakingly restoring a very old Orthodox icon.  Beneath the first picture of St. George slaying a dragon, she has discovered an older, more primitive picture of a dragon-like creature menacing a native.  Neil quickly becomes concerned for his sister, whom Frye has dubbed "Mad Madeline"- especially after she takes her birthday present, an expensive bottle of perfume, and empties its entire contents on her head and chest before diving into the surf and playing mermaid.  Frye doesn't seem to be entirely in his right mind either.  When he isn't downing Jack Daniels by the bottle or quoting Shakespeare ("He played Othello once in college and never got over it", explains Barbara) he is scuba-diving to an ancient subterranean ruin in search of treasure.  His hobby seems harmless at first, until one night when he discovers a strange walled up passageway. Without hesitating or considering the consequences, Frye packs together some plastic explosives and blows open the barrier.  The blast rocks the entire island and, of course, unleashes a terrifying evil. 

The next day, the two couples have taken Frye's boat out for a cruise.  They are not far out from shore when suddenly they hit something large with the bottom of the boat.  Frye dives under to inspect the damage, which turns out to be minor, and cannot find a trace of what caused the collision.  However, when they return to the docks they are met by the mayor and a dozen other men.  They are informed that a village girl is missing and are ordered not to sail their boats again until further notice.  Neil is about to protest, but Frye stops him with the warning, "These Greeks aren't known for their rationality."  Another day passes and though they can't sail anymore, the couples still hang out at the beach.  Barbara does aerobics on the beach before pulling her top off and jumping into the water.  Only then does she notice that a group of men has been watching her from afar.  "Perverts, dirty old men!  I thought you creeps only liked little boys", she fires at them.  The humorous scene quickly turns to terror as something pulls Barbara under the water, which instantly turns red with her blood.  Frye drowns his grief in alcohol, but is sober enough to know that their are no sharks in the waters off this island's coast-the islanders' explanation for what happened to Barbara.  A tense moment occurs at the funeral, as the town's mayor interrupts the Orthodox ceremony to honor an older local tradition- he pries open the coffin to place an ancient silver coin in the woman's mouth.  "Fare for Charon to carry her soul across the river Styx".  We have seen this coin before- it is identical to the hundreds Frye has collected in the underwater ruins.

At this point, life on the island begins to deteriorate quickly.  The night of the funeral, Neil confronts a very drunk Frye in the underwater tomb.  Paranoid, Frye nearly kills him with a speargun and then spouts cryptic warnings.  He tells Neil that Madeline was the one who discovered the ancient ruins and that since then "something has gotten to her".  He suggests that they all leave the island before something "gets to them too".  Despite the fact that none of this makes any sense, Neil is convinced.  He storms the convent looking for Madeline and does not find her there, but he does receive a tongue lashing from Sister Anna (Lila Kedrova), who tells him that he and the other Americans brought death to their island with their boats and machines.  But the Americans are still not allowed to leave the island, by order of the mayor.  The next day Frye witnesses a group of young boys and a girl playing a game that appears to be a reenactment of a human sacrifice.  After the girl plunges from a high cliff into the water, Frye powers up his boat and reaches her just in time to save her.  Unfortunately, the girl's mother (who jumped in to save her daughter) was not as lucky.  She is devoured by the sea creature, which Frye gets a look at. As he hands the trembling girl to the mayor at the dock, the man thanks him but then issues a chilling, prophetic statement:  "You have seen your death, Mr. Frye".  Meanwhile, at the convent, Madeline has discovered an even more ancient picture beneath the first two layers of the icon.  It shows a hideous reptilian creature with a large erect phallus and a native girl, presumably a sacrifice, kneeling before it.  The wood the icon is made of dates the picture to 1500 BC.  Sister Anna does not like the picture and begs Madeline, who has lately been foregoing Communion, to attend Mass- Madeline declines.  That night a celebration is held in honor of the girl who was rescued and the man who saved her, Frye.  Too bad he is too drunk to enjoy it, and passes out after trying to tell  Neil and Sherry what he saw under the water.  Neil and Sherry are shocked when a pageant is performed in front of them in which a young girl is given as sacrifice to a man in a dragon costume.  The mayor laughs at their response and tells them that he was just showing them a little "local color".  He playfully calls the mock ceremony "a little girl going to Communion".  Then the mayor becomes serious, and tells them about the ancient legend of a reptilian creature that inhabited their ocean and could also walk on land.  In the ancient days they placated the evil by giving young girls in sacrifice.  The party is soon ruined as Sister Anna runs down from the convent into the village bloody and beaten.  Fearing for Madeline's safety, Neil and Sherry wake up Frye and rush to the convent.  They find the place completely ransacked, with the corpses of savaged nuns littering the chapel.  Madeline is nowhere in sight, and Neil is now afraid that his sister has taken it upon herself to be the creature's human sacrifice.  They take Frye's boat out to the location of the ruins and dive down, finding Madeline dressed in a white robe waiting in the ruins for the creature to come get her. Neil and Sherry pull Madeline out of the cave-like ruins and drag her to the surface where the boat is anchored.  Meanwhile, Frye, still quoting his Shakespeare, meets his fate.  He straps plastic explosives to his body and, when the creature grabs him, blows himself and the ancient evil to smithereens.  Orders not withstanding, Neil and Sherry sail away from the island at full speed, and as the boast fades into the sun-filled morning horizon, the film ends with the Mayor and his granddaughter watching sternly from the docks as the foreign intruders disappear.

BLOODTIDE is a surprisingly solid B-movie from director Richard Jefferies (SCARECROWS) and writer Nico Mastorakis (IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT, ZERO BOYS).  The storyline is nothing too original- trouble making Americans in an exotic locale clash with resentful natives while unwittingly awakening an ancient evil.  But the film is well executed and never tries to overreach itself.  No lofty social or political commentary is broached and the conflict between the natives and foreigners is at the level of relative harmless cultural stereotypes and jokes.  This is a low budget piece, low on gore and even lower on nudity (which is a shame because Weller, Cornell, and Shelton are all beautiful women).  The fearsome sea creature is a run-of-the-mill latex creation which is only shown from the front, so that little is shown but its huge jaws opening and closing to display some nasty dental work.  The film does present some beautiful travel footage of a beach and island community, although I have no idea where the film was shot. The main strengths of this film are its fast pace, excellent casting, and goofy dialogue.  Veteran actors Jose Ferrer and Lila Kedrova contrast well with younger actors Kove, Weller, Cornell, and Shelton, who have more TV credits on their resumes than feature films.  But one man steals this show, and it is the much respected James Earl Jones, who inexplicably landed in this film.  His character is completely off-the-wall, from his "Me Tarzan, You Jane" attitude towards his girlfriend Barbara, to his Shakespeare fetish and heavy drinking.  He spends most of this film in a scuba-diving wet suit, and in one hilarious and memorable scene he speaks with the mask on, nearly perfectly duplicating his voice role as Darth Vader.  This film ends with Jones dynamiting the hell out of the monster JAWS-style and as the credits roll we are treated to a horrific song written and performed by one of the film's stars, Deborah Shelton.  A perfect ending to a film that is, as they say, so bad its almost good.  A highly recommended experience.

I reviewed the release of BLOODTIDE as part of the Brentwood Home Video DVD four-pack "Tales From the Boneyard".  This is a great company that continues to present set after set of films- which I otherwise would not purchase individually- at very affordable prices.  The picture and audio quality on each title of each set vary considerably, but BLOODTIDE was respectable on both counts.  As usual, there are no extras, unless you count  the six scene chapter index.  The other films presented in this set are the giallo THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE, the bizarre British hippie/death cult/ motorcycle gang film PSYCHOMANIA, and HORROR EXPRESS, an old monster movie starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
Story:  3.0 Bitch Slaps
Extras:  1.0 Bitch Slaps
Picture/Audio:  4.0 Bitch Slaps
Overall DVD:  3.0 Bitch Slaps

 

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