Search - Blood Tide on DVD

No one can eat just one virgin

bernie | Arlington, Texas | 09/23/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"We are treated to a quickie frontal flash view of Greek virgin to hold our attention through the move in hope of more. In this ancient ritual she has a coin in her mouth and a smile on her face as she is about to become creature chow.

Flash forward, Neil Grice (Martin Kove) and wife (Mary-Louise Weller) came to this Greek island to find his wayward sister. He meets authorities with negative attitudes and other strange beings as Frye (James Earl Jones). Fry has some sort of underwater secret. We also see that when Frye lies on his back on the beach the James Earl Jones stomach is almost flat. Oddly enough if the sister (Deborah Shelton) can be found she will turn out to be a tasty virgin artist with secrets of her own.

This movie would not live up to its name sake if they did not free an ancient creature with the munchies. Does he only eat virgins or is he omnivorous and snack on anything that moves?

How will this all end?

Mysterious Island of Beautiful Women"

What Were They Thinking?

Robert I. Hedges | 05/14/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

""Blood Tide" is an extremely cheap monster movie from 1982. It stars some very talented people, most notably the wonderful James Earl Jones as Frye, the legendary Jose Ferrer as Nereus, and the unknown Spyros Papafrantzizas as Dionysis [sic].

The movie opens with a little background on ancient virgin sacrifices then turns abruptly to the world of watercraft recreation. Indeed, the bulk of this film consists of either footage of boats whizzing around Greece, James Earl Jones chewing the scenery and mean tempered (watch for the spear gun intimidation scene), or various rituals in an old church.

The plot is somewhat reminiscent of "Jaws" (OK, it's in many ways fairly blatant...) especially the first "monster devouring girl" scene which is extremely similar (down to the skinny dipping subplot) to the famed "Chrissie's death" scene in "Jaws." It seems that the monster that hungers for the ancient virgin sacrifices has come back to life and is now devouring women at an alarming rate. There is a lot of prattling on about the monster, and many talky scenes, a lot of which take place in the dark; so dark, in fact that sometimes you can hear dialogue, but can only see pure black on the screen. (I wondered if my monitor had malfunctioned at one point. Really.)

This movie gets my vote for worst soundtrack of 1982, featuring not only a faux-pop song of extremely poor quality over closing credits (by Deborah Shelton), but also many extended piercing electronic notes designed to induce terror, or at least a little malaise. The monster itself (created by Vince Jeffords) is utterly laughable (and stays offscreen until about an hour into the film). Overall, the movie would probably rate one star if not for the talents of Jones and Ferrer, who do as much damage control as can be done.

Fans of bad movies may want to watch this once, but once is definitely enough. It is of thoroughly marginal quality, but does not contain enough camp value to make it a real joy to watch.
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