Neil (Martin Kove, the evil martial arts instructor in the "Karate Kid" movies) and his hottie wife Sherry (the lovely Mary Louise Weller; Mandy Pepperidge in "Animal House") go to a remote Greek island to find Neil's kooky wayward sister Madeline (the gorgeous Deborah Shelton, who also sings the ending credits theme song). They not only find Madeline, but also shady fortune hunter Frye (a hale'n'hearty slice of fat, juicy ham from James Earl Jones) and his blonde bimbo girlfriend Barbara (the adorable Lydia Cornell). Frye awakens an ancient evil sea beast from its centuries of slumber. The creature proceeds to eat a few folks including Barbara while she's swimming topless. The superstitious villagers decide to sacrifice the virginal Madeline to the creature in order to placate it.
"Blood Tide" is a good example of a promising story let down by an extremely flat and uninspired execution. The cast is fine (besides the aforementioned folks, we also have Jose Ferror as the mayor and Lila Kedrova as a nun), the Greek locations are breathtakingly beautiful, the plot is fresh and interesting, Weller and Cornell look spectacular in skimpy bikinis, but alas Richard Jeffries' slack direction keeps the pace crawling along at a gruelingly sluggish clip and fails to create the necessary tension and creepy atmosphere required to make the premise work like it should (Jeffries later made amends for his bungling here by co-writing the script for the excellent "Scarecrows"). Moreover, we hardly get to see the monster and when we finally do it looks pretty hokey and unconvincing. The tedious surplus of drippy dialogue doesn't help matters any either. Only in the last ten minutes does the pace pick up and the suspense kick in, but by then it's way too little much too late to make this anything more than a might-have-been-something-better wasted opportunity.
"Blood Tide" is a good example of a promising story let down by an extremely flat and uninspired execution. The cast is fine (besides the aforementioned folks, we also have Jose Ferror as the mayor and Lila Kedrova as a nun), the Greek locations are breathtakingly beautiful, the plot is fresh and interesting, Weller and Cornell look spectacular in skimpy bikinis, but alas Richard Jeffries' slack direction keeps the pace crawling along at a gruelingly sluggish clip and fails to create the necessary tension and creepy atmosphere required to make the premise work like it should (Jeffries later made amends for his bungling here by co-writing the script for the excellent "Scarecrows"). Moreover, we hardly get to see the monster and when we finally do it looks pretty hokey and unconvincing. The tedious surplus of drippy dialogue doesn't help matters any either. Only in the last ten minutes does the pace pick up and the suspense kick in, but by then it's way too little much too late to make this anything more than a might-have-been-something-better wasted opportunity.