Is there actually a mermaid in this film? (That is, does Mora ever have a tail outside the carnival where she works?) I could've sworn I saw her with a tail on one of the cases, but I wanted to be sure. If not, does her carnival tail look at all realistic? Thanks
shareThe carnival tail looks somewhat relistic but that is only scene with a mermaid that I can recall.
shareWow, after all this time SOMEONE finally answered! Thanks! It's ironic, though, that I've seen the movie now after you answered my question. There are actually two other scenes with her as a mermaid, both of which are dream sequences. Thanks!
shareDo you have clips of the mermaid scenes? if you do, could you please post it?
P.S. Check it out!: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493093/board/thread/53086468
No I don't have the clips, I'm sorry. If you haven't seen them, the best I can do is describe them for you: In the carnival scene, she's not swimming (unfortunetly), but it shows her lying on sand, supposedly underwater, combing her hair with her tail stretched out. Then, one dream sequence shows Dennis Hopper watching her sitting on a rock and looking in a mirror while combing her hair; it ends with her trying to pull him into the water with her. In the other dream sequence, he dreams that she walks up to him wrapped in a towel, hugs him, and then he looks down and sees that a huge tail is protruding from under the towel instead of legs. It never shows her swimming around, sadly, but the tail's cool and pretty realistic. Sorry I don't have any pictures but I hoped this helped!
shareDon't forget the nightmarish aspect of the couch scene: not only does she walk up to him wrapped in a towel, and hugs him where upon Dennis Hopper notices her mermaid's tail...there's that scene which sent goose pimples up my spine where, as she hugs him, she unexplicably turns into a tentacled creature which commences to strangle our love-crossed hero! That particular scene was relatively unexpected and really caught me off guard!
sharei think hopper's character *dreams* a sequence w/ her as a mermaid-....of course this movie has a 'lady and the tiger' quality!!
sharei've got a question i just saw this for the 1st time. i had been wanting to see this sucker for YEARS well ONLY cuz of "Dennis Hopper" in a decent performance buut NOT bad either. anyways i didn't understand the ending what the hell happend? one minute he went diving with her & she tries to i believe drown him & the next he's say no no, & than he dreams about her dragging him into the sea & he wakes up . the next we see him he's going to see him at her job. & we see her dead. & he fights with the old man & he confess to hopper that he is the one who killed her ex's. in short the ending felt rushed & it did fell a bit like a film that "Roger Corman" would have done during this era. & maybe somebody can explain the ending to me? like who was the old broad who was pestering Mora? or whatever her name is?
share YES, I know...it seems 'rushed'. But this is what happened: (remember the old drunk captain was jealous of all the guys she dated).
The old woman was probably hired by the captain to pester Mora to convince her she is a 'sea-person' so she will stay with him; the reason Mora tries to Kill hopper's character is that she thinks she is a killer.....she didn't kill the others but became *convinced* she did. The captain killed the others.
The captain finally kills her too after he realizes how wrong it has all gone. (but if he confesses all that, why doesn't he admit he hired someone to pose as a 'siren'? he wouldn't have to give a name-)
If you had seen Mora murdered, it would have been 'anti-climax'...
also, you don't really know when he is truly 'dreaming'. There are other wierd things you may not pick up on first time viewing.
HOWEVER-
the movie was made to be very ambiguous, so you would never really 'know' if Mora came from the sea; was the older woman a 'plant' or a 'sea-person'? Did the carnival owner know anything? and hey, here's another monkey-wrench in the works-
remember the carousel owner and his daughter..? notice how the daughter immediately falls for Hopper? maybe she fell in love with Mora's former boyfriends and then SHE (the carousel man's daughter) murdered them!!
Maybe the sea captain was covering up for both of them...it would explain a lot. (she falls for him real quick,huh?) then she killed Mora, and the captain wanted it all to end. Or maybe she (Mora)WAS a 'siren'...and the captain invented all the other stuff...then lied to save Hopper's sanity.
in the end, like 'lady and the tiger', you are left with a puzzle you can never quite understand.
does anybody have this on dvd ya know with the audio commentary? what do they say about it? IF anything? & thanxs that makes MORE sense than me just going what the *beep*? ya know?
share stimp-
did research, no, apparently no commmentary on the regular DVD from netflix.....you know, sometimes a movie like this upsets us a bit the same way a dream does....things in the movie don't make sense....dreams don't 'make sense'...so, here's something i learned: often a book or movie is about symbolism....and that is why this movie is the way it is; for example, notice hopper is a lonely sailor...he meets an older sailor, also lonely.....he's looking at a 'future' image of HIMSELF. Mora is the savage beauty of nature, i think....like the sea, she is unforgiving, but he loves her...when she 'kills' the other men, it means, like the ocean itself, she is above judgement....you can't judge her.
Why does the old captain kill her? Well, if what I think is true, it's for the same reason you and I lost our innocence when we are young...the illusion, like the first time we fell in love, beautiful-horrible ...it dies because you and I can never love the sea AND have it love us back.....hopper can't take the idea of being like the older captain, so mora MUST die for him to be free...if not, it simply kills him (us);
that's the reason why the carousel man's daughter is there- she is a 'real' person, not an ideal like Mora...not a goddess, not a mermaid, but a touchable mortal. something that will love us back.
in the end, we are left with unanswerable questions, and THAT'S why we both feel a little 'cheated'. because in life we ARE.
if you like 'symbolism', apply it to movies you may not understand, they make more sense...even 'wizard of oz' is actually an indictment of american society, believe it or not. sorry to go on.
bye
it's ok i don't mind. it was an interesting read. :) about what you said about the 1st time one falls in love, well the 1st time i fell i love well that was of course a mistake on my part, buut isn't that how it is MOST times your with your 1st love? & i did feel cheated than. & still do NOW! weird eh? & it's 10 or so yrs. later. buut with her i'm over, sorry about my babbling on. buut as for the audio commentary if you look at the other posts here one of the releases has it on it. it's be an interesting one to hear wouldn't it? to hear both the star & it's director to give you one. anyways my friend, in short that's a good theory.
i also have a habit of rambling at times as well, soo don't feel bad about it my friend. hehe so what did you think of it anyways? the film was an ok film buut had it made well MORE sense i would have it liked it more. it's NOT nearly as bad as some of "Hopper's Later films & his acting isn't the greatest in this buut my guess it was before he was still learning the craft of that is acting. this film is a *beep* a LOT better than "O.C. & Stiggs" which is just a horrible god awful piece of *beep* of a film. anyways sorry i'm getting off the topic again. see your remark on dreams though, IF one does research on dreams, well when you can remember them they can also at times make sense, buut IF you EVER notice each place you try & find out what they mean, the meanings to it Do often Vary which is funny in itself. anyways that's my few cents here.
Interesting discussion but, Stimpy, I couldn't help notice that you spell 'but' with two 'u's, as in "buut." I know it's not a typo because you spell it this way throughout your post and I was just wondering why. No offense; I was just curious.
My 150 (or so) favorite movies:
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070122364/
Why does the old captain kill her?
I see what you are saying-
Well, I'm not really 'insisting', it is just the thing that makes the most sense to me...if she's a mermaid, (and the movie seems to be making that statement), then she could NOT have drowned; and as far as the old sailor not killing her because he loved her.....you do realize that the majority of women that are murdered are killed by their husband, boyfriend, etc, right?....when a woman is murdered, the cops -rightfully- always look at the significant other;
I guess she could have killed herself in the mermaid tank too, out of remorse, so no need to find the body. It would simply end up in tank because that's where she killed herself;
It's been a while since I've seen it, I don't remember if there is a 'cause of death' statement, so, yeah, it's kind of like the story 'lady and the tiger', where what you think might have happened is determined by your personality rather than any 'clue' in the story; the old sailor killing her makes the most sense to me. The chances of him finding her body on the beach would also be astronomic; more likely that he killed her, therefore. He was willing to kill before that, too....meaning he had no problem murdering her. In my experience, symbolic storytelling is more about characters being used as symbols and the stories metaphors, so less concern about what happens to the 'individual'...
Just my humble opinion.
I am *MAX POWERS*- dynamic man of action!!
I'm just saying that it's not clearly stated or shown how Mora died so we can't assume that the captain did it. Your reasoning is good as far as the idea that the captain likely did it since he had a history of murdering two other people, but this is only valid if his confession at the end is legitimate. If Mora really was a sea person then she killed her two previous suitors, not the captain. I watched the movie last night and my instincts told me that Mora really was a mermaid and that the captain made up the climatic testimony to hide the truth, but I could be wrong.
I value your insights on this thread, including the fascinating symbolic interpretation you shared. Nevertheless, it can't be stated with certainty that the captain murdered Mora (even the Wikipedia synopsis says her death is left up in the air). Any references to the captain murdering Mora should be qualified with words like "if" and "possibly," etc.
My 150 (or so) favorite movies:
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070122364/
Gosh. No Kidding.
lady and the tiger <----Is that the story with the arena doors and the guy has to choose?
http://www.cgonzales.net & http://www.drxcreatures.com
It's like the TV show Let's Make a Deal; you have to pick the right one to get the "prize" but if you pick a wrong one, you get crap. The lady and the tiger gives the choice of the lady behind one door (the good choice, hubba hubba), or the tiger behind the other (the bad choice, growl you die!). That's a very simplistic explanation, but I'm old and tired.
share[deleted]
Indeed.
shareI don't know.
share