Desire, Death and The Mermaid On The Rocks

June 14, 2021 ● Catherine Jablonski

Mermaids and Sirens; half-woman, half-fish creatures are presented in folklore and art as an object of desire and temptation but always accompanied by disaster and death. The power of mermaids are held within their femininity, sexuality and haunting song, they kill male sailors with control of the weather and feast on their blood and flesh. The use of this feminine monster that kills men uncovers a societal fear surrounding female sexuality, the female monster revealing its true monstrous state only when it’s too late. 

Night Tide (1961) by Curtis Harrington takes the myth of the siren and places it into a 60s Santa Monica where Johnny (Dennis Hopper), a new Naval officer meets a woman named Mora (Linda Lawson) who works as a mermaid attraction at the pier. Behind her beauty is a danger, as each of her boyfriends drowned in mysterious ways. The film opens with a pan around a seedy bar, passing couples, drinking sailors, and sad-looking beatniks. The camera stops on a lone woman who looks from Ancient Greece. Mora was born on a Greek island and was taught that she was from a race of half-human, half-fish creatures and that she is destined to return to them one day beneath the waves. The film sets up the dilemma, should Johnny trust science and give in to temptation, or believe the stories that Mora brings death and bad luck wherever she goes. 

The only time we see Mora overtly sexual is during Johnny’s dream whilst she walks towards him in a towel. When they begin to kiss, her legs transform into the tail of a mermaid whilst Johnny keeps kissing her. His face then shows an expression of horror as she has transformed into an octopus. The dream sequences demonstrate the attitudes to women as it comes from a male point of view, she is shown to embody female sexuality, but once engaged, she turns into an ugly deep-sea creature. Mora is presented as a trickster character, under her beautiful facade is something monstrous.

Night Tide can be compared to Cat People (1942) by Jacques Tourneur, in which Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) believes she transforms into a panther when she is sexually aroused. These two films place women with animals, demonising and eroticising female sexuality. Both Mora and Irena exist in a place of difference created by their heritage and folklore. Mora's belief in Greek sirens puts her under tension from science and modernity, which acts as a curse that denies them a normal life and relationships, but constructs her as an exotic temptation for the American and English characters. 

The mermaid in contemporary culture has always been aligned with young girls and teens, which could be caused by narratives that correlate with puberty in many films, however, many modern films take this to a sinister place, harking back to classical folklore. Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure (2015) is a Polish horror musical that takes The Little Mermaid and places it into an 80s polish nightclub. Two sisters work as singers in an act called 'the lure' in which they strip and use their voices. Golden (Michalina Olszańska) has a thirst for blood and wants to give in to her mermaid instinct: to kill, eat humans and return to the sea. Silver (Marta Mazurek) on the other hand falls in love with the bassist at the club and gets her mermaid tail removed and replaced with human legs which causes her to lose her voice. She denies all of her mermaid instincts and doesn’t kill her husband on their wedding night, which turns her into sea foam.

This coming-of-age film converts the normal message of mermaid films which exists as a warning to uncheck feminine sexuality. In the classic mermaid story, we are taught we must give up our tails and natural power to take our place in society, the mermaid that gives up its wildness and transforms into a human gets the prince. This is in contrast to The Lure where trying to be human and denying her feminine power is Silver’s downfall.

Another example of a contemporary mermaid is in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019) which uses the rich history of maritime folklore to create an unsettling film of two men's descent into madness trapped on a small island with a lighthouse. Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Winslow (Robert Pattinson), as well as the previous lighthouse worker who Winslow replaced, were turned mad by the mermaid’s lure. The two characters are coded as very masculine, their role is to conquer the sea, keeping the lighthouse alight stopping ships from hitting the rocks. However, they are destroyed by threatening feminine nature, trapped by the rain, wind, and the sea. The mermaid (Valeriia Karamän) is a personification of this natural power that should not be disregarded, the sea commands them and is the all-powerful force in the narrative.

The mermaid is desired by Winslow despite how inhuman it is, it screams like a fish and has gills, but with an exterior of a woman. Winslow cannot keep away, the mermaid is always shot in scenes with sex and masturbation, always an object of desire. Feminine nature conquers them leaving Winslow as food for the seagulls, and Wake in a watery grave.

The mermaid acts as a personification of male anxiety surrounding female sexuality, which relies on trickery and beauty, where underneath a beautiful exterior is something monstrous, similar to a succubus or vagina dentata. This demonisation of women throughout folklore can be transformed into something empowering. Unlike female characters in Horror that are killed for their sexuality (such as in Slashers), the mermaid and siren is all-powerful and is in complete control of nature, surviving off the hearts of men.

Catherine Jablonski ● Writer

Twitter: @k1tchen_sink_

Instagram: @catherine_jablonski_

Photographer and occasional filmmaker, I spend my time watching Horror B movies and dreaming of living in a haunted house.