Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Night Tide (1961)

NIGHT TIDE 

1961

American International Pictures 

United States

Producer: Aram Kantarian

Director: Curtis Harrington

Michael J. Weldon writes in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film:

An excellent low-budget fantasy (?) with Dennis Hopper as a sailor on leave in a small California seaside resort. He becomes obsessed with an orphaned girl (Linda Lawson) who plays a mermaid at a sideshow. She believes herself to be a descendant of the "sea people" and must kill during the full moon. Avant-garde director Curtis Harrington did this odd CAT PEOPLE-inspired movie after making a series of experimental shorts. He's now known as a TV horror-film director and seems to have lost most of what made NIGHT TIDE so memorable. Co-star Luana Anders later starred in Coppola's DEMENTIA 13. With Gavin Muir and Bruno Ve Sota. 

Psychotronic Movie of the Week: THE THING WITH TWO HEADS (1972)

THE THING WITH TWO HEADS
1972
American International Pictures

Produced by Wes Bishop
Directed by Lee Frost

Michael J. Weldon writes, in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film:

The ultimate blaxploition horror movie, not to be confused with the previous year's all-white The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant. Both are from AIP. This, believe it or not, features Ray Milland as a racist brain surgeon with terminal cancer. Milland first creates a two-headed gorilla (designed by Rick Baker). Then he arranges to have his head transplanted onto the healthy body of a volunteer convict from death row. When he awakens from his operation he finds his head on Rosey Greer's body. You've got to see him (them) running around, riding a motorcycle, yelling at each other, and Chelsea Brown is the convict's surprised girlfriend. With Roger Perry, who is also in both Count Yorga movies, and William Smith. Music by Jerry Butler. Director Frost worked on lots of 60s "adults only" films.

Psychotronic Movie of the Week: Johnny Cash in Five Minutes To Live (1961)

Five Minutes To Live (aka Door to Door Maniac) was a 1961 thriller starring Johnny Cash and Vic Tayback. They hatch a scheme to rob a bank by taking the branch vice president's wife hostage and giving him five minutes to hand over the money or she'll get it. Only hitch? He was about to ask her for a divorce, throwing a monkey wrench into the plan. It's a well paced, fast little potboiler, and Cash is great in his first acting role as a cold blooded killer with a guitar. He performs the title song and is shown pickin' and singin' a few times in the film. 

Tayback is suitably sleazy as his partner in crime, and the movie also stars Donald Woods as the bank executive and Cay Forester, who also wrote the screenplay, as his wife. Director Bill Karn previously did a lot of tv work, most notably Gang Busters, and also helmed Ma Barker's Killer Brood the previous year. Sutton Pictures handled the original 1961 release, but AIP got a hold of it in '66 and gave it the Door to Door Maniac title.