We’ve had a lot of Pam Grier on this site, and here she is yet again, co-starring with Annie Belle and Anthony Steel in La notte dell’alta marea, aka Twilight of Love, aka Night of the High Tide, an Italo-Canadian sexploitation flick, and probably her most obscure role. An advertising exec played by Steel is looking for the perfect ass for a blue jeans campaign, spots Annie Belle in a sauna, and decides she fits the bill. The funny part of this is he sees her from behind initially and thinks she’s male, which tells you quite a bit about Belle’s elfish body type. But male or female, her ass will do just fine, and for more than only the ad campaign. She’s amenable to Steel’s advances, but she has a boyfriend who isn’t quite as sharing.
In the midst of this man-against-man for woman’s affections melodrama there’s still an advertisment to finish, so Steel takes Belle, her boyfriend, a photographer, and a second model played by Grier to Martinique for a photo shoot. This is a pretty sweet spot for location work, and Grier sports a killer afro that looks mighty good with the Caribbean wind blowing through it. Belle, never to be upstaged, has virtually no hair for the wind to play with but wears what must be one of the earliest thong bikinis to appear in cinema, and soon doffs the shoestrings for even less. Strangely, the jeans this entire excursion are supposed to be about never make an appearance.
From Martinique the group ventures to a smaller, uncharted island and promptly get stuck there. With no hope of rescue and tensions rising—like the tide—problems soon occur. Boy problems. Possessiveness problems. Aggression problems. Don’t fear though—rescue comes before anyone gets seriously hurt, and Belle gets the customary sexploitation send-off, jetting away backed by synth music and a torch singer as a man stares wistfully into the middle distance, wishing he could hold onto her but knowing in his heart he can’t. Because she’s a free spirit, you see. And free spirits must soar.
Cheesy? Certainly. But this is sexploitation, so we knew the script would be bad. We accepted that, but we wish the beach sequences hadn’t been shot through a layer of gauze—though on the whole the film looks great. We also wish Grier’s distinctive voice hadn’t been dubbed, but as she speaks no Italian, this was unavoidable. Preferences aside, if you like romantic island erotica this one will please you, though we can’t go so far as to call it a good film. But with Belle and Grier sharing the same screen and the same beach it’s hard to fail completely. La notte dell’alta marea premiered in Italy today in 1977.
