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** 1/2 “Night Tide.”

International Filmforum. $79.95. 1963.

This bizarre little film--writer-director Curtis Harrington’s fiction feature debut--is basically the 1942 “Cat People” updated to 1963 and reset in Venice Beach in a milieu of boardwalks, beach piers, coffeehouses and rootless Kennedy-era drifters. The bedevilled heroine (Linda Lawson), who impersonates a mermaid on the Venice Pier sideshow, also imagines she’s part of an ancient race of murderous sea-people. (Her lovers, of whom sailor Dennis Hopper is the latest, have a disconcerting tendency to drown.) It’s an interesting blend of non-Establishment film and cultural styles. Hopper gives a dreamy yet tense performance in the Dean-Brando mold; Harrington’s languorous frames suggest both Tourneur and Sternberg; David Raksin contributes a dissonant, softly jazzy score. The film pales beside its inspiration, but it has a soft, wistful, offbeat appeal.