Film Review: NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND (1972, Fred Burnley)

Stars: 3.8 of 5.

Running Time: 96 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Starring Susan Hampshire (LIVING FREE, THE LEGEND OF DOOM HOUSE), Frank Finlay (LIFEFORCE, THE PIANIST), Michael Petrovich (TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, ESCAPE 2000), Michael Craze (DOCTOR WHO, SATAN'S SLAVE), David Garth (SUPERMAN IV).  Cinematography by David Muir (GIRLY, AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT).  Based on the novel by Gordon Honeycombe.

Tag-line: "A bizarre story of love, life, and death."

Best one-liner:  Not really that kind of movie.

Readers of this site know of my obsession with "melancholy horror," the designation I gave to a sub-genre of mostly 1970s films that are incredibly atmospheric and just as likely to depress you as they are to scare you.  The seaside is a melancholy horror standby (THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE, DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, THE FOG, DEAD AND BURIED, many stories by H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James, et al.), as it's a site of desolate beauty and primal, existential mystery.  The mood practically builds itself: the crashing of waves, the calling of the seagulls, the overcast skies, the hands thrust in overcoat pockets, the windblown hair...

Now, every once in a while, I like to venture up the coast and spend the weekend in a fishing village.  I always go in winter, and that's a matter of personal preference; I'd much rather spend time on an barren, snow-covered beach than a crowded, sunbeaten one.
Having received a heartfelt, anonymous endorsement of NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND from a reader last fall, I figured that the perfect ending to the day would be to have a glass of brandy outdoors in the cold ocean breeze, and then to watch the film before retiring.  It was a fine choice!

Atmospherically, NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND is brilliant; David Muir's cinematography capturing that primal, existential mystery of the ocean that I alluded to earlier.

Neither the sea nor the sand?  Well, I'm happy to report that there's a hell of a lot of sea and sand in this movie, and that's a big part of why I like it.

There's also a nice, haunting, Morricone-esque score by Nachum Heiman that goes a long way toward establishing the proper ambience.

NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND is primarily a love story, albeit a tragic and occasionally ghoulish one.  On the beaches of Jersey (no, not New Jersey), Anna (Susan Hampshire) and Hugh (Michael Petrovich) begin a whirlwind romance, the sort that feels oddly natural because they're both brooding, solitary-types.

For a long time, it feels simply like a mildly gloomy seaside romance, and you nearly forget that you're watching what is ostensibly a "horror film."  Not wanting to spoil the plot, I'll say that it soon thereafter takes a hard turn into territory usually mined by say, NIGHT GALLERY or TALES FROM THE CRYPT.  There's a little "Monkey's Paw" in there, and a little Lucio Fulci-style filmmaking, too, which leads me to my next point.

NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND is a much-maligned film, and while I did enjoy it, at times I could see why it has been beset by this reputation.  It's fairly uneven in tone, which becomes most laughably apparent in a bicycle montage that jarringly switches out the somber music to which we've grown accustomed with an unrepentantly zany tune that would be more at home in perhaps a Benny Hill sketch or a 70s gum commercial.  (Inexplicably, the Image DVD chooses this music to accompany its main menu!)

Then there's the matter of some bordering-on-soft-core love scenes that go on for a touch too long and silly melodramatic dialogue like "Is this more than an affair?... it's a love affair!" Also,  the supernatural "rules" of the film's universe seem arbitrary and needlessly cryptic, which can sometimes result in the kind of pretentious Euro-camp that is best left to Lucio Fulci.


All that being said, those drawbacks are certainly not deal-breakers, and the film overcomes its imperfections to build to a poetic, doleful finale that is pure melancholy horror.

Also, we have David Garth and Betty Duncan as a fantastic, bickering Scottish couple,

"Aye."

the prolific character actor Frank Finlay (who here sort of looks like a young David Warner) as Hugh's mincing, weirdo brother,

and, hey, they even manage to work in a van explosion.

In the end, NEITHER THE SEA NOR SAND is an emotional, intriguing misfit of 70s horror, like a  battered, hand-carved fisherman figurine collecting dust at the far end of a curio shelf, out-peacocked by the more colorful knick-knacks, but retaining a certain, rare, grim dignity.  Nearly four stars.

–Sean Gill