ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

A little-known adventure yarn (with a great poster) about a marine biologist who discovers a race of mermaids and manages to win the trust of the Mermaid Queen.

The villain is a charter-boat skipper who wants to get his hands on the mermaids' treasure (a valuable horde of rare fire pearls). In 1965 a racier re-edited version was released under the name "The Aqua Sex".

Added scenes featured the wet charms of Diane Webber (alias Marguerite Empey of Playboy magazine). Produced, written, and directed by John Lamb.

[Also released as: "The Aqua Sex"]
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Rick]

I saw this in both of its forms. THE MERMAIDS OF TIBURON and THE AQUA SEX are almost but not exactly the same movie. The latter title offers some bare-breasted mermaids. Very softcore and very brief, but still....

I saw THE AQUA SEX at Louisville's Savoy Theater which was, at the time, the local nudie palace. This was 1967, well before the days when hardcore escaped the smoky men's clubs and invaded public theaters. So, THAR SHE BLOWS and HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN and NUDE ON THE MOON, followed by "the roughies", those were the most daring things available.

I ventured into the Savoy that day as a kind of scary experiment. The legal age for admittance was 18. I was 17. So I nervously plunked my money down at the box-office fully expecting the FBI or at least the Louisville police to jump out from somewhere and drag me off to the clink. But....nothing. So I walked right in.

I'd like to say that my reason for attending the Savoy that day was because I knew THE AQUA SEX was a fantasy and I was desperate to see it. Yeah. I'd like to say that. Wouldn't be the truth.

Anyway...

About 14 or 15 years later I caught MERMAIDS OF TIBURON on a late night movie in Cincinnati. Not one boobie on display.

Frankly, other than the fact that I saw them, I remember very very little about them. I remember some girls swimming around a boat. I remember that Timothy Carey was hanging around. I remember...nope, that's about it.
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Man need not kneel before the angels,
Nor lie in death forever,
But for the weakness of his feeble will.

[Robert (Butch) Day]

And the mermaid costume was latter used in an episode of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (ABC 1964 - 1968).
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

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On a semi-related note, am I the only one who wonders why mermaids (even in paintings) are always depicted with a distinct leg-shape to the lower body, and with the tail fin arranged horizontally when swimming, like a dolphin's —



— instead of with a straighter fish-shaped lower body and a vertically aligned fish tail, this way?



After all, a fish swims by moving its tail from side-to-side, not up-and-down like a dolphin. And being a loyal "leg man" myself, I don't want to see the suggestion of legs when I don't actually get to see legs. So, the tantalizing shape of the hips, thighs, and calves is just frustrating!

Watch Daryl Hannah in the clip below. She did as well as any woman could in Splash during her swimming scenes, but the awkward up-and-down movement doesn't approach the smooth swimming of either fish or dolphins.

And before somebody says, "But they have make it look that way because it's woman wearing a fake tail!", please remember that I started out saying that mermaids were depicted that way "even in paintings". So, just once I'd like to see a mermaid with a real "fish body" on the lower end, and not a rubber suit that obviously covers the legs.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

That "bobbing" motion used by mermaids was also used by Patrick Duffy in The Man From Atlantis (NBC 1977 - 1978).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Atlantis
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

[Robert (Butch) Day]

Bud, your description is almost exactly the way they were described by the ancient Phoenicians — who were the first to , uh, encounter "them".

The "modern depiction of mermaids actually comes from the late Dark Age to the early Middle Age (A. D 800 to A. D 1100).
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Custer]

And returning to the movie in question, here's the, er, raunchier poster:

[Maurice]

[Bud Brewster]

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One of the image hosts which Custer uses recently changed the ".org" suffix to ".cc" for some reason, and he's been correcting the URL's whenever he finds a broken one. I've been fixing the ones I've found, too, like the one above.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

I've just managed to fix a few more . . . and even took out an example of those pesky multiple question marks, along the way!

[Bud Brewster]

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Thanks for the question mark removal!

Were they in groups of two ( — ?? — ) or groups of three ( — ??? — ), like this?

I spent a few months search for the ??? groups using the Firefox "find" feature on the page of each thread, but the ?? groups were rare, occurring only when a word had something unusual, like an accent mark (as in cliché).

I figured it was better to just wait patiently and let the ?? groups be discovered during my routine browsing of the board.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

It was a twosome, and did indeed replace something unusual, though not unusual for me on my UK keyboard - a £ sign.