Neither the Sea nor the Sand is a great movie title, isn't it? Unfortunately it's definitely not a great film. A tale of a love that transcends death that's unfortunately dull, poorly written and suffering from a really bad case of shitty and overtly intrusive early '70s music... well, it's pretty easy to see why this has been all but forgotten, only to be exhumed by streaming services in their endless and unholy hunger for #content.
Annabelle (Susan Hampshire) is sightseeing along the Jersey island coastline when she runs into Hugh Dabernon (Michael Petrovitch) - a handsome, brooding, slightly douchey lighthouse keeper who proceeds to court her with juvenile philosophy and bargain-rack morbidity. These days she would laugh him off as a pretentious goth git, but I guess back then it was new and interesting? Susan is unhappy with her marriage, and after a short chaste courtship she decides to stay in Jersey with Hugh.
The first half of this movie is basically these people hooking up. Some of it is cute (including a couple of non-gratuitous sex scenes), some of it is shitty, but either way at forty-five minutes it still feels too long.
Then, while fooling around (non-sexually) in a remote Scottish beach, Hughie just... drops dead. This is a very effective scene, and Susan Hampshire really gets to shine here; she gets a lot of mileage just from looking desperate and/or dejected, using her very expressive eyes to great effect. Hugh's soon pronounced dead from a heart attack by a country doctor with a brutal bedside manner.
Later that night, Hugh comes back to Anna. At first it looks like it's going to be a haunting, but nope - everyone else can see Hugh just fine. He doesn't talk now, and is listless and barely responding to stimulus, but he follows Anna around like a puppy.
Once they return to Jersey, though, it's quickly established that Hugh is very much not alive. Anna has somehow returned only the semblance of life to her beau, basically turning him into an amorous zombie (it could be argued that Hugh's love drove him to return, but the actor doesn't sell it nearly as well as Anna.)
And here the movie seems to run out of ideas about what to do next; There's a murder, because there need to be some stakes, I guess, There's some attempts to cast doubt on whether what's animating Hugh is indeed Hugh or something else. There are scenes where Anna needs to mislead the police as to what's happening, and one where Anna is in denial and goes shopping... It's very clearly just pointless waffling.
The film ends how it needs to end, Not much in the way of surprises, but at least it ties into some of the bullshit Hugh spouts at the beginning. A decent ending to a movie that is too often on very shaky ground.
Even at an hour and a half, the movie is bloated and full of pointless scenes. The dialog is fairly bad - this is one of those movies where people often just don't talk or act like human beings; This kills the first half of the movie (where it really needs to convince you that these foolish young things' budding love affair can conquer death), and introduces some unintended humor into the second half with random bits like how Hugh's brother reacts to his sibling's death, or even worse, with a character played by Michael Craze who I guess is just there to (unsuccessfully) introduce some tension; the guy is so fucking hilariously inappropriate that I can't fathom what the scritpwriter (Gordon Honeycombe, working from his novel) was going for.
Most of the cast consists of established British actors, but except for the delightful Scottish Landlord no one really does much to elevate the material. Hugh's actor in particular needed to be a lot more charismatic to make the character interesting or fun to watch, especially later on when he barely gets any dialogue. Susan Hampshire is maybe not great, but she deserves some recognition for making some of her lines work as intended.
The photography can also be quite nice, with lots of lovely shots of dreary British coastland. Other than that it's a pretty pedestrian-looking movie. Don't expect much in the way of scares, carnage, or zombie makeup even when Hugh is supposed to be decomposing. And the music... oh god, it's terrible. Horrible pseudo-hippy shit.
It's important to state that even though the film chickens out and there's no actual on-screen necrophilia, if you choose to take the movie literally (and why wouldn't you?) Zombie Hugh does bone Anna telepathically, replaying previous sex scenes in their minds. Psychic zombie sex! If this film is to be remembered, that's as good a reason as any.