DEAD OF NIGHT. (1945)
THE SEGMENTS DIRECTED BY BASIL DEARDEN (X2), ALBERTO CAVALCANTI (X2), ROBERT HAMER (X1) AND CHARLES CRICHTON (X1).
STARRING MERVYN JOHNS, ROLAND CULVER, GOOGIE WITHERS, SALLY ANN HOWES, MICHAEL REDGRAVE, FREDERICK VALK AND MILES MALLESON.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
‘Just room for one inside, sir…’
DEAD OF NIGHT is a famously rare, black-and-white supernatural horror film. It’s also an anthology, omnibus or portmanteau film, a film featuring four or five stories all contained within the overarching or framing plot. It’s not exactly the first anthology film ever made, but it’s probably the most famous of the earliest ones, if you get me.
It certainly had a profound effect on the film-makers and movies that came later. Amicus Productions in particular made a few excellent portmanteau horror films in the ‘Seventies (TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE VAULT OF HORROR, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD), featuring iconic actors such as Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Massey and his sister Anna Massey, Terry-Thomas, Joan Collins and Patrick Magee, among others. Stellar cast, what…?
The making of horror films was forbidden during World War Two, probably in case it had a negative effect on the collective mindset. Films like comedies and musicals and rousingly patriotic action adventure movies were preferred instead, often featuring such well-loved stars as Vera Lynn and George ‘I’m leaning on a lamp-post’ Formby.
But meat, I mean, horror, was back on the menu, boys, just as soon as Hitler packed it in, called it a day, chucked in the towel or whatever you want to call it in the wee bunker beneath the Reich’s Chancellery…
In DEAD OF NIGHT, Mervyn Johns as the architect Walter Craig motors to a cottage in Kent on which he has been asked to do a refurb by Ronald Culver as Eliot Foley, the owner. When Craig arrives, he realises that he has seen Foley and the assembled guests before in a dream, strangely enough. He also has a strong premonition that something horrible is going to happen to him/them later.
The other guests, including a psychiatrist called Dr. van Straaten, try to comfort the worried little architect by telling him tales of the supernatural in which they’ve personally played parts. Why they’d think this would cheer him up is anyone’s guess, lol, but, in any event, this is what they do, bless their buttons.
One young man, a racing car driver, relates how a strange vision involving a hearse driven by Hammer actor Miles Malleson saves him from taking a trip on a bus doomed to crash. Though short, this story is a good ‘un and is based on a much-adapted short horror story called THE BUS CONDUCTOR by English writer E.F. Benson.
A young woman called Sally, played by Sally Ann Howes who would go on to play the character of Truly Scrumptious in CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG two decades later, reveals how she once encountered at a Christmas party the ghost of a little boy who, in life, was murdered by his sister. Eeuw. It’s enough to curdle the cream on yer puddin’.
I don’t like THE GOLFER’S STORY because it’s about- you’ve guessed it- golf, but THE HAUNTED MIRROR is a wonderfully creepy tale about a chap who receives a beautiful old mirror from his girlfriend. When he looks in it, however, which after all is what a mirror is intended for, the picture he expects is not the picture he sees…
The final story is an example of an early ‘the ventriloquist’s dummy has a mind of its own and is evil’ tale. Remember those GOOSEBUMPS ‘Night of the Living Dummy’ stories? Here, a young ventriloquist called Maxwell Frere ends up like Norman Bates when the persona of ‘Mother’ has completely taken him over, although in Frere’s case, it’s his cheeky and slightly frightening dummy Hugo who’s living rent-free in his head…
The film overall clocks in at one hundred and three minutes, and none of the individual tales overstays its welcome… expect for the one about golf, lol. Well, I’m sorry but I just hate golf, okay? It’s the most boring sport in the world, next to racing car driving and snooker and swimming.
DEAD OF NIGHT is a much better watch. Try to watch it at night, if possible, to maximise the spookiness. And don’t forgot to brush your crowning glory in the mirror afterwards…
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 