Dead of Night

Dead Of Night was made in 1945, but it is still creepy today. It tells the story of Walter Craig who is invited to stay at a farmhouse in the countryside for a weekend. When he arrives he meets a group of people who appear in his reoccuring nightmare. When he informs them of this they each tell him of their ghostly experiences. A racing car driver is given a warning of death, a young girl meets a boy who was murdered 100 years ago, a woman's husband is possessed by an evil mirror, a man's friend is haunted by the spirit of his golfing buddy and a psychologist encounters a ventriloquist who's dummy has a mind of it's own. Craig goes mad and strangles the psychologist and proceeds to run through the places where the group's stories took place. Eventually, he wakes up and realises that it was just a nightmare, but he is then invited to the farmhouse in real life, and the final shot is of him going inside to the horror that awaits him. People may say that this brilliant film isn't scary, but if you watch it at 1 in the morning with all the lights out a chill is guaranteed to run up your spine! The "Haunted Mirror" and "Ventriloquist's Dummy" stories are by far the best, but I also like the "Hearse Driver" part. In conclusion, a chilling film that is a prime example of how ghost stories should be told. 10 out of 10!

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Found this film in a very old antique shop among old recordings and even Frank Sinatra albums. Once I started viewing this film it held my interest from the very beginning to the very end. There are different story's revealed in this film, one being from H.G. Wells and other English authors. A man drives along a quiet English road and stops at a huge home and when he enters, seems to feel like he has been there before and all the people he meets he remembers very clearly from a dream he has had not very long ago. As the story continues, each person he meets has a very strange tale of suspense which makes you wonder about our own dreams and things that have also happened to our very selves. This is a great film, with outstanding actors and a real classic from 1945. There is also two characters who look like "Charlie McCarthy & Edgar Bergan ! Enjoy

source: Dead of Night

This black and white classic is considered the grandfather of British anthology films, even serving as an influence to Rod Sterling - the creator of The Twilight Zone that ran for five seasons from 1959 to 1964. In past reviews you've seen me mention Amicus Productions; a British film company that released various anthologies throughout the 1960's and early '70's and even they felt the effects. So what is an anthology? Well, it's a film sometimes referred to as a portmanteau, compendium, or omnibus in which several short stories share a unified theme. Dead of Night is widely recognized for having laid the groundwork behind this concept on the big screen. An architect by the name of Walter Craig is summoned to a country farm house to discuss a new project on behalf of his client. When he arrives he is greeted by a room full of guests in which he claims he's met before but only in a dream. A doctor by the name of Van Straaten attempts to scientifically explain this strange dream-to-reality phenomenon and how it is possible for Craig to foresee events before they happen. In the midst of diagnosing the issue several guests entertain Craig with odd or unsettling tales that they've either experienced or heard about. This film is broken down into 5 different segments - all of which vary in the intensity of their delivery. Since this was produced in 1945 one could excuse the mild tone of some of the tales involved but despite the more innocent outlook on horror in the '40's, they could have been more memorable. After all, certain films in the silent era still have an impact today! Easily the most disturbing story in Dead of Night is about a dummy and the mad ventriloquist who controls him. The amount of times this idea has been replicated is intriguing. The earliest film rendition of this idea is 1929's The Great Gabbo - you can go even further and recognize that the Great Gabbo was parodied by The Simpsons back in the '90's. I know of one Tales From the Crypt episode that borrowed from this theme that starred Bobcat Goldthwait. In addition, there were two The Twilight Zone episodes that followed it closely. If you really want to get obscure, there was a short entitled The Dummy that originally aired on USA's Night Flight back in 1981 - not really a play-for-play copy of what you see in Dead of Night, but certainly influenced nonetheless. A great deal of anthology films exercise a twist ending and Dead of Night is no exception. It's a satisfactory way to close the film and it should be considered a point of interest. It's true that this film was there in the early days of film-making. Sadly, the tales lacked consistency, whether intentional or not, and remains a big flaw among many anthologies.

I watched this again after a too-long gap of about six years. Were there many anthology films made during this time? "Flesh and Fantasy" (1943) comes to mind but "Dead of Night" is superior. The plot involves an architect who arrives at a country house for work, in a recurring nightmare, and he's terrified because he knows how this nightmare is going to end... At the house there are a number of guests and they soon fall into talking about their own horrifying supernatural tales. The stories of each of the guests range from semi-comical (the "golfing" episode was my least favorite, although there was one chilling moment even in that one) to the terrifying (the best of the lot, imho, is the 'ventriloquist' episode). Some have speculated that Rod Serling probably drew heavily on "Dead of Night" when writing a number of scripts for "The Twilight Zone" (as just one example, the scene where the dummy bites the hand of the ventriloquist is copied almost exactly in the TZ ep "The Dummy"). I'm not sure if this movie was a blockbuster at the time, but I think it was ahead of its time in terms of depth of concepts, in that there is more than meets the eye.

Scary British horror film with a bunch of people in a beautiful British country house sitting around and telling horror stories. A man in a hospital has a horrific vision that later saves him; a young girl has a ghostly experience at a Christmas party; there's a haunted mirror sequence; a purportedly humorous ghost story involving two golfers and a downright terrifying sequence. This has Michael Redgrave playing a ventriloquist whose dummy seems to have a life of its own. The dummy is terrifying and Redgrave is superb--he actually became a ventriloquist for the role! It all has a framing story which ends with a somewhat predictable ending. However, back in 1945, this ending was probably brand new and must have jolted audiences. I caught this on TV back in the 1970s. It was on LATE at night (about 1 am) and I was only 13 but I stayed up to watch it. I was fine with it until the Redgrave sequence and the one following it--those two scared me silly and I couldn't get to sleep--Hugo's face kept appearing in front of me! Seeing it now, all these years later, it STILL works on me. The stories have all been redone as episodes of "Twilight Zone" or "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"...but none have matched this movie. It's well-acted and has multiple directors doing separate sequences. There's next to no violence and no sudden shocks--it scares you but it sort of creeps up on you. A perfect example of subtle horror. The only misstep this makes is the stupid golfer story--it's not funny and pretty dumb--but this is a small complaint. A true horror classic. The DVD print is in pretty poor condition. The picture is clear but somewhat faded and the audio drops in and out (music especially). Still it is watchable and that's what counts. A 10 all the way.

Ealing studios' only foray into the horror genre resulted in a fine film indeed. Ealing studios are, of course, best known for their eloquent and inventive comedy, of which I am a big fan, but this effort certainly proves them worthy of creating hits in other genres, and it's a shame that they didn't make more horror. Dead of Night is often cited as being the first 'omnibus' style horror film (a style that would later be rekindled in the 60's by Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath"), and that is another thing that this film will be fondly remembered for, aside from it being a damn fine movie. Like many later omnibus style horror movies, the tales in this one aren't all as great as each other - but unlike many, it doesn't feature any weak links either. The first two tales are simple, yet effective ghost stories that tell stories that would later go on to influence entire movies in an efficient manner. I'm not a big fan of ghost stories as they tend to drag out something that could easily be told in half the time; but here that isn't a problem as the tales are short and therefore the film doesn't have to clog up it's running time with lots and lots of dreary back-building to try and make the stories work. Our scene opens with an architect, called Walter Craig, arriving at a house where he has a promise of some work; only to find that the situation he finds himself in resembles that of a recurring nightmare he's been suffering with. We later discover that he's been the victim of some ghostly goings on, and he tells us this through his story of a hearse driver that has warned him of his death. The first tale isn't all that impressive, but it prepares the audience for a quadruple helping of lovely little ghost stories nicely. As mentioned, the second tale isn't all that impressive either, but it's still rather decent and a damn sight more chilling than the likes of 'The Sixth Sense'. It's after the first two stories that the film really picks up, and the third tale is an absolute delight. It tells the story of a woman that buys a mirror as a present for her fiancé, only to find that the mirror once belonged to a lord that slowly a drove himself insane; a fate that promises to befall her fiancé also. This tale works thanks to simplicity and constant intrigue. Nothing is over the top about it, and we're fed information very much on a 'need to know' basis; and because the tale is so intriguing, we very much want to know. The film then takes a turn more towards what Ealing would become famous for with the golfing tale. This one is a departure from the others are there's much more comedy involved, and it doesn't concentrate on scaring the audience at all. It's then that we're catapulted into the movie's showpiece tale; the absolutely magnificent 'The Ventriloquist's Dummy'. This tale is nothing short of perfect and features of the most frightening, yet underused articles of horror imagery in history - of course I mean the dummy itself. This tale actually manages to be quite frightening through it's use of atmosphere and the way that the dummy is used. It works on both a straight horror and a psychological level. Dead of Night breathes that familiar Ealing style, as words such as 'besmirch' and 'crackers' are used often and it's all very British. This film represents how jaded modern audiences have become with it's tales that work due to simplicity rather than over the top scares or special effects. The style of the movie is a delight to view, and despite being a horror movie; the eloquent edge blends well with it. Dead of Night is often cited as one of the films that helped to create what would become the modern horror movie, and that alone is reason enough to see it. When you consider that the film is also a damn fine horror in itself, you've got a must see.

Walter Craig goes away for the weekend to relax to a place suggested by a friend. When he arrives he finds that he's has been to this place before, but in his dreams, and the host, his mother, and the 5 other guests he has also encountered in his dreams (though never in person), but as Craig later puts it, they should be called nightmares. One of the guests, Psychologist Dr. Van Straaten, believes there is a logical explanation for Craig knowing the house and of the guests, but the remaining guests debunk Van Straaten's theory but telling of their supernatural encounters, but Craig later believes the longer he stays at the manor, the greater chance, tragedy will occur. This is the movie that Tales of the Crypt could not ever hope to become. The film starts off slowly (its lone drawback), but as the film progresses, it become more mysterious and eerie. The Hearse Driver segment is wooden, the Christmas party is the weakest, the Haunted Mirror is a great spook tale, and the Golfing Story is a nice humorous change of pace, however the Ventriloquist's Dummy segment, the one the film is known for, is clearly the best of the lot, with Michael Redgrave giving the performance of his life as Frere. Mervyn Johns is very good as the tormented Craig, and the linking narratives are add its own spookiness as well. Great ending. Rating, 10.

Dead of Night is one of those movies that actually started a genre. Tame to today's standards many of its short stories can be traced to horror plots today; most notably the ventriloquist dummy come to life (Michael Redgrave sequence). This movie takes horror where it should remain...the suspense film. We can see all the blood and gore today but why do films like The Six Sense (1999) or What Lies Beneath (2000) remain a success? Everyone has their own fears and thoughts of horror; and the thought of that fear and horror adds to the suspense film in all ways more thansay the breed of horror slasher films...probably best portrayed by Psycho, Halloween and the Scream Films. Dead of Night isn't a Hitchcock film but it uses the same actors of his England days and uses the same suspense techniques seen in his tv series. Check this film out and watch it from the perspective of the 1940s viewers eyes and see why it was popular. Also check out Cat People (1942)and M (1931)