Dead of Night

Plot synopsis:
Architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) has been invited by Elliot Foley (Roland Culver) to his country home in Kent to consult on some renovations. Upon arrival at the cottage, he reveals to Foley and his assembled guests that despite never having met any of them, he has seen them all in a recurring dream.
He appears to have no prior personal knowledge of them but he is able to predict spontaneous events in the house before they unfold. Craig partially recalls with some dismay that something awful will later occur, and becomes increasingly disturbed.
The other guests attempt to test Craig's foresight and set him at ease, while entertaining each other with various tales of uncanny or supernatural events that they experienced or were told about.
These include a racing car driver's premonition of a fatal bus crash; a ghostly encounter during a children's Christmas party (a tale cut from the initial USA release); a haunted antique mirror; a light-hearted tale of two obsessed golfers, one of whom becomes haunted by the other's ghost (another cut from the initial USA release); and the story of an unbalanced ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) who believes his amoral dummy is truly alive.
The framing story is then capped by a twist ending in which Craig murders one of the guests, then escapes into a feverish montage of scenes and characters from the house guests' tales. At the climax, the dummy Hugo is strangling him when Craig suddenly wakes up at home from the nightmare to the sound of a phone ringing.
The phone call is from Elliot Foley, inviting him to his country home to consult on some renovations. As the end credits roll, Craig is again driving up to Foley's cottage, exactly as in the film's opening.

Tags: insanity, romantic, murder, violence

Review:
Dead of Night is responsible for so many films made in the horror genre, because it was the first that took a huge gamble and pieced several unconnected stories together within a narrative that loosely keeps them together.
Anthology n.: a collection of selected literary pieces or passages of works of art or music.This classic horror-anthology from Britain's Ealing Studios is composed of four separate stories, composed around a group of strangers that is mysteriously gathered at a country estate where each reveals their chilling tale of the supernatural.
The standout for me, not judged in terms of the best, but certainly the most frightening story of the four, is "The Ventriloquist Dummy" by Brazilian born Alberto Cavalcanti (he's simply billed as Cavalcanti), the only non-British director involved in DEAD OF NIGHT.
It is interesting, too, that the story of the ventriloquist's dummy that "comes to life," an oft-repeated theme in other movies and TV shows, originated with Dead of Night.
The architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) drives to a farmhouse in the countryside of London and he is welcomed by the owner, Eliot Foley (Roland Culver), who introduces him the psychiatrist Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk), his friend Joan Cortland (Googie Withers), his young neighbor Sally O'Hara (Sally Ann Howes) and the race car driver Hugh Grainger (Antony Baird).
Grainger had a car accident and then a premonition that saved his life; Sally had met a ghost during the Christmas; Eliot and his wife had lived an evil experience with a haunted mirror; two golfers that loved the same woman and decide to dispute her in a game, but one of them dies and haunt the other; and Dr. Van Straaten tells the story of a ventriloquist with double personality that is dominated by his dummy.
But when Dr. Van Straaten accidentally breaks his classes and the power goes out, the nightmare begins."Dead of Night" is an original horror tale that is certainly the source of inspiration to "The Twilight Zone", "Tales From The Crypt", "Vault of Horror", "Creepshow", "Tales From the Darkside: the Movie" where the screenplay discloses a main story and many segments.
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.
However, "Dead of Night" is a shining example of where these words may be applied without fear of being misplaced.From my youth, I remember several episodic horror films, made up from short stories and cleverly linked together but this was by far the best.
In fact, it's the charm of the film that gives the horror aspect such a contrast to work against.Think of it as the spookiest episodes of The Twilight Zone merged into one terrific movie and you won't be far off..
I watched Dead of Night for the first and (unfortunately) for the last time on TV when I was 10 or 11 years old but I still remember it like one of most fearful experience of my life.
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).
I knew it led to a lifelong dread of ventriloquist dummies, but I couldn't figure out how that tied to an architect at a country house party.For no apparent reason today I put "ventriloquist movie" into yahoo and skimmed down to Dead of Night - British 1945.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(The face in the dream that warns of death, the ghost in the haunted house, the mirror with a link to another time...) The tales are woven together, Canterbury Tales style, by several people in a country house telling of their most unusual experiences.They're all nicely done with a convincing cast with standouts Mervyn Johns as the man whose nightmare holds it all together, and Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist tormented by a dummy with a mind of its own.
Then there is the haunted mirror episode, a truly disturbing little play, which leans more towards psychological horror than M.R. James.The final and longest story, featuring a ventriloquist, is the most famous and celebrated of them all.
One can't help feeling that if this story had been left out (along with some of the similarly intrusive night club song in the ventriloquist tale) the impact of the film would have been all the greater.Other segments retain their power to disturb; most especially the two Albert Calvalcanti-directed tales of hide and seek, and of the ventriloquist, as well as Robert Hamer's spooky part about the haunted mirror.
- but, in its practices, looks forward to that great serial of English surrealist fantasy, 'The Avengers'.Not the least of its achievements is the way it takes those markers of English conservatism, fetishised most famously in the films of Merchant Ivory - the country house, the upper middle-classes, the family recreations of the past - markers that point to a reassuring stability; and makes them unstable, troubling, eerie, locii of menace, uncertainty, violence, where free will and social ties are negated, and darker impulses, fantasies, desires, dread form all laws.Louis Aragon once said that surrealism never took off in England because its insistent normality was already dangerously surreal - not only are the stories here mere tweakings of the normal into the frightening, but even th e framing story itself shows how the predictable can seem eccentric, weird even - Sally's mother, for instance.The film sets up an opposition between the scientific German rationalism of the psychoanalyst, Dr. von Straaten, where every seemingly unearthly phenomena can be explained away, and the dream world of Walter Craig, where events are arbitrary and inexplicable.
Each features doubles - Hugh Grainger gets a vision of his own possible death, with the Hearse Driver repeated as the conductor of the fatal bus; Peter Cortland is doubled not only in the reflection of the cursed mirror, but in the personality and destiny of its first owner; Sally and her friend are doubled in the young ghost and his murderous sister; George Parratt and Larry Potter are two golfers battling over the same woman - Larry becomes the ghostly double of his former self; in the film's most famous sequence, Maxwell Frere is doubled by his malevolent dummy.Another related connection is sex and death - Hugh's vision of his own death is just after he has proposed to his future wife, emergent desire and imminent death patently aligned; Sally's immersion in the ghost story is just after fending off sexual advances from Jimmy, her growing sexual awareness linked to the tale of a young girl who slits her own brother's neck, intimations of castration, incest etc.My favourite sequence is the mirror one, a brilliant analysis of marriage.
Without any major special effects this film still chills and thrills in a way that modern horror movies seldom do and the black and white photography helps; the ending would not carry the same atmosphere in colour.
Premonitions and dreams that relate to real life events DO happen and I have examples of my own that are too numerous to describe here.In between these two stories, the most memorable segment of the whole film for me is slotted in at number 3 - the haunted mirror.
"The Haunted Mirror" and "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" are the best two stories of the five - these two are really good and scary.
Classic supernatural anthology film starts when architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arrives at a country house along with several other guests.
Still, it's very good with an outstanding performance by Redgrave.The beginning of the film ties back in at the end in a clever way that is one of the best twist endings to a horror anthology film I've seen (and they all seem to have them).
When Johns relates what he thinks is happening to him, the others start telling some paranormal tales of their own.With Mervyn Johns's introductory story unifying the film, Dead Of Night now goes into five very engrossing short stories of some weird experiences that the guests have had.
I'm not sure the introductory tale is needed, all five can certainly stand on their own as Gothic drama.Although all the stories are good, by far the outstanding one involves Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist whose dummy seems to be taking on a life of its own.
This sets off talk about the supernatural and each guest takes it in turn to recount their own strange tale...Dead Of Night is brought to us courtesy of Ealing Studios, somewhat a veer from the normal output associated with that bastion of British cinema, it is none the less one of the finest films to have come from the place that gave us The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts And Coronets and The Man in The White Suit.
Or because of the numerous other movies with the same horror format that followed this, the best of them?There are five segments in Dead Of Night that are jointly directed by Alberto Cavalcanti (Went the Day Well?), Basil Dearden (Victim), Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets) and Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob).
The stories consist of "The Hearse Driver," "The Christmas Story," "The Haunted Mirror," "The Golfing Story" and the chilling crowning glory that is "The Ventriloquist Dummy" (the latter being responsible for my fear of talking dummies even to this day).In spite of my obvious love for this film (it "is" the greatest anthology spooker ever) I'm aware that it suffers from a variance of pace (the bane of anthology films), whilst the light relief in the form of "The Golfing Story" , whilst being a jolly bit of cinema, is in truth a segment that doesn't sit quite right.
Overall then this film was an enjoyable collection of ghost stories to watch on a winters night but the only story to really chill the blood in my opinion was the last one featuring the ventriloquists Dummy.
Firstly a piece of advice: if you call yourself a horror fan and what really ticks your boxes in the genre are gore and blood - FORGET IT:Either we can say the film is no match for your dubious taste or your mind is not of the kind which likes to "work out" a bit - GET BACK TO YOUR GRATUITOUS excuse of a horror film whatever it might be!On the other hand if you're someone whose favorite genre is REAL horror - and it doesn't matter if it's either movies or short stories in a book - you should definitely bow to the geniuses behind the making of this precious little gem.The plot is powerful and evolving.
Like the other reviewer, I was terrified by this film as a child, though for me it was the story about the Ventriloquist's Dummy which recurred for years in nightmares; and, seeing it again as a grown-up (well, sort of), it still gives me some uneasy moments.
I agree with the other reviewer about the power of the Haunted Mirror sequence, which achieves with great narrative economy and clever photography an impression of claustrophobic possession and violence far more effective than all the detached body parts and buckets of fake blood that dominate most horror films.
The underlying strength of the film, which carries all the stories, is the high quality of its ensemble cast, as so often with British films of the period, and the ordinariness of the setting for the linking sequences: no spooky haunted mansion or misty graveyard, but a comfortable, well-lit country house inhabited by charming and civilised people, each of whom turns out to have another life far outside the comfort zone.
Very early, if not the first, movie anthology of murder madness and the supernatural with five different stories that in the end fuse together as a real-life house of horrors for the poor confused and tormented Walter Craig.
In a series of flashbacks all the stories that the guest tell link together, like in a jigsaw puzzle, and become the nightmare that has been haunting Craig all these nights.
I remember seeing similar sequences like that one in many movies and even in a 1960's "Twilight Zone" TV episode with Cliff Robertson but none were ever as good as this one.Craig seems to be on automatic pilot throughout the entire time he's at the Foley home as everything, and everyone, that he sees play themselves out in a surreal and frightening fashion as his minds snaps and he descends into a dark abyss of insanity and murder.
In the case of "Dead of Night", its bold multiple-story format led to Amicus's successful series of similarly-styled horror films (such as "Tales from the Crypt").
The chilling and much-remembered ventriloquist's dummy section is an obvious precursor to "The Devil Doll", "Magic" (and more recently, an episode of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer"!)The first section with Sally Ann Howes is a little twee but then we get the impressive "Haunted Mirror" tale and the story really begins to kick in.
Michael Redgrave's performance as the ventriloquist who is slowly going insane has been justly-praised but one should not forget Mervyn Johns in the framing story, as a timid man who finds himself caught in a nightmarish spiral of events.The film climaxes with a brilliant, surrealistic montage, a shocking, impulsive murder and then a subtle final twist.
If a 'portmanteau' style film can best be defined through its framing device, that is, the story which links all of the tales, then 'Dead of Night' is truly the greatest.
It almost pains me to write this,but I have just watched 'Dead of Night' for the first time in years and I was surprised at how dated it has become.I remembered it for being a pretty chilling film,but now it is reasonably entertaining but not particularly scary.The film now has the feel of a stage play to me with acting that verges on hammy.A couple of stories are still pretty effective I guess.The one with the mirror is a pretty good tale.I have to say though that the golfing segment is just stupid and does not fit into the frame of this movie at all.I was willing it to end.I also found the music to be over the top and overwhelming in places.The one piece that saves this film completely is the ventriloquist's story.It is still excellent to this day and features the best performance in the whole movie from Michael Redgrave.I almost felt that this story should have been a film in it's own right with Hugo the dummy a scary and haunting figure.It is a film that has achieved cult status,but it is surely best remembered for the pure chills of the ventriloquist and his dummy..
However, if approached with the right attitude then it's an enjoyable anthology piece that manages to unsettle even after 60 years.Ealing Studios is of course best remembered for it's comedies and there's certainly a strain of good humour running through parts of this film, most notably in the absolutely barking golf segment ("May the Lord have mercy on your handicap!") which is really very funny (even if the idea behind it - that a woman would allow herself to be a prize for two golfers to play for - is too fantastical for words).
Ealing Studios certainly weren't known for horror movies but DEAD OF NIGHT is considered one of their best films and one of the greatest anthology projects in history.
Five different ghost stories in this anthology with different writers and directors tied to an architect (Mervyn Johns) who is plagued by recurring dreams.The scare factor varies with each segment, but the Ventriloquist's Dummy segment in which Michael Redgrave's wild-eyed ventriloquist performs with a demonic puppet that's out to get him, makes this film worth the time.
And there is undoubtedly one of the most unnerving of horror tales, the story of ventriloquist Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave) and his dummy, Hugo, directed by Calvalcanti.
The "Haunted Mirror" and "Ventriloquist's Dummy" stories are by far the best, but I also like the "Hearse Driver" part.
This story is the most famous and the one everyone recalls who has seen the film the segment about a man who believes his Ventriloquist's Dummy is actually alive!
DEAD OF NIGHT is the first horror anthology film and a well-remembered classic courtesy of Ealing Studios.
There's just something inherently sinister about a wooden dummy's grinning and this intelligent story exploits that to the full.Subtle and spooky, Dead of Night is an effectively chilling ghost film and a minor classic of the genre.