The Night Walker

Plot synopsis:
The plot of the play focuses on an arranged marriage. The heroine, Maria, is in love with a suitable potential mate, Frank Heartlove; but her mother (known only as the Lady) coerces Maria into a marriage with a rich old miser, Justice Algrip. Maria's Nurse describes him as "this old stinking dog's flesh," among other choice epithets. At the marriage feast, Maria's cousin, the prankster Jack Wildbrain, urges the heartbroken and rejected Heartlove to attempt to cuckold the Justice on his wedding night, and arranges Heartlove's opportunity to be with Maria alone. But Maria, a virtuous young woman, resists Heartlove's advances, even drawing a dagger and threatening to harm herself if he persists. Unfortunately, they are caught together by the Justice and other members of the wedding party; Maria, her reputation ruined, falls into a swoon, and is perceived to be dead.
Meanwhile, Wildbrain's friend Tom Lurcher, a down-and-out gentleman turned thief, is recruiting a new apprentice in thievery, a boy who calls himself Snap (he is the "little thief"). Lurcher's modus operandi involves disguise and trickery: it's easier to burgle a house when the inhabitants are terrified of devils. Lurcher and the boy break into the Lady's house, to make off with the chest that holds the wedding gifts; instead they steal the coffin containing Maria's body. When they discover their error, they take the coffin out to bury it; but they encounter Justice Algrip, on his way home from the Lady's house. The boy pretends to be Maria's ghost to frighten him off. In so doing, the boy mentions a woman the Justice abandoned in order to marry Maria — a broad hint that Snap is more than he appears to be. No sooner is he gone, though, that Maria wakes from her swoon, and the thieves flee the scene.
The Lady drives Jack Wildbrain from her doors, blaming him for the wedding disaster and even for the disappearance of the coffin. Wandering in the night, Wildbrain meets a dejected Heartlove, who now blames Wildbrain for getting him drunk and manipulating him into his disgraceful conduct earlier. Heartlove challenges Wildbrain to a duel. As they fight, a disoriented Maria stumbles upon them; she pretends to be her own ghost to frighten and shock them out of the duel. Afterward her Nurse takes her in, under the disguise of a Welsh cousin; the Lady soon penetrates the guise, but agrees to maintain it till Maria's reputation can be restored.
Lurcher and the boy, under various disguises, fool and rob the Justice, and then waylay and drug him; when the Justice wakes, he is confronted with "furies" and "hellhounds" ready to drag him to Hell for his sins. His soul is saved, however, when an angel (the boy in costume) intervenes; Justice Algrip repents his past misdeeds and promises to make amends. The Justice keeps his word: he returns Maria's dowry and admits that his precontract with another woman makes his marriage to Maria null and void. He also yields up the mortgage he holds on Lurcher's property, thus restoring Lurcher's fortunes. Maria is revealed and restored to Heartlove; and the boy thief turns out to be Lurcher's sister, and the woman to whom the Justice was previously committed. She has manipulated Lurcher to keep his bad deeds under control; it was her doing that they stole the coffin instead of the wedding treasure. And she accepts the Justice as her intended husband once again..."old dry ham of horse flesh" though he may be. Even Wildbrain is restored to the Lady's good graces.

Tags: murder

Review:
Producer/Director William Castle, famed for his low-budget shockers complete with assorted gimmicks, had by now reached his "Star Stage." He had featured Vincent Price in two of his films, and in 1964 really scored a coup when he signed Joan Crawford for "Strait- Jacket." Thanks mostly to her drawing power (she would later do "I Saw What You Did" for Castle) the film was a hit - and her publicity appearances on behalf of it didn't hurt, either.
So, for his next project, Castle signed both Barbara Stanwyck and her initially reluctant ex-husband Robert Taylor to headline "The Night Walker" from a script written by "Strait-Jacket's" Robert Bloch (who also penned the book "Psycho").
And so goes the plot...Most critics saw this as another "Horror Hag" movie, in other words, a lurid yarn featuring a Golden Age star, a cycle which began with "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" (with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford) and continued with "Strait-Jacket" (Crawford); "Lady In A Cage" (Olivia De havilland) and Ann Sothern) "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" (Davis, De havilland and Agnes Moorehead) etc.
This time around though, the still- beautiful Stanwyck was cast as a victim, rather than a villainess (as most of the veteran actresses ended up playing in these films were) and she generated a good deal of sympathy-(besides being a terrific screamer).
Dark and spooky movie about murder and deception with a number of twists and turns to it that keeps you guessing until the very last frame."The Night walker" is one of those films that doesn't seem to be what you at first think that it is; Something between a horror and psychological movie.
Howard Trent, Hayden Rorke, is a blind millionaire who's suspicious of his wife Irene, Barbara Stanwyck.
Howard tells his friend and lawyer Barry Moreland, Robert Taylor, how he feels about his wife Barbara at the start of the movie.
With her husband dead and Irene now all alone in the house her dreams,or better yet nightmares, become more and more pronounced and real to the point where she has to leave the house in order to keep from going insane.
Plays like a very good whodunit with Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck giving the movie the attention and class that it wouldn't have gotten if it had much less known actors in those two top roles.
One is the expressionistic prolouge, narrated by Paul Frees in his recognizably sinister voice, and the other is the late-night marriage ceremony, which is also eerie and well done.Another great facet of this movie is the music score by Vic Mizzy.
Maybe it was because William Castle produced it, or the handsome "dream lover", the music by Vic Mizzy, its surprise ending (which I should have known from reel one), or the happy time I was having when it was released: I was 13 years old, The Supremes had their first hits, and many stars of the past were back in action.
In this film (written by "Psycho" author, Robert Bloch), Barbara Stanwyck is rather restrained compared to her peers, as a widow having strange dreams (in which Lloyd Bochner seduced her), with ex-husband Robert Taylor lending a hand to solve the mystery.
The Night Walker is similar to William Castle's other films; like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler, and this movie is just as creepy.
I especially like the part where Barbara Stanwyck is screaming, "I can't wake up!" "I can't wake up!" This is a great movie.
Without a shadow of a doubt, screenwriter/novelist Robert Bloch (1917 - 1994) will always be best remembered for the 1960 film that made Alfred Hitchcock a household name: "Psycho"; and young Janet Leigh played what small part she had, in The Bates Motel, to the hilton.But the four-years-after thriller, "The Night Walker", which starred an actress who'd already been a star for more than a decade had a story line that haunted its lady in distress, rather than having her killed off after one scream.
Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck) was a troubled woman from the very start--having nightmares that seemed so real, she didn't know the meaning of the word "reality"; and having a literally-blind, eccentric husband (Hayden Rorke)--who was so demanding of her, that we might as well have wished she got away with murder.Enter her lawyer and supposed friend, Barry Moreland (Robert Taylor) and a very overbearing "dream lover", (Lloyd Bochner), and you've got  the formula for a workable "B" grade drama which, however predictable it might seem, isn't going to be very predictable at all.
Even by the time Irene had the final piece of her personal life's puzzle in place, the way the very final scene was to pan out was anything but predictable.William Castle did one royal job, here, for insomniacs everywhere, for many generations to come..
The plot has some excellent twists; the chills are more psychological and less gore-dependent than in other Castle films I can think of; and it's just fun to see two great (albeit aging) stars get their teeth into a horror script.
Of course, it's also entirely unbelievable for the wind-up to a tale that really loses all credibility when you start to examine it.BARBARA STANWYCK does her best to put some professional zing into her role of a woman who dreams too much and ROBERT TAYLOR, as an overly concerned lawyer friend, does his best to make things believable, but the script by Robert Bloch defies reasoning.
It's the sort of deceptive thriller that should have been much better written and directed, especially when stars like Stanwyck and Taylor were assigned to it.The opening segment is an expressionistic montage of the dream world that has a certain fascination and promise.
But what follows is an extremely artificial tale involving the woman's blind and jealous husband, her concerned lawyer and a muddled mixture of nightmares that plague the woman until the deceptive revelation at the end.Stanwyck and Taylor have clearly seen better days, but fans of the stars will no doubt enjoy seeing them coasting along on their former reputations in a horror film not really worthy of them..
Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck add credence to the story by virtue of their considerable "star" power, making a possibly unbelievable story believable.
It lacks William Castle's usual gimmicks to attract an audience yet stands out as a fine film effort.When a blind man - suspicious of his wife's loyalty to him due to her dreams of another lover - dies in a bizarre laboratory explosion, his wife begins to have nightmares about him and begins to suspect she may be going crazy.There's a good creepy atmosphere here and to think it's achieved without many of the expected gimmicks and thrills - the chapel-wedding sequence with the mannequins, spinning chandelier, candles being particularly effective.
William Castle's B/W thriller ( 1964 )with Barbara Stanwick and Robert Taylor ..
You know, William Castle didn't do just gimmick-laden horror movies.
Now the woman still has those dreams, but there's a new guest - her dearly departed husband.Is Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck, in her final film role) cheating on her husband?
Her sleep is restless, her psyche unstable.Irene turns to attorney Barry Morland (Robert Taylor), and it's clear she has a bit of a thing for him - but he's not the man in the dream, either.
Taylor, Lloyd Bochner (as the "dream" lover), and Hayden Rorke (as the jealous husband) offer fine support.
Bloch, who helped bring new shocks to the screen with his novel "Psycho", came up with a fairly straightforward thriller here, one that producer-director Castle then marketed his own way ("Are you afraid of the things that can come out of your dreams...Lust.
Vic Mizzy contributes one of his finest background scores to the film, and the cast is full of pros, including Robert Taylor, Stanwyck's real-life ex-husband.
The kitschy opening about the world of dreams is pure William Castle (and has next-to-nothing in common with the movie that follows), but there are many amazing sequences here to cherish.
William Castle reunites Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor in a scary tale of deceit!.
Castle puts a spin on the good and evil in all of us, by having Barbara Stanwyck fantasy about a "dream lover" throughout the film.
Well.............actually it's not, not when you think about it anyway.The concept is there as is the delivery but the plot itself is a frustrating mess and everytime Stanwyck screamed I died a little inside.Certainly not the worst, but I'd definetly advise skipping over it.The Good:Great opening sequenceSFX are ahead of their timeRobert Taylor The Bad:Story is an absolute messThings I Learnt From This Movie:Barbara Stanwyck has the worst scream in cinema history.
For The Night Walker he did things the more conventional Hollywood way, he reunited two stars from Hollywood's golden age of the studio who happened to be married to each other at one time.This was done once before, for William Powell and Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey.
Actually they did and they produced a classic motion picture comedy.Would that The Night Walker did the same for Taylor and Stanwyck.
"The Night Walker" is perfect proof of this statement, because even though the screenplay (by none other than Robert "Pyscho" Bloch") is occasionally too slow-paced and predictable, Castle still managed to turn it into a mysteriously ominous thriller with a handful of authentic fright-moments, hypnotizing music, eerie imagery and strong performances.
Barbara Stanwyck (very good in her last theatrical role) is married to a bitter, blind man.
Is he alive, or dead, or is she just going crazy?Not a bad premise...some of the nightmare sequences are spooky and the great music score is very eerie, but the film doesn't have enough material to sustain and hour and a half length.
Funny, it almost doesn't seem quite as bad as I remember it -- except for the ending and Stanwyck's usual overwroughtness in the wrong places.Who made the creepy -- and downright good -- ghostly avant-garde prologue montage, narrated by Paul Frees?
It's the best thing about the movie and it's pretty obvious that William Castle, no auteur he, was not responsible for it.The eerie 1964 Cold War black-and-white photography with an equally eerie Vic "Addams Family" Mizzy score.
I still say the whole thing would have been granted a little extra dignity if they had ended on Stanwyck awakening one more time, hearing men's voices down the hall, and her going to find her husband and the lawyer in the study, reliving completely the first scene in the study from the beginning of the movie, Stanwyck in the doorway of the study in terror, camera zooms up to her left eye.
It wasn't until the scene just before he went the the reel-to-reel recorder that I finally recognized the man as Hayden Rorke who  went on to do the tv series "I Dream Of Jeannie" the next year after this film was released.
This William Castle film is a little better than The Tingler but ends as abruptly as House On Haunted Hill did.
I've Fallen Asleep and I Can't Wake Up. Castle follows the Strait-Jacket formula in The Night Walker by casting a couple of former heavyweight champs (Stanwyck and Taylor) and retaining Bloch for another script.
This immediate follow-up exercise in similar vein adds an intriguing element of Freudian psychodrama and cleverly casts a former royal couple of Hollywood, Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck (whose final theatrical feature film this turned out to be!), in the leading roles; I should be following this with their much earlier on screen collaboration, THIS IS MY AFFAIR (1937).
It turns out he is no figment of the imagination but Stanwyck's blind, embittered millionaire husband (Hayden Rorke  whose decidedly effective facial make-up is first-rate) walking around his mansion as his wife has her nightly dream of a romantic liaison with a mystery man (compulsively recorded on tape, as is every other conversation held within his household)!
As can be expected from such 'let's-drive-an-heiress-mad' scenarios, the plot thickens with new twists and turns every few minutes and, among the highlights we have: Stanwyck's dead-of-night wedding  in a supposedly abandoned chapel  with Bochner (who is amusingly billed as "The Dream" in the opening credits) presided over and witnessed by waxwork dummies and the climactic fistfight between Bochner and Taylor in Rorke's lab  which is about to blow up for the third time in the film!
Driven by a minimalist but catchy score by Vic Mizzy (of TV's "The Addams Family" fame)  even if the main musical motif is oddly reminiscent of the "Food, Glorious Food" number from Lionel Bart's musical "OLIVER!"  THE NIGHT WALKER is possibly the second best  after the utterly unique oddity SHANKS (1974)  of the 8 William Castle films I have watched so far (although, thankfully, I will soon be filling in some of the remaining gaps with 4 more)which makes its absence on DVD (I had to make do with a full-frame VHS rip of acceptable quality) almost as big an enigma as the strange occurrences that befall the sturdy Stanwyck throughout the film!.
This William Castle film of a Robert Bloch script may not be cricket for the modern moviegoer, force-fed junk like "Scream" or "I Know What You Did Last Summer", but it is actually a tidy little horror flick that utilizes some fine actors in the twilight of their careers.
Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, though rather subdued in these strange parts, both add a sense of depth to the proceedings; and whilst, the directing and pace are a bit clunky, it does instill a creepy mood, which goes a long way in this genre.
This movie stars Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor as the wife and lawyer of an old blind man.
Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor are both wasted and it's a shame to see such talented actors wasted in such a crappy movie like this..
From writer Robert Bloch of "Psycho" fame and the gimmick-loving producer-director William Castle comes this entry into that genre crudely referred to by some people as "hag horror".
(Popularized by the legendary "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?".) Barbara Stanwyck, in her final feature film, stars as Irene Trent, who's unhappily married to embittered blind man Howard Trent (Hayden Rorke).
Her well-meaning lawyer friend Barry Morland (Robert Taylor) tries to help her solve this puzzle in her life.Castle does some great things with atmosphere, and his direction is stylish.
The opening narration, ruminating on the entire concept of dreams and nightmares, is spoken by the great Paul Frees.Good fun, and rather under rated as far as Castles' output and the entire "older women in shockers" genre goes.Seven out of 10..
The film is worth seeing for the sake of Barbara Stanwyck, who is always reliably excellent and doesn't seem a year less beautiful in her fifties than in her thirties, while Robert Taylor, some years younger, appears as much more aged and worn.
Twelve years after their very nasty divorce, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor made another movie together.
Although it has some great elements, it really doesn't make all that much sense (such as why didn't the lady ever seek out the police??) and it's best you just turn off your brain and enjoy this one.The film is made by William Castle...so it's not surprising it starts off weirdly.
What is really going on here?Pairing Barbara Stanwyck and her ex-husband, Robert Taylor, was an interesting choice....and the film is filled with fantastically eerie camerawork and music...which, along with the husband's make-up, really terrify.
If only the story were a bit more logical, I would have rated it higher, as the movie (much like Castle's "Strait-Jacket") is highly entertaining and creepy..
Irene Trent's (Barbara Stanwyck) blind, jealous, clock-collecting husband, Howard (Hayden Rorke) suspects his wife has been seeing another man.
Oh well, at least Miss Stanwyck, having dipped a toe in the murky pond of William Castle's productions, decided to avoid the occasionally hysterical film fate of Bette and Joan and stick to television.The dummies used in the chapel scene were more animated than poor old Robert Taylor — never the most exciting of actors here he sometimes seems to be wearing more make-up than Stanwyck while reacting like someone who'd taken a nice sedative just before walking onto the set..
The Night Walker (1964) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck) is accused by her blind husband of having an affair because when she dreams she speaks of a much younger man.
The blind husband is killed in an accidental explosion and soon afterwards Irene's dreams continue but soon they turn into nightmares as her dead husband seems to be coming back for her.William Castle's THE NIGHT WALKER is a rather interesting horror film that has some good ideas that aren't fully realized but there are certainly enough good moments throughout the picture to make it worth watching.
The film is basically about Stanwyck having these awful visions yet she's never quite sure if they are real or if they are from her dreams.
Robert Taylor is also very good in his role as is Judith Meredith and Hayden Rorke.There are some flaws with the film including the screenplay not doing enough with the set-up.
Sadly not available on DVD at time of writing, "The Night Walker" seems to be one of William Castles more neglected films.
But I was attracted to the presence of two formerly married actors (Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck) getting back together to star in a film together...and I love a GOOD horror film.
However, as is often the case, the film isn't near as good as I remembered it being Robert Taylor was looking almost old here, although Barbara Stanwyck was still quite beautiful.
Barbara Stanwyck in her final theatrical film before confining her appearances to TV, makes a moderately attractive figure – and she certainly screams to chilling effect!