Dead of Night [Region 2]
by Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer
![Dead of Night [Region 2]](/images/Dead-of-Night-Region-2-B00005NEVW-L.jpg)
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DVD details
Actor: Frederick Valk, Googie Withers, Mary Merrall, Mervyn Johns, Roland CulverDirector: Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer
DVD: Region Code 2
Audio: French (Subtitled)
Format: Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
DVD Reviews of Dead of Night [Region 2]
DVD Review: A classic movie of supernatural tales, with Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist whose dummy, Hugo, bites
Summary: 5 Stars
Please note that I'm commenting only on the film itself, not the various VHS tapes which carry it. The best picture quality I've encountered is on the Anchor Bay two-movie, two DVD disc set which also includes The Queen of Spades film. The Anchor Bay DVD transfer shows some age but is in good overall shape.
Dead of Night remains, sixty years after it was made at Ealing Studios, one of the creepiest and most intelligent of supernatural films. No, it doesn't have creaking coffins, or pale hands edging through a doorway, or Ruritanian vampires. It has a country home set in the warm Kentish countryside, civilized house guests with excellent manners, five stories of unhinged supernatural happenings, and one guest who suffers from nightmares. This is an anthology film, with the stories ranging from ghosts to premonitions to savage possession. They are told by the people who experienced them, and they are all wrapped around by the one guest who knows the house, knows the host and knows the other guests even though he has never seen any of them before. He knows them in his nightmare, a nightmare he has had over and over. "It always starts exactly the same as when I arrived, just now," architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) says. "I turn off the main road into the lane. At the bend in the lane, the house comes into view, and I stop as I recognize it. Then I drive on again. And Foley meets me at the front door. I recognize him, too. And then, while I'm taking off my coat, I have the most extraordinary feeling. I nearly turn and run for it, because I know I'm going to come face-to-face with the six [other guests]." Four of the guests and the host, we learn, have stories of their own.
There's the race car driver's story, directed by Basil Dearden. Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird) survives a crash but sees from his hospital window a horse-drawn hearse. The driver looks up at him. "Just room for one more, sir," he says with a smile. That's just the beginning.
There's the schoolgirl's story, directed by Alberto Calvalcanti. Sally O'Hara (Sally Ann Howes) plays hide-and-seek at a party and discovers a hidden room, a small boy crying...and an older sister.
There's the wife's story, directed by Robert Hamer. Joan Cortland (Googie Withers) buys an antique mirror for her fiancee. It's not long before he sees in the mirror another room from another age, and we learn of a crippled, jealous husband and a strangled wife.
For a chance to exhale and smile, there's the story of two golf fanatics, directed by Charles Crichton, who decide how to have the woman they both love. Eliot Foley (Roland Culver), our host, tells us this story.
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. Redgrave gives a tour de force performance as the dominated ventriloquist...but is he dominated by Hugo or by a separate personality. All we know for sure is that Hugo bites.
Weaving through these stories is the dread of Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns), who insists he has met the other guests. He knows that he will slap one, that another will break his glasses, that a sixth guest will soon appear. He knows he will do something terrible to someone who has never harmed him. One of the guests, Dr. van Straaten (Frederick Valk), is a psychoanalyst who has a reasonable explanation for all the stories. As the stories are told and as Craig's forecasts happen, van Straaten's rationales become shakier. This connecting story, directed by Dearden, reaches a climax in a psychedelic nightmare of leering faces emerging from the stories, of madly off-balance staircases and dark windows...and of a terrified Walter Craig.
And then a telephone rings. It's morning and we're in Walter Craig's bedroom. He wakes, realizes this was another nightmare and takes the phone. He's invited to spend the weekend looking over a house that needs an addition built. His wife asks who was calling. "Eliot Foley, Pilgrim's Farm...I wonder why that sounds so familiar," he says. "A weekend in the country? I should go." she says. Craig takes a coin and says, "I'll toss for it. Heads I go, tails I don't." Mrs. Craig looks at the coin. "Heads." He smiles and says, "I go." She gives him a hug. "That's just what you need, darling. It'll help you get rid of those horrible nightmares." But was it a nightmare? Or is it still?
Despite there being five tales, the linking narrative and four directors, Dead of Night works as one unified story. Everything fits seamlessly. Even after all these years the stories hold up, particularly those of Frere and Craig. Coming in a respectable second, for me, are the stories of the race driver and the wife. But even the weakest, the schoolgirl's story, is well done. The golfer's story is there to provide some eased tension and it serves it's purpose. The acting is all of a high order, with Michael Redgrave just about extraordinary. I've always been fond of Roland Culver's brisk competence. He's very good as the host. If you watch this movie, bear in mind that up until Dead of Night, ventriloquists' dummies in the movies had always been seen as charming, funny and harmless. Hugo's DNA changed all that forever.
DVD Review: English Twilight Zone-like flick
Summary: 4 Stars
"Dead of Night" is a mid 40's English paranormal horror type flick that succeeds in conveying it's supernatural theme.
Architect Walter Craig is played by Mervyn Johns, better known as Bob Crachit in the classic 1951 Scoroge, the finest version of Dickens' Christmas Carol. He is called to a countryside farmhouse to do some renovations. As he approaches in his car, the scenery somehow seems familiar. He is speechless as he enters the farmhouse. A group of people gathered there are characters he has seen in a recurring nightmare that he has been having.
Each person there has had some bizarre experience which they recount. In effect the plot is a series of weird occurrences encountered by the members of the group at the farmhouse. Frederick Valk playing psychiatrist Dr. van Straaten, one of the guests, tries to explain these tales scientifically. He recounts a strange tale of his own, featuring Michael Redgrave as a crazy ventriloquist.
The movie is rather amusing and has an effective twist at it's conclusion, very reminiscent of Rod Serling's classic Twilight Zone series.
DVD Review: Great Film, Horrible Quality
Summary: 1 Stars
Each episode of this masterpiece conveys a sense of dread and impending horror. This is achieved by gradually turning reality askew until it's a nightmare. No need for chainsaws and chop-chop. Unfortunately, the print I received must have been pirated by a drunken one-armed lodger with Parkinson's Disease, sitting in a vibrating chair in a dumpy London flat while struggling to keep his Toys R Us video camera trained on the flickering blue screen of a 10-inch Dumont TV situated behind the dirty window of an apartment on the other side of the Thames during a foggy night.DVD Review: The nightmare is real life
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a classic. The film is very entertaining in its succession of paranormal stories that a psychiatrist questions systematically to propose explanations that are farfetched and have to be farfetched because he does not want to accept the idea that there may be some paranormal activities and events in the world. The whole range of such events is explored and leads to a very disquieting ending. What if what we consider the real world were nothing but an illusion, a nightmare, something happening in our own minds, something that only existed in our minds ? What if this dreamlike and nightmarish world became blocked on one particularly event ? What if psychosis were the real natural normal state of tle mind instead of what we generally call normality ? What if schizophrenia were nothing but enhanced consciousness and not some deranged illusion of the brain ? ETC. You will look at the world with different eyes after this film. You may even be tempted to go to sleep and finally enter the reality of a nightmare or just a plain dream. Do so and bring the reliefs of this nightmare or that dream into what you have so far considered and called the normal world. You will discover then that most people around you will consider you as a real nightmare and that you will consider them as either real dummies or real monsters from the dead of night. Anyway life will become a lot more interesting and fascinating.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
DVD Review: The Best Horror Film
Summary: 5 Stars
You've seen the plots if you ever watched The Twilight Zone or half a dozen other series which generously stole the idea from Dead Of Night. But even if you are familiar with the tales, no film manages to invoke such fright as Dead Of Night.A series of stories told by a group who are in an isolated English cottage on the moors, the suspense starts with the first tale and doesn't let up until the surprise, knock-out ending that beats them all.
Slightly Hitchcock in feel, the movie plays beautifully, even today, despite the lack of technological gimmickery.
Look for Sally Anne Howes in one of her first roles and a very young John Mills in the last tale.
Although the film does slow down with a comedic tale in the middle, it makes up for it with the John Mills episode.
Even if you are not a horror film fan, this movie will stun and fascinate you and is not to be missed.
Description of Dead of Night [Region 2]
While horror conventions may change from generation to generation, there are ideas that will scare us no matter what time period we inhabit. Dead of Night is a classic horror anthology that effectively plays on those timeless fears. Mervyn Johns stars as a man who has been summoned to a house with a group of strangers he has never met but has seen in his dreams. As they convene, he predicts certain events will happen as they do in his dreams, and when they do, the other guests relate their own experiences with the supernatural, including tales of a possessed mirror, a sinister ventriloquist's dummy, and an eerie premonition of death. Throughout the group meeting, the protagonist fears something horrible will happen to him, and we are left to wonder what it might be. The film's final, revelatory sequence offers an unexpectedly horrific surprise. It may have been made in 1945, but Dead of Night is still spooky. --Bryan ReesmanGeneral DVDs
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