DEAD OF NIGHT: Blu-ray (Ealing Studios, 1945) Kino Lorber

The pinnacle of British anthology horror, Dead of Night (1945) employs four of Ealing Studio’s most accomplished directors - Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer – to tell the psychologically complex tale of a man, driven by a bizarre and haunting déjà vu to rendezvous at a country estate.  Dead of Night refrains from bloodshed, but otherwise delivers blood-curdling results, thanks to its utterly superb screenplay by John Baines and Angus MacPhail. If only for The Ventriloquist's Dummy segment, directed by Cavalcanti, then Dead of Night could already be considered a masterpiece. And, while the remaining vignettes told by each competing director remain episodic at best – their integration into the central narrative - merely expressed through fade ins and outs - leaves not a single moment absent of a sinister and mounting sense of dread to creep us out and permeate every frame, as the picture builds to its slam-bang wallop. Mervyn Johns’ shell-shocked architect, Walter Craig, indulged in his notion he has already met the various guests staying at this country retreat, is regaled with a series of even weirder stories by its amused patrons, apparently into a good ‘ghost’ story – all except, psychiatrist, Dr. Van Staaten (Frederick Valk) – the sole skeptic among the group. But Staaten’s resolve is steadily eroded until this ensemble’s fantasies transgress into reality and reality mutates into the macabre fulfillment of Craig’s nightmare.

Although Ealing today is most fondly recalled for their clever and urbane comedies, producer, Michael Balcon pulled out all the stops for Dead of Night, in hindsight, a response to the traumatic war years, resulting in a paranoiac psychological thriller par excellence. Shying away from the affluent, the milieu here is middle-class, populated by a desirable ensemble of stiff-upper-lipped character actors. And although Staaten cannot dissuade his cohorts to accept their unexplained premonitions as mere overactive imagination – a cursed mirror, as example, leads to attempted murder; a children’s game of hide-and-seek reveals the ghost of a dead boy strangled nearly a century before by his wicked half-sister – the supernatural and the surreal herein are allowed their full breadth; the past and, then, present, intermingling in unexpected ways to build on a far more evil-inclined and collective hysteria. Despite the picture’s opening disclaimer, suggesting ‘the events and characters portrayed are fictitious’, and that ‘any similarity’ is purely ‘coincidental’, the ‘Christmas Party’ sequence, featuring a winsome Sally Anne Howes as Sally O’Hara, the unsuspecting teen who discovers a tear-stained Francis Kent in a hidden upstairs bedroom of a great English manor, is actually based on a real incident. Kent, age four, was found murdered at Road Hill House in 1860. The boy’s sixteen-year-old half-sister, Constance was later arrested, put on trial and convicted, serving 20 years for murder before emigrating to Australia. There, she remained until her death - aged 100, only a year shy of the release of Dead of Night. It would take nearly another 50-years to unravel the crime that shocked England, presenting two alternate theories; either, Constance had not acted alone, or, in fact, falsely confessed to protect another member of the family.

Dead of Night is superbly crafted down to the last detail. If imitation is, as they claim, the cheapest form of flattery, then Dead of Night owes an ever-so-slight nod to Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938) without having to pay for the royalties; co-stars, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Parratt and Potter – a very thinly disguised reprise of Charters and Caldicott – the two similarly sport-obsessed gentlemen, with a genuine verve for wry English humor, who appeared in that Hitchcock classic. Think of Radford and Naunton as the Brit-based Abbott and Costello. Indeed, their schtick proved so indelible and amusing to audiences, they appeared together frequently thereafter, always playing derivations of themselves.  Regrettably, when Dead of Night found its way to the U.S., it was shorn of its Christmas ghost story and ‘Golfing’ vignette – unhinging the narrative structure and all but crippling the movie’s eerie dénouement.  Dead of Night also hold a rather dubious distinction of influencing science; cosmologists, Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, inspired by the story’s cyclical kismet, to develop ‘The Steady State Theory’ of the universe, an alternative to the more widely embraced ‘Big Bang’.

Only in retrospect does Dead of Night acquire a sort of Agatha Christie ‘locked room’ stagecraft quality, adding immensely to its ghoulish time capsule vintage. Even the weakest among the vignettes, Charles Crichton’s Wodehousian fluff piece about two golfers competing for the affections of the same woman, or, the opening segment, about a race car driver who, having narrowly escaped a hellish wreck, is courted a second time by the specter of death (a vignette loosely based on E.F. Benson’s 1906 ‘The Bus Conductor’, and later to inspire Rod Serling’s ‘Twenty-Two’ episode of The Twilight Zone) yield tremendous charm. Cumulatively, Dead of Night offers even the most jaded contemporary horror afficinado a chain-rattling/bone-chilling good time. And the complexity with which the tale has been assembled, continues to astound. The five stories, featured in flashback, are eventually exposed as intricate pieces to Walter Craig’s dream – or, actually, a prelude to the architect’s pilgrimage along the same road already featured in his nightmare. It is a monumental craftsmanship at play, tightly and graphically unfurled, to tease the brain and make it question its own mind-warped hallucinations.  

Our story beings with Craig’s arrival at a quaint English country house populated by a dazzling assortment of British character actors. The estate’s proprietor, Eliot Foley (Roland Culver) welcomes Craig. In short order, Craig also meets Eliot’s mother, Mrs. Foley (Mary Merrall), and guests, Joan Cortland (Googie Withers), Dr. Van Staaten, Sally O’Hara and Hugh Grainger (Antony Baird).  Craig knows – or rather - believes he has been here before, already having met the people to whom he is now being introduced; circumstances beyond his control that gradually reveal elements of his own violent and repulsive nightmare. As one by one, the incidents recalled from his nocturnal flight into fear begin to rattle his nerves, but otherwise intrigue the other house guests, each setting about to ease Craig’s anxieties by suggesting they too have been touched by the unexplained and supernatural. Hugh kicks off the flashbacks, as a retired race car driver who, after a near death experience on the track, was visited in his hospital room by visions of a Victorian-age hearse and its unctuous driver (Miles Malleson), brightly declaring “Room, for one more.” Upon his release from hospital, Hugh prepares to board a double-decker for the ride home, only to be greeted by the same man, now driving the bus. Rejecting the fare, Hugh helplessly observes as the bus, packed with passengers, suffers a malfunction and veers off the road a short distance ahead of him, toppling over the edge of a bridge, killing all onboard.

While Van Straaten remains cynical about Hugh’s premonition, chalking it up to mere coincidence, he entertains Craig’s frayed psyche, after Craig predicts – again, from his dream – the arrival of a woman, and shortly thereafter, Mrs. Grainger (Judy Kelly) enters the house, imploring her husband to pay for the waiting taxi.  Craig is haunted by the notion he will eventually be driven to commit an unspeakable act to fulfill his destiny in the dream. Perhaps a tad unnerved by this, Mrs. Foley encourages young Sally to return home, but not before she shares her curious tale with the group. During one snowy eve not so very long ago, while attending a children’s Christmas party at a great mansion, Sally played a game of ‘sardines’ (a.k.a. hide and seek), hosted by Jimmy Watson (Michael Allan) – a boy, she is obviously sweet on. As the other children count down to the moment of discovery, Jimmy finds Sally lurking behind a curtain in the upstairs hall and suggests a far better place to hide; the attic, untouched in many years and surely, the very last place anyone would think to look for her. While navigating through the cobwebbed junk, Jimmy tells Sally that the house is haunted by the ghost of a young boy strangled by his sister in 1860. Now, Jimmy tries to kiss Sally. She playfully resists, and retreats into a hidden side room, whereupon Sally discovers a small boy, Francis (Barry Ford), sobbing inside a cozily lit nursery. Francis tells Sally his sister is plotting to kill him. Gingerly comforting the child, Sally puts Francis to bed, wipes away his tears and promises to sing him to sleep. Afterward, she hears her friends calling and returns to the group in the main parlor, only to discover that the boy who was murdered and Francis, the child in the attic nursery, are one in the same.  

Now, Joan relays her curious tale to the group. For her fiancé, Peter’s (Ralph Michaels) birthday, Joan bought an antique mirror. Peter is enchanted by the gift until he begins seeing visions of another room, presumably from the Victorian age, reflected in its glass. As Joan does not see these same reflections, Peter begins to suspect he is going mad. To prove his sanity, Joan forces Peter to confront the mirror with her. Only this time, Peter sees the other room without her standing at his side.  With Joan’s tender guidance, Peter begins to see the reflection of his own bedroom in the mirror instead. Believing his odd hallucinations have abated, Peter and Joan are wed. He loses his fear of the mirror. However, upon returning to the shop where she bought the cursed relic, Joan is told of its history: owned by a jealous, wealthy man, crippled in a riding accident. Believing his wife to be unfaithful, the man strangled her before taking his own life by slitting his throat in front of the mirror. Anxious to return home, Joan finds Peter staring into the reflection, enraged at the sight of her. He accuses Joan of having an affair and begins to strangle her. In desperation, Joan smashes the glass, thus breaking the spell.

Challenged to make sense of Joan’s story, Dr. Van Straaten is barely able to offer an explanation when Craig nervously announces he is leaving before the rest of his nightmare can come true. Van Straaten implores Craig to remain and confront his fears, and Foley, plying them both with drink, begins a yarn of his own.  In this flashback we meet, golf-obsessed George Parratt (Basil Radford) and Larry Potter (Naunton Wayne); deadly rivals on the green, but best friends off it. Alas, these fair-weathers are put to a test with the arrival of Mary Lee (Peggy Bryan) who favors each with her romantic overtures. Unable to choose between them, Mary manages to make both men miserable, utterly wrecking their concentration and love of the sport. To settle the score, George suggests they play one final round – the loser, to agree to leave for good. George wins this wager, though only by cheating. Larry accepts defeat and to George’s horror, strolls calmly into the nearby lake where he is drowned. Sometime later, Larry’s spirit returns, threatening to haunt George into an early grave unless he gives Mary up. Begrudgingly, George agrees to these terms. Only Larry now claims to have forgotten ‘the code’ to re-enter Heaven. Desperate to rid himself of Larry’s ghost, George’s search ends with his own disappearance, whereupon Larry enters George’s bedchamber where Mary is waiting, grateful to take his place.

The Golfer’s Tale is by far the most light-hearted and amusing of the vignettes, immediately followed by Dead of Night’s most macabre outing. Breaking with doctor/patient privilege, Van Straaten recalls his most notorious case; that of renown ventriloquist, Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave) and his cheeky dummy, Hugo Fitch (voiced by John McGuire). Catching Maxwell’s act, American ventriloquist, Sylvester Kee (Hartley Power) is ‘invited’ by Hugo to go backstage. In Maxwell's absence, Hugo suggests he and Sylvester team up. Assuming this is part of Maxwell's act, Sylvester is impressed. But Maxwell genuinely fears Sylvester will take him up on Hugo's offer. Not long thereafter, Sylvester witnesses a drunken Maxwell involved in a brawl in the hotel bar. Sylvester helps Maxwell to his room, leaving Hugo propped against the bed. Later that evening, Maxwell bursts into Sylvester's room, demanding to know what has become of Hugo. Sylvester protests, but is astonished when Hugo is found in his room. Now, Maxwell shoots Sylvester twice, though not fatally. Attended by Van Straaten in his prison cell, Maxwell is reunited with Hugo. Once Van Straaten leaves, Hugo taunts Maxwell. Driven insane, Maxwell smothers the dummy before stamping its head to pieces on the floor.  Sent to an asylum, Maxwell is visited by Sylvester, who has recovered from his wounds. Only now, the voice which greets him is not Maxwell’s, but Hugo’s.

As Van Straaten concludes his story, he inadvertently breaks his glasses, fulfilling the last of Craig's prophecies. Night falls and the other guests retire to their bedrooms, just like in Craig’s nightmare. Left alone with the psychiatrist, Craig is compelled to strangle him. Suffering from delirium, Craig relives portions of all the other vignettes, swirling about his mind. The pandemonium is diffused when Craig is stirred from slumber by his wife (Renee Gadd). So, it really has been just a bad dream. The telephone is ringing. It is Eliot Foley, inviting Craig to a weekend in the country for an appraisal of his property. As yet unaware his déjà vu is about to begin all over again, Craig dresses with confidence and embarks upon the journey to the country estate. Alas, as he approaches the house, he develops a queasy unease. Oh, no! -  the nightmare is beginning all over again.

Dead of Night was decidedly a departure for Ealing Studios; producer, Michael Balcon’s ambitious venture to break free from wartime rationing that had effectively relegated Ealing as a production house of B-budgeted documentary picture-making. Balcon likely refrained from any hint that Dead of Night was a horror movie, as Britain’s governing board of censorship would have slapped the dreaded ‘H’ restricting audience attendance. So, Dead of Night took its loftier aim at telling a good ole-fashioned ghost story – and not just one – wrapped in the enigma of a fateful supernatural melodrama.  Viewed today, Dead of Night has lost none of its devastating charm as a psychological thriller. Interestingly, while Balcon borrowed prestige from noted authors, H.G. Wells, and, E.F. Benson in the ‘original story’ writing credits, the movie’s most memorable skits (The Haunted Mirror, Ventriloquist’s Dummy, and, Christmas Party) were actually hand-crafted by screenwriters, John Baines and Angus MacPhail. Today, with all the cheap imitations to have followed it, much of Dead of Night plays with a time-weathered familiarity that was distinctly absent at the time of the picture’s premiere. Even so, it’s the professionalism of the piece that continues to shine through; Stanley Pavey and Douglas Slocombe’s luminous cinematography, and, Michael Relph’s exquisite art direction, contributing to the unsettling and very English atmosphere. The anthology movie is perhaps the toughest nut to crack, as its episodic nature practically ensures disjointed storytelling. What is of paramount importance then, is the ‘linking’ narrative, necessary to create cohesion between these otherwise disparate vignettes. And herein, lies the true greatness of Dead of Night; Craig’s déjà vu odyssey, weaving in and out of these various ghost stories with an ominous premonition that miraculously is connected, in some form or another, by a fatal kismet, certain to be revived at the picture’s final fade out – the real beginning of the end for Craig’s chronic visitation from these supernatural forces.

Dead of Night arrives on Blu-ray state’s side via Kino Lorber. While the picture has certainly been through the proverbial ringer over the decades, this new Blu, while light years ahead of anything previously seen on home video, still falls short of expectations. Kino’s marketing denotes the transfer has been culled from a 4K ‘restoration’. To my eyes, I believe Kino has confused ‘restoration’ with elements having been scanned in at 4K ‘resolution’, but with minimal restorative efforts otherwise applied. Retained in this image, minor gate weave, occasionally edge enhancement, and, a lot of age-related dirt and scratches that occasionally distract. Framed in its proper 1.37:1, the overall image quality does take a quantum leap forward in overall sharpness and fine detail, with a light smattering of film grain looking very indigenous to its source. We applaud the effort, certainly. But the overall image is still very rough around the edges and with added digital anomalies that detract from our viewing pleasure. Worse, the 2.0 DTS mono audio is a queer mix of grating and scratchy distortions and/or intermittently muffled, garbling the dialogue to the point where it is inaudible.  Personally, I found the audio extremely problematic and, on the whole, one of the worst efforts yet put forth to stabilize a vintage recording. Film historian, Tim Lucas provides a comprehensive audio commentary, discussing the discrepancies between the U.S. and U.K. release. But the big surprise here, is Remembering Dead of Night – 75 minutes of discussion with college lecturer, Keith Johnston, critic, Danny Leigh, author and critic, Kim Newman, Matthew Sweet, writer-actor, Reece Shearsmith, critic, Jonathan Romney, and director, John Landis. Difficult to call this one a ‘documentary’ – more like, a series of ‘talking head’ conversations loosely strung together with only one or two inserts from the movie itself, accompanied by zero archival footage, stills, poster art, etc. Bottom line: Dead of Night is a classic deserving of better. Only a monumental restoration will do. This isn’t it. Visually, the Blu-ray is adequate, though just. From an audio perspective, it is well below par. Regrets.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

3