DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) ****
Back in 2005, I needed three credits to complete a master’s degree in history (lifetime underachievement) and I finished a three-week 120-hour internship that summer at the National Archives in Kansas City, Missouri.
Anyway, they let me loose on their free account on some genealogical site as reward for good behavior and a day-and-a-half later I came back with Sisney family history dating back to 1776.
On February 27, 1776, a few months before the Declaration of Independence, Steven Sisney fought at and was captured and imprisoned during the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge near Wilmington, North Carolina. Sisney was one of about 1600 loyalist-siding Highland Scots who marched from Cross Creek, North Carolina, toward the coast behind British Colonel Donald McLeod. The loyalists lost, the patriots received a morale boost, and North Carolina became the first colony to vote for independence, beating the official declaration by a couple months easy.
Every once in a while, I think about Steven Sisney and his loyalty to the British since I favor the Beatles and the Stones and the Who and the Kinks and Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin and the Clash and the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks and Radiohead and Pink Floyd and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and Sherlock Holmes and James Bond and Alec Guinness and Cary Grant and Ben Kingsley and Ian McKellen and Glenda Jackson and Hammer and Hitchcock and Monty Python and Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and on and so on and on some more again.
If nothing else, the 1945 horror anthology film Dead of Night made me think about Steven Sisney, the epic 1989 David Hackett Fischer history book Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (never forget the saga of the poor one-eyed servant George Spencer in New Haven, who was hanged for bestiality after a sow birthed a deformed pig with one eye and the two witnesses required for conviction were the deformed piglet and Spencer’s recanted confession), the late Pittsburg State history professor Judith Shaw (1931-2013) who taught many British History courses over the decades, and how much of an impact Dead of Night had on Richard Attenborough’s Magic.
Horror anthologies generally offer a mixed bag of success and failure.
Of course, Ray Davies outlined it in Celluloid Heroes, Success walks hand-in-hand with failure along Hollywood Boulevard. I always think about Twilight Zone: The Movie from 1983 to illustrate the mixed bag qualities of just about every anthology we’ve ever been expected to consume. The segments directed by John Landis and Steven Spielberg suck, the ones from Joe Dante and George Miller are dynamite, and the prologue and epilogue push the overall package into positive review terrain.
In Dead of Night, Alberto Cavalcanti directed Christmas Party and The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, Charles Crichton directed Golfing Story, Robert Hamer directed The Haunted Mirror, and Basil Dearden directed Hearse Driver and Linking Narrative.
It all starts when architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) tells host and potential client Eliot Foley (Roland Culver) and his guests at country estate Pilgrim’s Farm that he’s seen them all in a recurring dream. Craig feels like he’s been at Pilgrim’s Farm before and every guest rings a bell to him despite never having met any of them before. Each person (host and guests alike) rattles off a supernatural tale, inspired by Craig’s revelations. Craig wants to leave because he doesn’t want his dream to come true and the guests do their best to make him stay.
The Haunted Mirror and The Ventriloquist’s Dummy are especially brilliant and Golfing Story reminds one that Ealing Studios later brought us Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, and The Ladykillers, all of which feature a dark comedy that seems to have started with Hitchcock. Hamer directed Kind Hearts and Coronets and Crichton directed The Lavender Hill Mob (and later on in his career A Fish Called Wanda).
Basil Radford (1897-1952) and Naunton Wayne (1901-70) appear together in Dead of Night, but not as their characters Charters and Caldicott. Charters and Caldicott began in Hitchcock’s 1938 classic The Lady Vanishes and then the acting duo appeared together in a series of films from 1940 through 1949, including three more times playing Charters and Caldicott. They are very funny, both individually and collectively, in Dead of Night. They don’t seem particularly gay in Dead of Night.
During The Haunted Mirror, guest Joan Cortland (Googie Withers) relays to us what happened after she gifted an antique mirror to her future husband Peter (Ralph Michael). Peter sees another room in the mirror’s reflection, does not see Joan in the mirror when she confronts him, and for a spell he sees the room as normal. Joan finds out the history of the mirror and the wealthy man who owned it after she visits the antique shop from which she purchased the mirror. This wealthy man was crippled in a riding accident, then he grew so insanely jealous of his wife that he strangled her and he finally slit his own throat in front of the mirror. When Joan returns home, Peter accuses her of having an affair and then he attempts to strangle her. Joan smashes the mirror in sheer desperation and breaks the spell.
In The Ventriloquist’s Dummy, the absolute most effective segment, resident rational explanation seeker Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk) tells us about the case of ventriloquist Maxwell Frere (Michael Redgrave) and his dummy Hugo Fitch. Maxwell develops a dual personality with Hugo becoming the dominant part. Poor, poor, poor Sylvester Kee (Hartley Power), who happens to catch and be impressed by the act.
In the long run, I was much impressed by Dead of Night and I recommend it to anyone.
Attack of the Killer Librarian 