DEAD OF NIGHT

This 1945 British film is a horror anthology which had been on my watchlist for a long time, simply because the last of the five stories, with Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist, is always spoken of as something quite special.

As indeed it is.  It has a neat premise, that of a ventriloquist being controlled by an evil puppet. Or is he?  One of the clever things about the story is that even at the end it is open to two interpretations, either a supernatural one or one in which it is simply a case of the ventriloquist undergoing some sort of mental breakdown.  Redgrave is superb either way.

I was prepared to find the rest of the film disappointing in comparison, but this was not the case.  Admittedly only one of the other stories, about a sinister mirror, is up to much but this doesn't matter as much as it might have done because of the high quality of the linking story.  

It concerns an architect who turns up at a farmhouse for an assignment who then realises that this is part of a recurring dream he has been having.  Needless to say the various characters he meets there don't believe they are simply figments of his imagination.  It's an idea which kept me intrigued me throughout and which leads to a satisfyingly circular ending.

It's a shame that the penultimate story ('The Golfer's Story') is comical rather than scary, since it dissipates the creepy mood that had been developing.   

Other than Redgrave most of the rest of the cast were unknowns to me but everybody does what they have to do and the whole thing is well written and directed, by four leading British directors of the time, Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer.  

RATING: ✓ Cheers