Dead of Night

One of Britain's favorite film forms is the omnibus or anthology in which the principals, cozily sipping their tea, sit about a fire and relate stories to each other. This Ealing Studio production tells four stories - strange, macabre, nightmarish things that try so desperately to be horrifying that they often stumble past the baited-breath point to fall into giggles. This is the story of an architect who has recurrent dreams about weekending at a country home, meeting six people there and then having the whole visit end in a scene of horror. This dream comes true. He visits the home, meets the six people and the scene of horror turns out to be a scene of murder. But before you get around to that murder three different people, supporting the architect's belief that you can see into the future, relate what happened to them one bright afternoon. Antony Baird says that while recovering from an auto accident he saw a hearse drive up in front of the hospital. Once out of the hospital he starts to board a bus but recognizes the bus driver as that dream-figure of a hearse driver, and so steps down. Later the bus crashes, killing all the occupants. Googie Withers says that she gave a mirror to her husband, Ralph Michael, and Ralph saw a century-old bedroom reflected in the mirror, which was hung in an ultra-modern apartment. Ralph tries to kill his wife because of that. Frederick Valk reported that in his role as a psychiatrist he discovered that Michael Redgrave, an internationally famous ventriloquist, had assumed the identity of his dummy. When these stories are told, then the architect, played by Mervyn Johns, continues his story and murders the psychiatrist Valk, just as his dream had indicated he would. But that's not the end of it. Johns wakes up in bed and the whole previous 75 minutes of film is revealed a dream. Then Johns gets a telephone call to spend the weekend at a country home and off he goes. Although this picture features an all-star English cast, few of which, unfortunately, are well known in America, directed by Cavalcanti, Basil Deardon and Robert Hamer, it fails to be believable either as parlor conversation or as a Frankenstein horror picture.