Night Watch (1973)

Night Watch has the distinction of being the only horror movie Elizabeth Taylor made. And this 1973 British production is a reasonably successful effort.

It follows the psychological horror formula that had become familiar in the early 60s, in movies like Hammer’s psycho-thrillers of that era. But Night Watch adds a few new twists of its own.

Elizabeth Taylor is Ellen Wheeler. She is married to investment consultant John Wheeler (Laurence Harvey) although she is apparently wealthy in her own right. The marriage seems happy enough. John works fairly long hours but Ellen has her friend Sarah Cooke (Billie Whitelaw) to keep her company. Ellen is somewhat disapproving of Sarah’s mysterious affair with a married man. on the whole these seem like reasonably normal upper middle-class people. Until one night, in the middle of a severe storm, Ellen sees something in the window of the deserted house next door.

Ellen is sure she saw a murdered man with his throat cut. It was jut a glimpse as the shutters briefly blew open before blowing closed again but Ellen is convinced that she did indeed see a murdered man. The police are called but a search of the deserted house reveals nothing unusual or sinister. John is inclined to think that Ellen let her imagination play tricks on her, and the police share his view.

Ellen lost her first husband Carl in a car accident some years earlier. We do not find out the circumstances of the accident until late in the picture but Ellen has clearly never quite recovered from this tragedy.

Shortly afterwards Ellen sees another body in the derelict house, this time a woman’s body. The police are called again and again they find nothing. Ellen becomes increasingly distraught and John, by this time very concerned, calls in his psychiatrist friend tony (Tony Britton) to take a look at Ellen.

Ellen refuses to be shaken in her belief that she really did see those bodies. She is so persistent that they even dig up her neighbour Mr Appleby’s flower beds but they can still find absolutely no evidence to support Ellen’s story. Ellen rings Inspector Walker (Bill Dean) so many times that the police dismiss her as a harmless crank and no longer bother to respond to her phone calls. On Tony’s advice Ellen eventually agrees to admit herself to a private clinic in Switzerland but before she takes that plane flight the story reaches its climax.

As you might expect Elizabeth Taylor gives a wonderfully over-the-top performance. Taylor was never afraid to push her acting to extremes that would have been ridiculously histrionic in any other actress, but she was always able to get away with it. And she gets away with it here. Her performance is the key to the film’s success and she delivers the goods.

Laurence Harvey and Billie Whitelaw provide fine support. Robert Lang is amusing as Mr Appleby, a man who seems both absurd and vaguely sinister.

Brian G. Hutton directed only a handful of movies although these included another rather outrageous and very entertaining Elizabeth Taylor vehicle, Zee and Co (released in the US as X, Y and Zee). He does a very capable job with Night Watch. Screenwriter Tony Williamson had a prolific carer in British television, writing episodes for just about every crime/adventure series of the 60s and 70s. Twisted little stories were something he was very good at and his screenplay is economical and effective.

This movie has been released in the Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD series, in an excellent anamorphic transfer.

Night Watch is a fine example of the British psychological horror thriller and Elizabeth Taylor’s performance in her only horror outing is certainly an added inducement. Taylor proves that she can do horror very well indeed.

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

The Eyes of Laura Mars is an important movie for several reasons. The obvious one is that it was scripted by John Carpenter. Carpenter was making a name for himself as a screenwriter at that time. His directing career would soon take off as well. In a very brief period he would write the screenplay for The Eyes of Laura Mars, would write and direct the TV-movie Someone’s Watching Me and then write and direct Halloween. But The Eyes of Laura Mars was his first real experience working for a major studio on a major production.

The script had apparently been floating around for a while and a lot of writers aside from Carpenter were involved at some stage. Which means it may not be fair to blame Carpenter for some of the deficiencies in the script.

Irvin Kershner was offered the directing job. He was an experienced director although not perhaps a terribly distinguished one. He has the distinction of having directed the worst Bond movie of the pre-Daniel Craig era, the trainwreck that was Never Say Never Again. Would The Eyes of Laura Mars have been better with Carpenter directing? Perhaps.

The Eyes of Laura Mars is also interesting because it has a slight giallo feel.

This movie is also important because although it was made in 1978 it has very slight hints of the 80s. It’s like a proto-80s movie. In some ways it’s very 70s. New York City as a garbage dump, a world of violence, sleaze and squalor. But Laura Mars is rich and famous. Her world is a world of glamour, style, high fashion and money.

And it’s a suspense thriller with hints of the supernatural (or at least the paranormal), something you see in a few European movies of the 60s and 70s but don’t expect in a Hollywood movie.

Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a very famous very successful photographer. It appears that she works in both the worlds of fashion photography and art photography. She’s a celebrity. And she’s controversial. Her photographs depict both high fashion and savage violence.

While doing a fashion shoot she has a vision. It has happened once before. A vision of murder. On the first occasion the murder actually did take place. And now it’s happened again.

The idea of someone seeing visions of murders before they happen was far from original. It is however given a few twists here. The visions are linked to her photography. If a photographer is a voyeur then she’s a voyeur of murder, but a kind of psychic voyeur of murder.

She finds out from cop Lieutenant John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) that many of her earlier photographs bear uncanny similarities to police crime scene photos, photos that no-one outside the police department has seen. She may have been having these visions of future murders for quite some time without being aware of it.

What really freaks her out is that her interest in violent subject matter is a comparatively recent thing and she can’t explain why she suddenly developed this interest. It was just something that she felt compelled to do.

Laura will have further visions and there will be further murders.

Laura herself is not a suspect but it’s obvious that the murders have some kind of connection to her.

I have mixed feelings about Faye Dunaway but that may not be her fault. Apart from Chinatown she had a knack for being in movies that I really disliked. I don’t think of her as a bad actress. She’s pretty good here.

The movie does have a few definite weaknesses. The paranormal element could have been really interesting but is not developed fully. The screenplay really does have that “subjected to numerous rewrites” feel, because in fact it really did go through countless rewrites. The various thematic elements in the story, potentially interesting in themselves, just don’t quite come together as a coherent whole.

There is a clue early on that makes the identity of the killer very very obvious.

Perhaps the best thing about this movie is that the Laura Mars photographs were done by the great Helmut Newton. They’re superb. The two most successful and striking scenes are the fashion shoot scenes.

This movie has a few problems but don’t be put off by that. It’s an exceptionally interesting film that just doesn’t feel like a 1978 Hollywood movie. The giallo influence is very obvious and the world of high fashion figures in many notable gialli. The voyeurism theme is handled extremely well. I liked the way Laura is a voyeur but not just in the obvious ways (which she’s intelligent enough to be aware of) but in ways of which he’s not consciously aware. She is is some ways a passive voyeur - the images control her rather than her being in control of the images. And that’s disturbing for a photographer. Photographers manipulate reality but Laura is herself being manipulated.

The Eyes of Laura Mars is well worth seeing. Highly recommended.

Double Door (1934)

Double Door is a 1934 Paramount release and it came out in May of that year so it is a pre-code movie. It has definite claims to being a horror movie, but not in the style of the 1930s Universal horror films. There’ll be more to say on the subject of genre later.

It was based on a hit play of the same name by Elizabeth McFadden. The play itself was based on the real-life story of the fabulously wealthy but bizarre Wendell family. The last of the Wendells died in 1931.

McFadden denied that her play was based on the Wendells but the parallels between that family and McFadden’s fictional Van Brett family are so striking that it stretches credibility beyond breaking point to believe that the Wendells were not the inspiration for the play.

The setting is Manhattan in 1910. A wedding is taking place in the Van Brett family mansion. It might be 1910 but despite the family’s vast wealth the house seems decades out of date. The past is an oppressive presence.

The family is ruled by the formidable Victoria Van Brett (Mary Morris). Under the terms of her late father’s will she controls the money. Her sister Caroline (Anne Revere) and her half-brother Rip (Kent Taylor) are entirely dominated by her. Right from the start we sense that Victoria is not quite sane and is consumed by hatreds and resentments. We will quite soon discover that she is not sane at all and that she is very definitely evil.

Rip has married Anne Darrow (Evelyn Venable), a nurse. Victoria is furious at the idea of a Van Brett marrying someone from outside the Van Brett’s social class. To her marrying a nurse is not much better than marrying a shop girl or a parlour maid. Victoria is determined to wreck this marriage and her overwhelming and controlling personality and iron grip on the purse-strings puts her in an excellent position to do so. Victoria will stop at nothing to destroy the marriage and to destroy Anne.

Rip is pleasant enough but he’s a weakling and a fool. Anne has one ally, Rip’s best friend Dr John Lucas (Colin Tapley), but there’s a complication. Dr Lucas had at one time been in love with Anne and Victoria can (and will) use that fact to plant seeds of suspicion in Rip’s mind.

Anne is soon engaged in a desperate and seemingly losing fight to save not just her marriage but her sanity as well. Victoria’s madness reaches epic proportions.

Mary Morris gives us an extraordinary portrait of malevolent insanity which is truly amazing to watch. Paramount’s promotion of the movie compared her to Karloff and Lugosi and the comparison has some substance to it. Victoria Van Brett is a full-blown monster, albeit a human monster.

Anne Revere takes stagey overacting to levels never previously thought possible.

Evelyn Venable is a likeable enough heroine. This is a movie entirely dominated by the women. Both Kent Taylor and Colin Tapley are adequate but a bit colourless

This is out-and-out melodrama. From the start there’s an atmosphere of suppressed hysteria in the Van Brett household and the hysteria soon bursts into full bloom.

There’s also a very strong gothic feel. There’s something slightly decadent and Poe-like in the descent into collective madness of the slowly decaying and degenerating Van Brett family.

It’s not really the plot that matters so much as the overheated claustrophobic atmosphere and the extraordinary menace projected by Mary Morris’s bizarre but fascinating performance.

And there are some genuine horror moments. There are no hints at all of the supernatural. The Van Brett mansion is hunted not by ghosts but by very human evil. The other characters are trapped is a web of malevolence spun by Victoria.

Double Door is an oddity but an extremely interesting one and it’s highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray looks nice and includes some extras.

Thirteen Women (1932)

Thirteen Women is a 1932 RKO pre-code movie which straddles the crime melodrama and horror genres.

It was based on a book by Tiffany Thayer and he’s an interesting figure (and yes despite the name he was a man). He was a founding member of the Fortean Society and edited their newsletter for many years. Thayer therefore had an active interest in the strange, the unexplained, the occult and the paranormal. Those interests come through very strongly in this movie.

Twelve women who were once schoolgirls at the St Alban’s School for Girls in San Francisco receive warnings in the mail. An Indian mystic, Swami Yogadachi (C. Henry Gordon), has cast their horoscopes. He has foretold disaster for all of them.

The Swami has foretold disaster for himself as well. But were the letters that were sent to those twelve women sent by the Swami, or by his assistant, the beautiful and glamorous Ursula Georgi (Myrna Loy)? What motive could Ursula have?

The swami’s predictions begin to come true. Disaster does befall three of the women, in puzzling circumstances.

Laura Stanhope (Irene Dunne) has by far the strongest personality of the twelve women. She decides that she will have to take charge and persuade the others that the only dangers they face are in their own minds. It is their own fears that threaten them.

Ursula had also been a pupil at the St Alban’s school. She is half-Indian and as a result she was given a very hard time by those other twelve girls. She has neither forgotten nor forgiven.

The combination of threatening letters and three slightly mysterious deaths has attracted the attention of the police. Detective Sergeant Barry Clive (Ricardo Cortez) is assigned to the case. The three deaths were all suicides. There was absolutely no doubt about that. But Sergeant Clive suspects that something sinister was behind those suicides. His job is to find out what is really going on, and to make sure there are no more odd suicides. Laura Stanhope’s main concern is for her little son Bobby.

This movie does confront the issue of racial prejudice and it does so in an intelligent and sensitive way. It is best not to get distracted by the fact that it does not approach the issue the way it would be approached today. Western attitudes in the 1930s towards Asia, Asians, Asian society and culture and Asian belief systems were complex and varied. Ursula is certainly portrayed as a dangerous exotic beauty but she has some nuance. She has comprehensible motives for her actions.

Irene Dunne gets star billing but she also gets the thankless sensible good girl role. She is totally overshadowed by Myrna Loy who gets the juicy sexy bad girl role (and in 1932 no-one could top Myrna Loy in that kind of part). Ursula Georgi is in fact the central character, she entirely dominates the movie and Myrna Loy is the real star. And she’s fabulous.

The most interesting question to be confronted is whether there is actually anything occult or paranormal going on. There are hints that perhaps there might be. This is essentially a murder mystery but those hints are just enough to give the film some affinity with the horror genre.

Sadly Thirteen Women in its original form is a lost film. In 1932 it was hacked to pieces by the studio. The running time was slashed from 73 minutes to 59 minutes. The cut footage was destroyed. Since this happened in 1932 it seems most likely that the studio lost faith in the film’s commercial viability as an A-picture and butchered it for release as the bottom half of a double bill. In its surviving form it’s quite coherent but seems a bit rushed.

Thirteen Women doesn’t have any overt pre-code content but it is rather pre-code in its refusal to fit neatly inside genre boundaries and it does have a lurid vibe. It’s slightly offbeat and thoroughly enjoyable. Myrna Loy’s performance is enough to qualify it for a highly recommended rating.

This film is included in the five-movie Spanish Verdice Irene Dunne Pre-Code DVD boxed set, in English as well as Spanish. The transfer is not great but it’s acceptable. That’s where my copy came from but it has also been released on DVD in the Warner Archive series.

The Collector (1965)

William Wyler’s Anglo-American production The Collector was based on the bestselling novel of the same name by John Fowles. It was subject matter that was going to need careful handling in 1965. It was an odd choice for Wyler but apparently he was very keen to do this movie. It’s a kind of horror movie, but a very low-key subtle horror movie with the emphasis on psychological horror.

Gerald Franklin (Terence Stamp) is an odd young man. He’s very shy, very solitary and very lonely. He collects butterflies. Butterflies are beautiful and he likes beautiful things. It occurs to him that there may be more interesting things to collect than butterflies. Girls for instance. He’s already spotted a specimen who would make a fine start to his collection. Her name is Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar).

Catching butterflies requires skill and patience, and careful preparation. You need the right equipment. And you have to know what to do with them when you catch them. The stalking and the catching are challenging and enjoyable. It’s the same with girls.

Franklin makes very careful plans indeed. And he has a place to put her when he’s caught her. He’s bought an isolated house and it has a large basement that he has turned into what he fondly imagines will be an ideal environment in which to keep a captive girl. He has no intention of hurting her. He just wants to keep her, as a sort of pet. Of course the trouble with girls as pets is that you can’t really release them. Not that he wants to release her.

Franklin is not your usual movie psychopath. He’s clearly a very troubled very disturbed young man. He’s obviously psychotic. But he’s not a killer. He likes Miranda. He wants to be kind to her. Girls are like butterflies. They’re fragile.

Which is of course what makes the movie so disturbing.

Naturally Miranda is not very happy about being kept as a prisoner. At first she assumes that she’s been kidnapped for ransom but Franklin doesn’t want money. So she assumes he wants sex but he assures her that he has no intention of forcing himself on her. Then she discovers the truth, which is even more horrifying. He’s in love with her. He assumes that if he keeps her a prisoner she will learn to love him.

Franklin obviously has no experience at all with women. He also obviously lives in a fantasy world. He really believes that his intentions are honourable. He really believes she will grow to love him.

Of course there is sexual tension. Miranda is a beautiful young woman. Franklin is clearly sexually attracted to her although it’s equally clear that he has no more understanding of his sexual feelings than he has of anything else. Miranda figures that eventually he will be unable to resist the sexual temptation. She asks him to at least not use violence on her - if he cannot control himself she will not resist, but she won’t respect him.

They make a deal. She agrees to stay for a month. She makes various escape attempts, but they are unsuccessful.

A weird relationship develops between them. She almost feels sorry for him, although she also feels contempt.

There’s a definite class dimension to this movie. Miranda is middle-class and privileged with all the self-confidence and unconscious arrogance that entails. She doesn’t have to work. She’s an art student. Franklin is working class. He was a clerk in a bank until he won a fortune on the football pools. He is very conscious of his lack of education and polish. Franklin is the sort of young man that Miranda would never dream of having anything to do with under normal circumstances.

The power dynamics are interesting. On the surface he has the power - he has her locked in the cellar. In practice, most of the time, she has the power. The fact that he is so desperate for her approval, and that she can hold out to him the possibility that she will be nice to him, and perhaps even grant him her sexual favours, gives her the edge. He needs and wants her. She neither needs nor wants him. And of course there’s that class dynamic - her effortless middle-class assumption of superiority.

Franklin is at times almost a sympathetic character. When he tells Miranda that under normal circumstances she would never even speak to him much less go out with him, that she and her friends would make fun of him, he is of course correct. What makes the film more interesting is Miranda’s unawareness of her own incredibly privileged position in society and the extent to which people without her privileges lead lives of misery and despair. She cannot understand how much the contempt of people like her hurts people like Franklin. She cannot put herself in his shoes. She is not only financially secure and middle class, she is also young, female and beautiful. She has the world at her feet. She has men at her feet, if she wants them. She has no idea what it’s like for someone like Franklin to look at a girl like her knowing that such a girl would never even give him a chance.

Obviously Franklin is mad and his behaviour is appalling but while the movie doesn’t attempt to exonerate him it does allow us to understand him.

And while Miranda is the victim she’s oddly unsympathetic. Her contempt for him is so vast that most of the time she doesn’t even fear him.

In the 60s both Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar seemed destined for brilliant careers. They made successful high-profile movies. They were talented. Eggar was nominated for an Oscar for The Collector and won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The brilliant career just never happened for her. The box-office fiasco that was Dr Dolittle may well have sunk her career. Stamp was a major star in the early to mid 1960s then just walked away from the film business. Ten years later he attempted a comeback, but by that time he’d been forgotten.

They both give brilliant nuanced performances.

The Collector is a psychologically and socially complex movie, disturbing but with a slight black comedy edge to it. It’s not a horror movie or a thriller but it has some affinities with the psychological horror and psychological thriller genres. Great movie. Very highly recommended.

The Night My Number Came Up (1955)

The Night My Number Came Up is a 1955 Ealing Studios production and it’s one of those odd little movies that they don’t make nowadays (and more’s the pity). It’s a kind of semi-paranormal vaguely supernatural psychological suspense aviation thriller.

Air Marshal Hardie (Michael Redgrave) and his aide Flight Lieutenant McKenzie (Denholm Elliott) have just flown in to Hong Kong in an R.A.F. Dakota. A Naval officer, Commander Lindsay (Michael Hordern), was on the flight as well. Hardie and McKenzie are to fly on to Tokyo on the following morning.

Commander Lindsay had had a disturbing and very vivid dream on the previous night. In the dream the Dakota carrying the Air Marshal became lost in fog and crashed. Commander Lindsay wasn’t aboard the aircraft in the dream.

Of course it’s all nonsense. The dream involved a Dakota but the Air Marshal is actually continuing his journey to Japan on board a Liberator. And there will only be two passengers - in the dream there were eight passengers. So of course the dream is nothing at all to worry about. All a lot of silly superstitious rot.

The night before the flight to Tokyo diplomat Owen Robertson (Alexander Knox) is informed that his presence is required in Tokyo immediately, along with diplomatic bigwig Lord Wainwright and his staff. And they won’t be flying in a Liberator after all. They’ll be flying in a Dakota. Just like the one in the dream. But there will only be six passengers. Until at the very last moment two more passengers are added. Now there are eight passengers. And one of them is an attractive young woman. It’s all exactly as in the dream.

The lead-up is done is a nicely low-key way. No-one is at all worried by the dream. If you start believing in dreams soon you’ll be believing in all manner of superstitious tommy rot. Englishmen in the 20th century don’t put any store by superstition. It’s all just a coincidence. Mr Robertson isn’t really worried at all, even if he does order a large brandy just before take-off.

To increase the tension there are actually two flights. The Dakota will fly first to Okinawa and then refuel and fly on to Tokyo on the following day. This split journey gives the passengers lots of time to worry and to brood. Which they do.

This is a slow-burning suspense movie and while we’re waiting for the fatal flight (or the flight that might be fatal if the dream is true) the main interest is provided by watching the effect the dream has on the passengers, and the effects that the passengers then have on each other. Long before the aircraft is due to take off everyone who is going to be making the flight knows all about the dream and they’ve had a long night to think about it.

The one thing Air Marshal Hardie is grateful for is that nobody told the pilot about the dream. If you tell a pilot something like that it can have a very bad effect in a crisis. He can start to think that his number’s up and there’s nothing he can do about it. But as long as the pilot doesn’t know about the dream it’s alright. Except that someone did tell the pilot.

The build-up is slow and deliberate and intentionally so. And it’s very effective. And when things do start to get scary and exciting they do so in a big way.

This movie certainly has a very strong cast. All the cast members perform splendidly and all are careful to keep their performances on the low-key side. Lots of stuff upper lips disguising lots of inner turmoil.

Owen Robertson is already starting to fall apart. He’s terrified of flying at the best of times and now he’s well and truly spooked. Flight Lieutenant McKenzie is not in the best of shape either. He had been a notable fighter ace in the Battle of Britain but had had a major nervous breakdown and had to be taken off flying duties. He recovered from the breakdown, but he has perhaps been left with slightly shaky nerves. Those nerves are getting shakier as the time for take-off gets nearer. Air Marshal Hardie is adamant that he is not worried at all but we have reason to suspect that he’s whistling in the dark.

Nobody wants to believe in the dream because really it’s all so silly but what can’t be denied is the uncanniness with which events seem to conspire to bring about precisely the situation of Commander Lindsay’s dream. Even the most rational person can start thinking along superstitious lines given the right stimulus.

There are obviously lots of flying sequences and they’re exceptionally well done and quite convincing.

The Studiocanal Region 2 DVD is barebones but the transfer is extremely good (the movie is in black-and-white and in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio).

The Night My Number Came Up is an offbeat but very tense little thriller which achieves a very effective sense of the uncanny. An excellent film. Highly recommended.