Nothing But the Night
Director: Peter Sasdy
Year:
1973
Rating: 5.0
A film
with both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in it is a treasure no matter
the quality of the film. Were two actors who appeared together so often more
loved? They were in the same film 24 times. The first few ones as minor characters
but once they began their run of Hammer films with The Curse of Frankenstein
in 1957, then a few Amicus films, a few independent offerings until their
final pairing in 1983 with The House of Long Shadows and during that time
they became huge fan favorites. Adding to this was the fact that off-screen
they were great friends. They were the Kings of British horror and the most
amiable of men in their civilian life. Not all of these films are classics
but they are almost always entertaining.
But I admit that it took me a few go's to
finish this one up. I usually bailed at about the 20 minute mark with a promise
to return. It just felt uninteresting and a dull palette with both actors
being particularly snappish. It was Lee's first and what would turn out to
be the last film he made with his production house. It is directed by Peter
Sasdy who previously performed the same duty on a few respectable Hammer
films - Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula and Hands of the Ripper.
So why is it such a dull mess for most of its running time? Too many plots
and characters for one thing and one of them quite pointless by the end.
Too much jumping from one character to another breaking up the narrative.
No likable characters - even the children were rotters and neither Lee nor
Cushing showed a human trait. But then it saves itself with an ending that
was a smack in the face. Lovely and for its time a bit shocking. It made
it worth sitting through.
The beginning held promise - a person reaches
into a car and releases the break and the car goes over a cliff; another
man jumps off his balcony to his death and another person blows out the brains
of an elderly woman. Nothing wrong with that beginning. It switches to a
hospital where a young girl is being held after an accident in a hospital
with nightmarish memories. Coincidentally, in the same hospital Colonel Bingham
(Lee) is consulting a famous pathologist, Ashley (Cushing) about those three
deaths - all wealthy trustees to an orphanage in Scotland. Into this crashing
like a runaway truck is Diana Dors, the mother of the girl with nightmares.
This is not Dors of the 1950s when she was a total sex bomb - now looking
like Shelly Winters and over acting in that same crazed fashion. She was
in jail for murder and is now a prostitute who wants her girl back. They
all end up in Scotland with Dors acting like a Godfrey Ho ninja to break
into the well-guarded orphanage. Every time they come back to Dors scouring
for a way to get in, she is falling down or exhausted. And then she just
slips through the iron fence. But wow. Great ending.
