Fear in the Night (1974)

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The camera prowls around the open fields, huge assembly rooms and rolling sports grounds to the sound of children singing, nicely and sedately setting the scene for this 1972 Hammer horror. Naturally, the camera comes to rest on the feet of a man hanging from a tree. It takes 94 minutes for us to find out who they belong to …Sally Geeson plays the rather delicate woman in peril attacked in the first few minutes by a man with a prosthetic arm! When she meets the very friendly Headmaster of the school where her boyfriend Robert (Ralph Bates) is due to begin work, the fact that he has only one usable arm doesn't appear to bother her unduly, at least not initially. To say Cushing is excellent is rather like pointing out the sky is blue. His subtle wistful looks and occasionally rather breathy intonation when in close proximity to Peggy seem to betray the rather obvious fact that Headmaster Carmichael is behind the attacks on the unfortunate young lady. A testament to his performance here is that you remember him appearing far more than he actually does. The question is, is Peggy imagining it (she recently suffered a breakdown), or is Robert in cahoots with Carmichael?A pre-Hollywood Joan Collins turns up as Molly the waspy wife of the headmaster ("She can be a terrible bitch!"). Curiously she considers Peggy almost a child bride to Robert – curious given the vast age gap between Molly and her husband.The revelations, when they come, are very good. Peggy, a victim throughout, really has our sympathy as the bizarre double-twists are expertly delivered. The recording equipment where the deranged Carmichael broadcasts his private showcases are used to good effect in the finale, handsomely obscuring the fact that the scenes are simply filled with the Headmaster explaining the plot. Unspectacular, but enjoyably told and extremely well played by an excellent cast.

I found Arthur Grant's lighting the principal annoying element of this motion picture. While Jack Asher photographed almost all of Hammer Film classics, Grant was usually in charge of the less ambitious projects of the company. By the end of the 1960s he contributed to little gems like "The Reptile" and "Plague of the Zombies", but even these were much brighter than the average horror film and --in cases as "Frankenstein Created Women" and this production-- the lighting was more akin to a television drama or sitcom, having too much light on sets of dark tales, making the images (and the tales) look flat. Then the almost absence of surprise and subtlety in the dosage of information, does not help the fact that the story is not very original, and that you have seen it many times before, and a couple of times with more flair. Judy Geeson, Ralph Bates, Joan Collins and Peter Cushing do quite well, considering they are dealing with stereotypes (frightened girl, suspicious husband, bitchy headmaster's wife, and mean crippled headmaster, respectively) and that they were under the direction of Jimmy Sangster, who was foremost a very good scriptwriter. But do not expect too much.

Peggy (Judy Geeson), a recently married young woman, plans to move with her new beau Robert (Ralph Bates) to a secluded boy's school near London where he is set to teach. The night before they travel, she is attacked from behind by a man with a prosthetic arm, who strangles her but leaves her alive. Awakening in a panic, the attack is put down to her recent mental health issues and they later arrive at the deserted school. There she meets the ghoulish headteacher Michael Carmichael (Peter Cushing), a one-armed man with a shadowy demeanour, and his bitch wife Molly (Joan Collins).Directed and co-written by one of Hammer's driving forces, Jimmy Sangster, Fear in the Night sees Hammer at the very end of their life (before their recent resurgence), when they were struggling at the box-office and failing to bring in their young target audience. Interestingly, the film favours the slow-build, creeping atmosphere of their early thrillers, and not the blood and guts approach they adopted during their most prolific years. Sadly, Fear in the Night's ponderous narrative is not saved by it's more European approach, and the film is a pretty dull affair for the most part.The notable lack of red-herrings means that it doesn't take long for the audience to figure it all out, and there's plenty of time to piece it together given the length of time dedicated to Peggy plodding around investigating her strange experiences. The performances are as solid as you would expect however, with Cushing managing to steal the film with a relatively small amount of screen time, and Geeson is perfectly charming as the unassuming lead, which makes it all the more tragic that the ensemble weren't handed more to run with. Notably lacking in the Gothic atmosphere that audiences used to flock to experience, or any atmosphere at all really, this was one of Hammer's final whimpers before tragically folding.

No matter how bad the film, the august presence of the wonderful horror character actor Peter Cushing always lifts the proceedings considerably. Which is not to say that 'Fear in the Night' is a bad film, because it is quite well-constructed and enjoyable.Recovering from a traumatic experience, the fragile Peggy Heller (Judy Geeson) moves with her new husband Robert (Ralph Bates) to a boys' school, the headmaster of which is Michael Carmichael (Peter Cushing). Peggy makes the acquaintance of Michael's wife, Molly (Joan Collins), and soon begins to believe that she - Peggy - is being stalked by a one-armed man.I really liked the twist in this film and did not see it coming, which of course made it all the more enjoyable. 'Fear in the Night' is well-made and the performances are naturalistic and convincing. Judy Geeson is a sympathetic heroine and you do feel for her plight. From the ever-reliable British horror film studio Hammer, this is a film worth watching at least once.