Features

Night of the Eagle (1962) continued.

The major reason for Eagle’s success is that it takes a lesson from its transatlantic cousins and nearly always maintains pace. Every attempt is been made to unveil the plot in a manner which is not unwieldy – no huge chunks of dialogue. The only place I think in which this fails is the sequence after Tansy’s return from the sea. All that conjecture and persuasion from the doctor is totally unnecessary as Taylor is instantly convinced that his wife’s best place is at home.

On seeing the screenwriting credits it is no surprise that pace is sustained. The screenplay is by three parties: Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont and George Baxt. Matheson was already famous in his own right as the creator of many excellent fantasy stories – the most famous of which remains ‘I Am Legend’. Beaumont was also an author of fantastic stories, but it is most interesting to note that at the time of Eagle, both writers were becoming mainstays of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone in the USA. Baxt had previously conspired with Eagle's director (Sidney Hayers) to create Circus of Horrors, and was also fully familiar with the genre. The source material for adaptation was again a noted fantasy author, Fritz Leiber, who was best known for his science-fiction stories.

Not to be outshone by the above are the contributions of director Sidney Hayers and director of photography, Reginald Wyer. Hayers, who went on to direct several episodes of The Avengers, flies in the face of the traditional Hammer trends prevalent at the time. Instead he falls back on the approach which made the monster movies of the Thirties into classics. Like these, Eagle shuns the concept of overt horror – the viewer is manipulated in such a way that, as for Taylor, the real terror is built up slowly in the imagination. Disorientation is used to put us on our guard – the spinning lampshade, or the car crash. Darkness and shadows are exploited to the full, thanks to the careful lighting set-ups by Reg Wyer. Small incidents build up to form a near-catastrophic chain. Taylor’s fall from grace is as swift as his success. The ‘protections’ are removed and instantly adoration turns into denigration; friendship to hostility.

But what of the actors? Horror/Fantasy films of this nature rely upon one basic principle – the suspension of disbelief. So straight away there are two major requirements placed upon the actor if the film is to succeed. Firstly, conviction; they may be the worst lines ever written, but the actor has to deliver them with a degree of credibility. If he lets the audience know that he thinks they are funny – well, that’s how cult comedy starts. The second necessity is presence; a near magical quality – something which cannot be learned. Thankfully for this film Peter Wyngarde displays all of the necessary qualities in abundance. In his critique of the film Leslie Halliwell stated that the leading performances let it down. On this I must disagree. Wyngarde easily captures the viewer’s attention. After all, the character of Taylor could easily have become unpopular as he is initially set up as a ‘holier-than-thou’ semi-caricature. For the film to fully succeed we have to feel the isolation of this character as his accepted world and all its securities collapse around him. This obviously demands a fair degree of audience sympathy – something that Wyngarde manages to win in his portrayal of that slow disintegration. This in itself is a major triumph, given that the film will not have been shot in continuity.

Second place in the acting stakes goes to Margaret Johnson as Flora Carr. As the villainess of the piece she does not come into force until the final reels – until then she simply adds to the red herrings and innuendo with faintly unsettling air. However, from the office confrontation onwards, she very much takes the remainder of the film to a two-hander between herself and Wyngarde. Carr is the equal and opposite of Taylor in every way. Intellectually she is easily his equal – hence her status within the college. She also mirrors him in another fashion, as she is the flipside of his obsessive nature, feeling exactly the same way about her own ‘religion’. Johnson lends an unnervingly convincing air to Flora’s derangement, loading her lines with heavy, underlying menace – eerily enhanced by Reg Wyer’s under-lighting.

Close third comes Janet Blair as Tansy. Her best scenes occur in the first half of the movie – from the coach trip onwards unfortunately her character simply becomes (literally) an instrument of the revenge plot. However, she does contribute greatly to the film’s atmosphere – most notably in the scenes following the game of bridge. Her frantic search for the counter-charm is one of the better-paced pieces, giving rise to a true feeling of desperation and disorientation. Note also how we share her terror in the ‘blackout’ scene as her fear of what’s outside becomes almost tangible. Sadly, after the drawn out scene with Norman Bird’s doctor (where the film loses much of its earlier pace and tension) the Tansy character slips onto the sidelines and I don’t think much sympathy is engendered for her plight in the culminating house fire; it is more the sense of Wyngarde character’s relief that we feel when the trauma is over.

In the final reckoning I have to side with critic & writer David Quinlan, who says of Hayers: “His first few films were moderate second-features, but almost all of his films from Circus of Horrors to Southern Star were minor A-class entries which were better than one would have expected…mention should also be made of Night of the Eagle, a genuinely frightening witchcraft chiller…”