Hackett

There is something about a ventriloquists dummy that makes them real to me. The bigger the head and smile the more sinister they are. If they have a strong character the more menacing they seem. How many other people who watched the news bulletin which reported the death of Rod Hull had the same thought as me. The reporter said he fell from the roof of his house while trying to adjust the TV antenna. I immediately had a vision of poor old Rod and that Emu plummeting from the roof holding onto the aerial.

smudge

Mnay moons ago I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Supervising Editor/Producer Sidney Cole, of Ealing fame. He was EXREMELY proud of DEAD OF NIGHT and so happy that it held up even back then (early 90s.)

He took an even greater delight in the fact that his teenaged grandson told him that it was the scariest film he'd ever seen, even in these days of hack-n-slash killers....

A CRACKING film !!!! thumbs_u

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

deckard

As one Britmovie nut to another I agree with and envy you, Steve was right in his sentiments about watching a classic for the first time, but a first time P&P?.....Heaven will be in your DVD player! thumbs_u

"and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock"

Steve Crook

A Canterbury Tale (1944) has been released on NTSC but is now out of stock. But that it has been released means that there might be some copies that appear on the second hand market.

Amazon.com is offering some in its second hand section from private sellers (but with some buyer protection from Amazon). But they are priced from US$42.69 - US$89.95 which does seem a tad excessive.

Enjoy your viewing of Blimp. I trust it's the full version and not the one that was heavily cut for the first US release. I epect it is, the heavily cut version is actually hard to find now.

As to your refreshment. A bottle of Canadian merlot or water that a horse has stepped in (Hippocrene)? That's not much of a choice :)
Just don't numb your senses "as though of hemlock you had drunk"

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Steve Crook

Amazon.com & Amazon.ca do tend to list films that haven't been released and that there are no known plans to release. I don't know if they do actually send those requests on to the studios & production companies. Carlton released A Canterbury Tale here in the UK but I don't know who they'd partner with to release it in the Americas.

There's a table on the P&P Films page that lists all known releases as well as those that are expected soon on DVD.

A Matter of Life and Death is expected soon on Region 1. It's just waiting for Mr Scorsese to do the commentary track.

The Tales of Hoffmann has been put on hold by Criterion as the print they were sent by the BFI wasn't very good quality.

The other solution is to get a "region Free" DVD player. Then you can see all the films listed on that page.

The 163 min version of Blimp is the full version. It was hacked back to just 120 mins for its first US release. They took out the flashback structure and just did it as a straight line story - cutting out huge chunks of it.

I prefer a glass of vintage port and a fine Stilton when watching the best P&P films. It's not easy being a hedonist - you have to work at it :)

The Edge of the World has been released on DVD in the Americas (Region 1) and in most of the rest of the world (Region 2). There are some reviews and comparisons of the DVDs on the PaPAS web site.

The Tales of Hoffmann is a bit of an aquired taste. It's certainly not just a film of a stage production. They make use of all the tricks you can do on film that you wouldn't be able to do on stage. Most of it is certainly quite wonderful. Some think that the 3rd act (Antonia) should have been reduced in length or even cut altogether. I'm always interested to hear what other people think.

Contraband is a little gem. It's a lightweight spy thriller but it has hidden shallows :)
I think it's a contender for the sexiest film of the decade.

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

smudge

Steve -

I just popped onto the site. No mention of Return to the Edge of the World. Was that just released on VHS then, and is it worth seeing ?

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

Steve Crook

It's mentioned in the details of the DVDs of The Edge of the World (both versions) and was on the earlier VHS release of The Edge of the World.

They should really be seen with Return to the Edge ... as colour bookends to the 1937 film. It starts with Powell and then John Laurie introducing people as they go back to Foula. Then you're meant to watch the film, then Powell, Laurie and others share some reminiscences.

That's how it was originally broadcast but it always seems to be served up as a separate item nowadays.

I think it's well worth seeing - but I might be a bit biased :)

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

smudge

I caught the first few minutes of it YEARS ago on BBC2. Sadly it was just the run-out of a tape after the end of a film (NOT TEOTW...) It intrigued me, but I never got round to buying that VHS. Perhaps I shall add the DVD to my Birthday/Xmas list...

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

Steve Crook

The British DVD (released by the BFI) is the better one I think. There are a few blips on the main film on the Region 1 DVD as if the film has slipped in the sprockets.

The British one also has some other interesting extras, like a 1928 travelogue about the island of St Kilda. And *all* items on the DVD have subtitles.

Steve

Steve Crook

PaPAS

DB7

Twisting tale from the dark side of Ealing

rarely seen horror classic in which Michael Redgrave plays a haunted ventriloquist is the pick of the week's releases. Sukhdev Sandhu reports

Dead of Night

Showing in an extended run from tomorrow at the National Film Theatre, Dead of Night is the Ealing film for people who don't like Ealing films. There are no cheeky chappies here. No musty boarding houses in which dowagers do battle against the forces of suburban badness. No plucky underdogs battling gamely against bureaucracy, technocrats or Americans.

Rather, the studio's first ghost story is a collection of loosely interlinked horror tales that provide the missing link between Oscar Wilde's novella The Picture of Dorian Gray and Nic Roeg's psych-shocker Don't Look Now.

An architect (Mervyn Johns) is invited to spend the weekend at a country house, only to find that the five other guests have been turning up regularly in his recent dreams. He's scoffed at by psychiatrist Dr van Straaten, but everyone else is happy to recount the strangely supernatural experiences they have undergone.

These include a hospitalised motor-racing driver who is beckoned by a hearse driver outside his window bidding "room for one more inside"; a schoolgirl playing hide-and-seek who happens across the ghost of a murdered boy; a man who is temporarily deranged by an antique mirror bought for him by his fiancée; two golfing buddies (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) smitten with the same woman, who play a round to see who should win her hand, only to find that the suicide-committing loser keeps returning from the dead; and a ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) who is possessed by his dummy.

This last segment is particularly strong. Redgrave, a genius at playing hounded and embittered melancholics, gave a performance that even he struggled to rival throughout his long career. What could be a throwaway or an amusing conceit – the wooden servant switching roles with his master – becomes a terrifying and unforgettable study in mental cruelty. One wants to put the increasingly dishevelled and distrait Redgrave out of his misery long before he finally buckles.

Dead of Night is as unsettling, and as liable to be seen as destabilising to the national consciousness as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It takes everything that seems most English and reassuring - a country house, upper-class characters, an obsession with the past - and laces it with fear and loathing. The crimes here, or at least the shadowy traces of crimes, are more twisted and psychological than anything to be found in an Agatha Christie.

All the characters have been tracked by ghosts and demons. They've been nursing secrets and repressions. Bereavement, real or imagined, has bruised each of them. Released in 1945, the film offers itself both as a holding area and pressure-venting mechanism for all the horrors, spoken and unspoken, that had accumulated during the war years.

Dead of Night is that rare thing: an omnibus film that is more than the sum of its parts. It brings together the directorial talents of Alberto Cavalcanti (Went the Day Well?), Charles Crichton (Hue and Cry), Basil Dearden (The Blue Lamp) and Robert Hamer (Kind Hearts and Coronets). What's more, its writers include TEB Clarke (Passport to Pimlico) and Angus MacPhail (Whisky Galore!).

Together, these men represent a who's who of post-war national cinema. Not all the segments work as well as each other - the golfing one striking an especially light note - but put together they suggest that a new dawn for English horror was on the horizon.

It was not to be. Ealing, notwithstanding the likes of The Blue Lamp or Pool of London, chose not to pursue such a scary road again. Dead of Night, always closer to the dark cavities of Powell and Pressburger movies, or even those of Hitchcock, than to The Titfield Thunderbolt, disappeared into a cinematic twilight zone.

It was fondly remembered by movie buffs or those lucky enough to catch it on its rare television outings, but it never became part of the Ealing canon. Hammer went on to gain a monopoly on the horror genre, while critics gravitated to mavericks such as Michael Reeves, director of Witchfinder General. Now, thanks to the NFT's Robert Hamer season, we have another chance to discover or rediscover it, and to marvel at Basil Radford's extraordinary facial scar: does anyone know how he got it?

Rob Compton

Interesting, thanks DB7.

Sad, though, that the article misunderstands Ealing. It was never just one genre - the Ealing comedies, that many people remember, were only one facet of it's extraordinarily varied output.

The "missing link" thought is absurd, and is based on an insufficient knowledge of British films.

rgds
Rob

DB7

It's lazy journalism to consider the comedies as Ealing's canon. The likes of Dead of Night, Went the Day Well? and The Cruel Sea stand up to comparison with any of the studios other productions bar the two greats Kind Hearts... and The Ladykillers. Neither was it "the studio's first ghost story" as Tibby and Macphail had toyed with supernatural themes in Halfway House.

I've never really considered Dead of Night a 'horror' either, most of the tales are of the supernatural and related in a Jamesian fireside manner. A good companion film that was released shortly afterwards was Queen of Spades.

alan gowdy

As a dedicated fan of Ealing films of whatever genre I was very pleased to recieve "Dead Of Night" as a Christmas present this year. It's in an Ealing Classics boxed set along with "Went The Day Well?", "Nicholas Nickleby" and "Scott Of The Antarctic"

"Don't forget... one of petrol, two of meths"

DB7

I've got that DVD myself but if I recall rightly it wasn't a very good print of Dead of Night.

alan gowdy

Watched this film again last night - fantastic! But was it sponsored by Benson & Hedges?

Almost every scene prominently featured cigarettes being offered / lit / smoked / stubbed out etc. I know times and attitudes to smoking have changed but this was OTT.

"Don't forget... one of petrol, two of meths"