Marky B

In an episode of Murder She Wrote,Friday 18 March 2005,there was a small take on the Michael Redgrave episode of Dead of Night. A New York based ventroloquist in small seedy nightclub run by the late Georgia Brown,seems to be over come by his doll. Thankfully,the comparison stopped there. The programme was okay.
Ta Ta
Marky B

I am special. The heavens always open for me.

mysteriesofedgarwallace

I too am a fan of dead of Night.

I watched it again recently, having not seen it since it was last shown in the mid 80's.

I have always thought there are some similarities with the HHOH production 'Rude Awakening' with Denholm Elliott.

Ealingfilmfan

"Dead of night" was (imo) the finest film to come out of the hallowed Ealing Studios, I first saw it on TV around 1966, and have seen it countless times since....

The cast throughout is excellent, some scenes still send shivers up my spine even today, I have been following the "location" thread with great interest and would like to thank Carlito for sharing his photographs of the house as it stands today....

I plan to visit myself, next time I am down that way.......

"Just room for one inside sir"

DB7

Filmmakers on film: Peter Hewitt

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/09/2007

Sheila Johnston talks to Peter Hewitt about Dead of Night with Michael Redgrave

It all begins so primly, as if in some creaky old Agatha Christie thriller. A group of middle-class house guests gather at a country manor and sit around making small talk and politely offering each other cigarettes and cups of tea. Then one of them admits to a sinister sensation of déjà vu.

Dead of Night
Ahead of its time: Dead of Night

A pompous Teutonic psychiatrist dismisses it as superstition but, one by one, the others step forward to tell their own uncanny tales. And the shrink's contribution turns out to be the creepiest of all.

One of the scariest British horror movies ever made, Dead of Night builds these five ghost stories - by four different directors - into a supremely spooky climax.

"When Dead of Night first came out, the ending would have been very ahead of its time and a terrific twist - a Sixth Sense-type twist," says Peter Hewitt. "It was so sophisticated and shocking and makes you immediately want to watch the film all over again."

The film is a capricious choice for a director best known for his droll comedies. After winning a Bafta for his first short, Hewitt was summoned to Los Angeles and handed £20 million to direct the sequel to the Keanu Reeves romp, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Since then he has specialised in family-friendly movies that blend eccentric humour and elaborate special effects.

Some have been exceedingly well received, like the irresistible Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, which many critics deemed better than the original, or The Borrowers, a delightful version of Mary Norton's books about a tiny family who live under the floorboards; others less so, like Garfield or the recent I Want Candy, which Hewitt co-scripted.

One thing is certain: you are unlikely to see his name on an austere, Bergman-esque art movie; the nearest he has ever come to that is the priceless sequence in Bogus Journey where Reeves and Alex Winter play battleships and Twister with Death, in a parody of a famous scene from The Seventh Seal.

The films he enjoys are the popular mainstream ones, and those are just the sort he also likes to make. "It's the grandest way of showing off," he says. "There's an element of 'Look what I can do' in putting a big spectacle up on the screen."

Hewitt first saw Dead of Night in what, for those of a certain generation, was an essential weekly ritual: the Sunday matinee.

"My parents ran a sweetshop in Brighton. We lived above it, and on Sundays my five brothers and sisters and I were allowed to go down and buy five pence' worth of sweets. Then we would watch the movie on telly. We've tried to replicate that with my three daughters," Hewitt adds rather plaintively.

"But it's so much harder now with all the channels and choices. Besides, they'd rather go off and play some fancy internet game."

Meanwhile, he was making little movies in his back garden with his father's cine-camera, "building cardboard skyscrapers and setting them on fire". His career in movies prospered with a job at the Brighton Odeon in a dapper purple uniform.

"I had to ask everyone, 'Are you Smoking?', to which the response was always either to say, 'Yes, are you offering?' or to pat oneself down as if on fire."

There, he watched Richard Attenborough's Magic "probably several hundred times" because it reminded him of the thrilling segment in Dead of Night, in which Michael Redgrave's ventriloquist is possessed by his demonic dummy.

However, Hewitt's favourite bit is the one directed by Robert Hamer in which a man given an antique mirror as a wedding present by his wife is transfixed by the dark and murderous alternative world in it.

"I always remember that long, shivering moment when you see the reflection, as if there were a ghost in the room with you."

The stories range widely in tone, from this one to Charles Crichton's jovial yarn about two rival golfers. "Dead of Night was made by a hand-picked bunch of directors whom Michael Balcon pulled together and who then went on to give us incredible films like The Lavender Hill Mob and The Blue Lamp. They are all different, but Dead of Night holds together incredibly well and feels very cohesive."

The unifying influence was probably Balcon, the long-time head of Ealing Studios, who made it his self-proclaimed mission to project "Britain and the British character". One suspects that Hewitt is not the only British director today who hankers after that golden age when filmmakers were assured continuous work under Balcon's headmasterly tutelage.

"There's something so appealing about that lovely Googie Withers England of cream teas in Chichester and picnics in the sunshine. I was never a part of it, but I missed it terribly in a weird way. I would have been perfectly happy turning up on a Monday morning and being told, 'You're over there on Stage 2 with Mr Guinness.' I'm sure that, in reality, it had its downsides but, looking back through rose-tinted specs, it seems rather marvellous."

stevie boy

Certainly a great film and the ending ensures that you do not have to feel guilty about watching it again. Sheer perfection in my book.

dremble wedge

I do hope it's going to be shown again over the festive season.

HugoVonStype

My all time favourite is 'dead of night'. This is one of those movies with lots of smaller tales. The reason I love it is because of Michael Redgrave who plays a ventriloquist who goes mad and 'murders' his dummy in a prison cell.

mysteriesofedgarwallace

DoN is in a class of it's own............................

Does anyone know when the last TX of it was?
Must be late 80s; I should thiink.

image45

YouTube - Dead of Night: A Darkness at Blaisedon (1969)

"Seya next time!"