The Night Has Eyes

James Mason - Stephen Deremid
Wilfrid Lawson - Jim Sturrock
Mary Clare - Mrs. Ranger
Joyce Howard - Marian Ives
Tucker McGuire - Doris
John Fernald - Dr. Barry Randall

Taut stage bound “Old Dark House” thriller from director Leslie Arliss. The cast all perform capably and Arliss allows the suspense to gradually build towards the films chilling climax. Cinematographer Gunther Krampf wonderfully crafts an effective and eerie atmosphere of fog-bound foreboding on the studio-set moors.

Carne House Girl’s School teachers Marian (Joyce Howard) and her wisecracking friend Doris (Tucker McGuire) go on a walking holiday to the Yorkshire Moors where their colleague Evelyn disappeared a year earlier. Caught hiking across the same moors in a torrential thunderstorm, they glimpse a house in the darkness and are sheltered by reclusive composer Stephen Deremid (James Mason). Stephen has remained shell-shocked since the Spanish Civil War and is subject to seizures; he now lives a solitary existence in his remote home with housekeeper Mrs. Ranger (Mary Clare) and handyman Jim Sturrock (Wilfrid Lawson).

Although initially insisting that the two women can only stay the night, they are forced to stay longer when flooding causes them to become stranded – much to Stephen’s discomfort. Marian feels she can sense the presence of the missing Evelyn in the house and when Stephen warns the girls not to search the house for hidden rooms their suspicions are aroused. When the flooding subsides the two girls have an opportunity to leave, but Marian, having formed a friendship with Stephen, stays and strives to discover what deep psychological secret he is hiding and what is lurking within the hidden room. Stephen confesses to Marian that he is subject to blackouts and fears he may have murdered Evelyn during one of his fits and might kill again.

When Marian is left alone in the house she discovers a secret room containing a skeleton and a locket that belonged to her missing friend, but a doctor the two girls encountered en route to Yorkshire discloses that the body is that of a male and has probably been in the priest hole for hundreds of years. In the final denouement the murder mystery is solved amongst the quicksand on the moors.