Architect Walter Craig, seeking the possibility of some work at a country farmhouse, soon finds himself once again stuck in his recurring nightmare. Dreading the end of the dream that he knows is coming, he must first listen to all the assembled guests' own bizarre tales.
Mervyn Johns Roland Culver Mary Merrall Googie Withers Frederick Valk Anthony Baird Sally Ann Howes Robert Wyndham Judy Kelly Miles Malleson Michael Allan Barbara Leake Ralph Michael Esme Percy Basil Radford Naunton Wayne Peggy Bryan Allan Jeayes Michael Redgrave Elisabeth Welch Hartley Power Magda Kun Garry Marsh Renee Gadd John McGuire Peter Jones Paul Bonifas Patrick Aherne
Au coeur de la nuit, Μάντεψε Ποιον θα Σκοτώσουν Απόψε, Βαθειά Μεσ' τη Νύχτα, Incubi notturni, Au cœur de la nuit, Traum ohne Ende, Al morir la noche, Ölüm Gecesi, U progu tajemnicy, 악몽의 밤, 死亡之夜, Na Solidão da Noite, Глубокой ночью, Nattens Mysterier, Βαθειά Μεσ' την Νύχτα, Az éjszaka halottja, Vise de groază, Přízraky noci, Skuggor i natten
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Netherlands12
France
Netherlands
Sweden
UK
USA
This was my first drive-in experience and it was a blast! Was in a comfortable position for less than a minute total but still had a good time so what does that say? This is real creepy and real funny, the whole golf ball thing was brilliant. But wait AND I won a free blu-ray during the pre-show trivia. Hell yeah, movies!
this OG British horror anthology is perhaps the classiest & one of the most subtlely spooky ones of them all. each story builds in the oddness and fright and it ends with a real solid freakout of weirdness that may have made folks in 1945 shit their pants.
I watched this because I love horror anthologies and because one of the segments is set at Christmas. All of the segments were fun, but unexpectedly it was the wraparound that I found most interesting. This guy comes to a country house and meets a group of people and realizes they are all part of a recurring dream he’s been having. He listens to stories from each of the guests before the dark part of his dream starts to come true and that is where we get some seriously creepy scenes including a life size ventriloquist dummy coming after the poor guy.
I feel like in the right hands this could become an excellent remake for today’s audience. The visuals are great here for the time, but they could be fantastic today!
Also, bonus points for being one of the relatively few horror films to be made in the 1940’s!
Dead of Night was a pleasantly drifting experience. It carried me on its placid waves of 1940s style gothic horror it offered in each of its ghost story sketches, but then came the last anecdote with Michael Redgrave and his dissociative personality disorder pre-dating Hitchcock's Psycho but with a ventriloquist's dummy instead of a mother figure, and the pleasant drifting all but turned into a nightmare. But then, luckily, I woke up. Or did I...?
Dead of Night, the original horror anthology, depicts five tales of terror, cleverly wound around a central wraparound story following a man with a recurring nightmare. The film has a lot of class and is very "British" in the traditional sense. The stories are all rather tame but they are entertaining in their own right and the film has good variety - including ghosts, premonitions, a ventriloquist dummy and a man getting wound up by a dodgy mirror. The film has definitely dated but there are a lot of ideas and imagery here that would go on to influence huge genre films later on. Of course the stories vary in quality and everyone will have their own favourite - I would say that the film saves the best for last and the dummy sequence is by far the standout.
Varied in quality, with some stories being much stronger than others, Dead of Night is a rather pleasantly British anthology film with a final act (the last short story and revelation that comes during the conclusion of the wraparound) that blew me away! A good time, creepy and funny in equal measure; the great moments make up for when this annular nightmare starts to drag.
RECOMMENDED BY Jacob
Anthology movies have been a thing for a while now. A series of often intricated stories that form one narrative, sometimes loose, sometimes tight, where either one director and writer or a series of them gets to showcase their skills in a short amount of time.
One of the (if not the) early example of this comes all the way from Ealing Studios where we follow an architect by the name of Walter Craig, who makes his way up to a country home in Kent where he's come to talk with its owner in regards to some renovations. Everything seems normal but things will turn weirder and weirder as he encounters a series of guests at the…
This is the earliest horror anthology I've seen, and I think it's perfectly fine for what it is—an unambitious, old-school horror experience with its ups and downs.
Dead of Night explores different aspects of the supernatural with five tales wrapped in a chilling nightmare, from dangerous premonitions to haunted mirrors and jealous ghost golfers. Some segments are more intriguing than others, and while it gives you false hopes with its deceiving buildup, it ultimately shines with its unique circular structure and offers a great peek into the horror anthology genre of its era.
Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?
- Edgar Allan Poe
Charming, funny and at times a little creepy, Dead of Night is a really well constructed anthology of five connected short stories, each based on the dreams of those present at a 'fwitefully poshe' get together of English country folk. The tales are:
- The Hearse Driver
- The Christmas Party
- The Haunted Mirror
- The Golfing Story
- The Ventriloquist's Dummy
"A ghost shouldn't be allowed to go haunting until he's properly qualified!"
The only horror made by Ealing Studios is a rather brilliant mashup of styles and well regarded as one of the early anthology greats. I agree, it's an absolute cracker.
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The Podcast Macabre 2022
12. From the 1940s you have not seen before
🎃 Hooptober ❌: Ten Times the Terror (6/31)
Criteria: Decade 2/8 (1940’s)
An interesting film that attempts the ask the questions: “when do you know you’re in a nightmare?” And “what can dreams tell us about the strange borders between death and life?” An early example of existential nightmarish horror, Dead of Night boasts a screenplay that is clearly ahead of it’s time in this regard, written by Angus MacPhail, known for his collaborations with Hitchcock. But the script might be a bit too ambitious for it’s own good and an execution on film that is not without it’s problems…
Some parts of the movie I found to be a bit dull unfortunately. There are interesting ideas here but I think…
