Nachts kommt die Angst

Sangster's third and final film as director forsakes the Gothic trappings of the first two for the psycho-thrillers which Hammer occasionally dabbled in (inspired by LES DIABOLIQUES [1954] and kick-started by the Sangster-penned TASTE OF FEAR [1961]).

As such, it's a pretty solid entry in the genre: well-made (the last half-hour being especially tense), stylish (making subtle use of elliptical editing, careful not to go overboard as was the case with STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING [1972]) and sporting a compact but most able cast - Judy Geeson (her inherent vulnerability is suited to this type of frightened lady role), Joan Collins (going through a horror/thriller phase at the time and who's, of course, alluringly bitchy), Ralph Bates (it took me some time to accept him in a modern setting since he's so comfortably placed in the Gothic world of his other stuff for Hammer, but there's no denying that he does quite well by his role here!) and Peter Cushing (superlative as always, he has a field day with an ambiguous characterization); incidentally, Cushing and Collins must be one of the most incongruous husband-and-wife pairings in film history!

As one can gather from the above, I liked the film quite a bit and, in fact, pondered for a while the notion of awarding it a *** rating but was, ultimately, deterred from doing so by a couple of flaws: the 'ingenious' plot is, actually, fairly predictable (but, if anything, it's even more fun to be able to anticipate the many twists involved!); however, this also means that one has to labor through a first half that is both slow and repetitive!! I do feel that it's underrated in the Hammer canon: Leonard Maltin dismisses it, for instance, but Leslie Halliwell - not usually one to bother much with the company's latter-day output - is surprisingly complimentary in his review.

While FEAR IN THE NIGHT more or less adheres to Hammer's formula for this type of film - an innocent girl having a brush with murder and madness in remote surroundings - it also draws parallels to the contemporary giallos, especially with its device of a black-gloved stalker. Incidentally, of Hammer's 10 modern suspensers, I've only got two more to catch up with - MANIAC (1963) and CRESCENDO (1970).

The Audio Commentary here proves disappointing - not because it isn't informative but, rather, due to the fact that we get an awful lot of repetition of Sangster's anecdotes from his tracks for THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (1970) and LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971); to be fair to him, the fault lies more with moderator Marcus Hearn - who should have come up with a fresher set of questions, as it were. Then again, I'd have expected more insight into the actual construction of the script (a psycho thriller being, fundamentally, more intricate than a Gothic horror) - but it's safe to assume that, after all these years, Sangster recalls precious little about this aspect...although he does mention that he had pitched the script to the company as early as 1963, and that it was originally intended to be set on a boat! The discussion also touches upon Hammer's other suspensers: apart from citing TASTE OF FEAR and THE NANNY (1965) as his favorite films, Sangster mentions that Orson Welles turned up unannounced one day on the set of MANIAC; in connection with the film under review - which, incidentally, brought Sangster's fortuitous association with Hammer to a close - he acknowledges the fact that Peter Cushing was basically serving the same function (i.e. a red herring) that Christopher Lee did in TASTE OF FEAR.

Often effective British thriller features a tip-top cast(Joan Collins, Peter Cushing, Ralph Bates, Judy Geeson), but suffers from a lack of originality as this is, for the most part, a rehash of similar motifs explored in earlier British horror films like PARANOIAC and NIGHTMARE, which themselves derived from the brilliant French thriller DIABOLIQUE. Still, the good outweighs the bad and there are plenty of nice, genuine jolts.

Although this is certainly not one of their more famous titles, I was actually quite impressed with this Hammer movie which is an interesting variation on the famous French thriller "Diabolique" but with four main characters instead of three. Judy Geeson is a naive schoolmarm who marries a man (Ralph Bates) who she thinks is also a schoolteacher but actually turns out to be the caretaker of an abandoned boys' school and its mentally unstable former headmaster (Peter Cushing). The headmaster in turn has a shrewish, grasping wife (Joan Collins)who spends her time cruelly blasting cute bunnies with a double-barreled shotgun. Without giving too much of the plot away, two of the characters are having an affair and scheme to drive another of the characters insane so he/she will kill the fourth character. But as usually happens, the plan goes horribly awry for almost everyone involved.

This is one of the more interesting 70's Hammer films because it actually tries to do something new rather than just mining the old Gothic formulas and monsters that served them so well in the 60's. Hammer had of course done psychological thrillers like this as early as "Scream of Fear" in 1961, but this is one kind of film that they actually refined and perfected in the 1970's (rather than beat like dead horse)with entries like this, "Straight on Until Morning", and the Gothic/psycho-thriller "Demons of the Mind". It was definitely better than Jimmy Sangster's first directorial effort "Lust for a Vampire", even though the latter was much more famous (probably owing to Yutte Stensgaard pulling her two Danishes out every five minutes). It will probably never be regarded as a Hammer classic, but is interesting film at least, which is more than can be said of a lot of their 70's product

A great story and cast! A suspenseful horror-thriller! Worth watching if you like the classics! The casting in this movie is wonderful - everyone was great in this movie. Judy Geeson plays Peggy Heller so wonderfully... I felt so sorry for her. Ralph Bates plays Robert Heller a man who seemly is in-love with his young wife Peggy. Joan Collins plays Molly Carmichael - snooty rich woman. Peter Cushing is The Headmaster Michael Carmichael - a strange gentleman.

The movie does build an amount of suspense and it does have it's thrilling moments. It makes a wonderful late-at-night film. Not overly scary but definitely suspenseful and thrilling!

8.5/10

It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Penny is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?

Fear in the night, a suspense thriller with sinister undertones, benefits greatly from Judy Geeson who is mesmerising as a woman who had suffered a nervous breakdown, and is quite mentally fragile. The plot is pleasingly twisted and the climax suitably dramatic. It's a bit drawn out in the end, but it's an efficient thriller that is about uncertainty around what is real and what is imaginary. There are good performances from Peter Cushing and Joan Collins. It's well-handled by Freddie Francis, the prowling camerawork is effective, and the tension is well constructed till the end.