Amor entre sombras

I remember watching it when I was a kid and it scared me badly. Revisiting it so many years later, not so much. Maybe it was the Watergate era in the intervening years that makes everybody suspect anybody and everybody else. But I digress.

Barbara Stanwyck, still a handsome woman at 57, plays Irene Trent. She's married to a wealthy maimed blind ....scientist???...Howard Trent, who is over the top jealous and thinks because his wife talks in her sleep about some dream lover she is actually having an affair. They have a confrontation about his suspicions, he tries to strike her with his cane, and she runs into the street. At about that time there is smoke coming from Howard's lab. And yet blind, he goes up into that lab to handle this himself, there is a fiery explosion, and no more Howard.

And I mean literally no more Howard as in no body. The arson squad guy thinks this is not odd and says there was such extreme heat that the body disintegrated, while he stands next to all kinds of electrical equipment that is undamaged. And the fireproof door saved the rest of the house, and yet there is a hole in the floor. Is there a physicist in the house?

So the thing is, Irene starts having vivid dreams, as in a young man who comes to her, even marries her, with each dream ending with a burned Howard appearing. She feels like these "dreams" are actually happening, not just her imagination. What is going on here? Watch and find out.

So many questions and issues. How did Howard and Irene meet and why would she marry him? She seems to completely loathe every aspect of the guy. She had/has her own business that is doing well, was it just his money? This is never explained. The creepy organ music seems to be "Food Glorious Food" from Oliver, four years before the fact. And there are some very large plot holes - I'll let you find them - I still can't explain. And finally a warning - the film's prologue about dreams goes on forever.

And yet, in spite of all of this, I still like it. It is very much an example of "last gasp of the production code" horror. No gore, no "blood feasts", no hippies. Everybody is always dressed like they are going to work. It uses actual suspense - and mannequins! - to scare you. I'd recommend it.

Dark and spooky movie about murder and deception with a number of twists and turns to it that keeps you guessing until the very last frame.

"The Night walker" is one of those films that doesn't seem to be what you at first think that it is; Something between a horror and psychological movie. The movie skillfully goes from one side of of line to the other throughout it's almost entire time on the screen until that last ten or so minutes when you really see it for what it is and it's very effective in doing it.

"The Night Walker" starts out like something out of the "Twilight Zone" or "One Step Beyond" with a very good prelude about the world of dreams and how we who dream becomes "Night Walkers" in them. Howard Trent, Hayden Rorke, is a blind millionaire who's suspicious of his wife Irene, Barbara Stanwyck. Howard thinks that Irene is cheating on him but all the evidence that he has is a number of audio tape recordings he secretly recorded in her bedroom while Irene was talking in her sleep.

Howard tells his friend and lawyer Barry Moreland, Robert Taylor, how he feels about his wife Barbara at the start of the movie. You somehow at first think that it's Barry who's the man who having the affair with his Irene. It's seems that the blind but very cagey and clever Howard is manipulating both Barry and his wife Irene is some kind of sub-rosa plan that he's cooking up for them. A little later after Howard got into a fight with Irene he goes into his secret room where he keeps all of his audio equipment and tapes, as Irene runs out of the house, and the room suddenly explodes with him being blown to bits to where there's nothing left of Howard but molecules and atoms. With her husband dead and Irene now all alone in the house her dreams,or better yet nightmares, become more and more pronounced and real to the point where she has to leave the house in order to keep from going insane.

Moving into a room at the back of a beauty shop that she owned now instead of her dreams stopping they become even more real to the point where she can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Irenes conjures up this "Dream Man" Lloyd Bochner, who appears to Irene at night. The "Dream Man" is so real that when he gets her to go out with him one evening to a chapel to get married the next day when Irene was driving with Barry through the city streets Irene recognizes the places that she went with her "Dream Man"! Is Irene dreaming all this or is it real? if it is real why and who is behind all this? and even more if it's real what are the reasons for doing this?

Plays like a very good whodunit with Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck giving the movie the attention and class that it wouldn't have gotten if it had much less known actors in those two top roles. The ending to the movie was not at all that contrived as if the screenplay was written only for shock value. The ending tried and succeeded in tying all the loose ends together and giving the film a satisfying instead of a confusing ending.

Wealthy widow in Los Angeles dreams of a handsome mystery man who romances her--also of the walking corpse of her blind husband, who may not have perished in an explosion as she was told. Robert Bloch was the writer William Castle wanted to work with most. Bloch, who helped bring new shocks to the screen with his novel "Psycho", came up with a fairly straightforward thriller here, one that producer-director Castle then marketed his own way ("Are you afraid of the things that can come out of your dreams...Lust. Murder. Secret Desires?"). However, just because "The Night Walker" is relatively gimmick-free doesn't mean it's a washout. Far from it, as Barbara Stanwyck is very good in the leading role, creating a savvy, quick-thinking businesswoman who is also prone to screaming fits (the latter trait doesn't quite pay off, as Stanwyck just isn't a Scream Queen). Eerie thriller on a low budget has a quietly menacing ambiance that is intriguing. Vic Mizzy contributes one of his finest background scores to the film, and the cast is full of pros, including Robert Taylor, Stanwyck's real-life ex-husband. The kitschy opening about the world of dreams is pure William Castle (and has next-to-nothing in common with the movie that follows), but there are many amazing sequences here to cherish. Good fun! *** from ****

Perhaps the key to enjoying this movie is to come to it with no expectations, as I did--or to be a fan of William Castle (as I am becoming!). If you know William Castle's work, you know to expect low-budget chills that don't take themselves very seriously. What's surprising about this film is that it's actually fairly sophisticated. The plot has some excellent twists; the chills are more psychological and less gore-dependent than in other Castle films I can think of; and it's just fun to see two great (albeit aging) stars get their teeth into a horror script. Barbara Stanwyck is excellent, and Robert Taylor comes a close second.

Why this little gem isn't available on DVD with (what I consider to be) lesser Castle works baffles me. It's definitely worth seeking out for your next cheesy horror fest.

I watched this film so many times in my youth that I lost the count. Maybe it was because William Castle produced it, or the handsome "dream lover", the music by Vic Mizzy, its surprise ending (which I should have known from reel 1), or the happy time I was having when it was released: I was 13 years old, The Supremes had their first hits, and many stars of the past were back in action. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, and real-life sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, all starred in black-and-white horror and suspense vehicles in which grand guignol reigned. In this film (written by "Psycho" author, Robert Bloch), Barbara Stanwyck is rather restrained compared to her peers, as a widow having strange dreams (in which Lloyd Bochner seduces her), with ex-husband Robert Taylor lending a hand to solve the mystery. Even knowing the ending, I still enjoyed it again and again.