The Night Has Eyes

A pretty young school teacher named Marian(played by the very lovely Joyce Howard) sets out to investigate the disappearance of her friend Evelyn who had vanished on the Yorkshire Moors a year before.

Soon however her and her American friend Doris(enlisted to accompany Marian) get caught in an awful rainstorm but luckily happen upon an unlikely house located in the vicinity.

A bizarre young man named Stephen Deremid(played by James Mason), a former composer, offers them shelter for the night but warns the ladies to keep their doors locked at night. We soon learn that Deremid fears he cannot trust himself - fear he might unknowingly do harm to others following his years of fighting in the Spanish war and being held in a prison camp. But Marian soon finds herself in love with Stephen and sets out to help him at any. However others have more ghoulish intentions for the couple.

This film works much better in its Romantic settings than it does in its Horror ones. Character changes come rather abruptly and unexpectedly. The Yorkshire Moors does make a creepy setting however--with the fog, muck, dead trees and nothingness certainly contributing a sense of horror to the film. The best thing to watch this one for is the romance...those expecting out and out horror will find disappointment.

Of all the movies I love, none has had a wider ranging impact than this one. I saw it on late night TV when I was 9, Halloween night, at a sleepover where everyone else was sleeping. I had nothing to do and couldn't figure out how to change the channel on the TV, so I was sitting there grumpily watching something random when this... strange movie came on. It was in black and white, but the people in it were beautiful, as were the clothes, the sets, everything. I was transfixed. I told my mother about this movie rapturously, and when it came on again a couple of years later she woke me at 2:00 in the morning so we could watch it together (my mother understands what it is to love a film). For many years Stephen was my tortured masculine ideal, and I married a man who definitely fits the James Mason physical type. Luckily, he has a sunny temperament and a stronger chin, so I feel like I got the best of both worlds! This movie also led me into the genre of Gothic literature, which was a major component of my reading life for a long time, and I still enjoy. Thank you to the people who made this film with love. They'll never know what it's meant to me.

I find "The Night Has Eyes", a very personal project by director-scenarist Leslie Arliss and producer and scenarist John Argyle, to be both a seminal and engrossing narrative. To me, it often appears to be an inexpensive but nevertheless effective adaptation of a mystery novel by Alan Kennington. And it is one whose several aspects have been copied and redone many times since. The center of the storyline is a reclusive young man. Injured in war, he has shut himself away in a Gothic-profile house on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. We find that he was a brilliant young composer but that he can no longer access his talent. There is a mystery as to why he regards it as necessary to quit mankind; and we find out about his reason through the agency of a young female teacher, who arrives at the house as a visitor and who with her girlfriend must remain there for several days. There is a "kicker" in her presence in the area; she is seeking the truth of the death of another teacher, her friend, who vanished in the area the year before. Upon these ingredients, Arliss constructs a rather claustrophobic-appearing but well-constructed tale. Revelation follows, revelation, relationships are shifted and changed by actions, words, discoveries and altered purposes. And when the teacher falls in love with the troubled hero, a chain f events is set in motion that ends with a satisfying and interesting conclusion of what I find to be great power. The actors to me are the strongest element in this moody and atmospheric piece from start to finish. Duncan Sutherland designed the low-budget production; Gunther Krampf did the cinematography and interesting music was composed by Charles Williams. Dorothy Black and Amy Dalby show to advantage as teachers in the film's earliest scenes; John Fernald plays a laid-back physician in fine comedic style with Tucker McGuire stealing scenes as a man- happy and sharp-tongued companion to the heroine. The other long roles in the mystery are played by pretty Joyce Howard, as Marian Ives, the teacher seeking her lost friend, Mary Clare as the enigmatic housekeeper to the hero, powerful Wilfrid Lawson as the hero's handyman, and James Mason as the troubled composer. It is Mason's utterly believable and beautifully-timed performance, as in so many other films, that unifies a merely-middling production. Howard is weak in charisma but quite satisfactory as a consort to the angst- ridden recluse; all the rest keep the intriguing psychological mystery moving very nicely, making for a well-acted film. "The Night Has Eyes" with a sufficient budget might have appeared to be a somewhat better as a realized work of cinema; but the main strengths of the script are very well brought out by the accomplished Mason and the rest of the cast as it is; and the simplicity of black-and-white presentation adds to the effectiveness of the characters and to the sense of importance that accompanies their motives and deeds.

A very young James Mason plays a mysterious man who may know something about a young girls disappearance. Her friends try to find out what he knows.

I caught this on a cable TV station in the early 1980s. Back then there were a number of small cable stations starting up and they put on anything that they could get cheaply. The print I saw on this station was dreadful--VERY faded with some scenes so dark you could barely make out anything. The sound wasn't much better. Still I did like it and the final revelation of the killer (and the look on their face) chilled me. Also Mason was very good in an early role and it was a delight seeing him so young and full of energy.

This is a pretty obscure little film but worth seeing if you get the chance.

The Night Has Eyes (AKA: Terror House/Moonlight Madness) is directed by Leslie Arliss who also adapts the screenplay from the novel written by Alan Kennington. It stars James Mason, Wilfrid Lawson, Mary Clare, Joyce Howard and Tucker Maguire. Music is by Charles Williams and cinematography by Gunther Krampf.

"You seem to regard me as some sort of male sleeping beauty who is restored to life by your kiss"

During the school term break, two lady school teachers travel to the Yorkshire Moors in the hope of finding out what happened to a fellow work colleague who vanished there a year previously. Arriving on the moors at night time, a storm breaks and the two women are thankful to stumble upon an isolated house where somebody is at home. The inhabitant is Stephen Deremid (Mason), a mysterious man who may just hold the key to what happened to the ladies' missing colleague.

OK! It's a stage bound "Old Dark House" film that has noir shadings but is more in keeping with classic Gothic offerings like Jane Eyre, Uncle Silas and Gaslight. The setting is a doozy, a creaky and shadowy mansion with a secret room, add in a storm from hell, the foggy moors that hold secrets along with the patches of quicksand (quickbog?), a seriously brooding leading man greatly troubled by his past, a spunky heroine fronting up for love interest and some possible perilous shenanigans… and you are good to go for some dark deeds and closeted skeletons.

Director Arliss builds the suspense very slowly, dangling snippets of information that teases the audience as to what might be going on in this shadowy abode. Stephen is a music composer, he is also a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, the effects of which has left him scarred. Why does he take tablets? Why is the moon significant? Now that his house servants have turned up, do they know what happened to the girl last year? It all builds towards the film's chilling climax, where all is revealed, and not insultingly so.

The cast all perform well under Arliss' direction, with Mason honing the brooding lead man act that would serve him so well in his career. Cinematographer Gunther Krampf (Nosferatu/The Hands of Orlac) creates an eerie atmosphere of fog-bound menace out on the moors, and also a foreboding darkened house of shadows for the interior of the Deremid mansion. The slow pace may put some off, and you are asked to forgive one or two dumb character reactions to certain situations, but this rewards the patient and very much it's a film for Gothic thriller fans to seek out. 7/10