The Night Holds Terror

I have often confounded NIGHT OF TERROR with CRY TERROR, because both have "terror" in the title, and also because both are made by the same director; and let's admit that both stories are quite close. Hoodlums against the common law abiding citizen living in the suburb. John Cassavetes and Vince Edwards literally steal the show because of their performances. This story could have been perfect for a seventies or even eighties film, partly because inspired from true events that occured in february 1953. It is predictable, easy to know how it will end, but just enjoy the directing and acting too. Useless to insist on this same topic as DESPERATE HOURS.

Gene Courtier picks up a hitchhiker. It turns out to be wanted criminal Victor Gosset. He is forced to drive out to a remote location where Victor is joined by his fellow criminals Robert Batsford (John Cassavetes) and Luther Logan. At first, they threaten to kill him. Then they take over his house and family while they wait for the bank to open to get their money.

This alternates between threatening realism and weaker B-movie material. There is some over-acting melodrama. It is interesting to see a young Cassavetes earning his chops. Despite its limitations, it is a tense little thriller. Once the criminals leave the house, the intensity gets a bit muddled. If it's ransom, the crooks should take the kids. If they're worried about witnesses, they can't leave the wife behind. The movie becomes tied down by the police minutia. It's better to stay in the house but it's still a solid crime drama B-movie.

Evading a manhunt three escaped convicts takeover the home of Jack Kelly and Hildy Parks and their two small children. The three are John Cassavetes, Vince Edwards and David Cross are about as mean a trio you'll find on film. It's also apparent that Cross is playing way out of his league with the other two.

It's an open hostage situation meaning that the trio really has no fixed plans what they are doing next which is worse for the hostages because they have no idea when or if they'll be free. Especially bad for Parks because Edwards is getting ideas about her.

The husband and wife team of Andrew an Virginia Stone present this film in a fine and realistic documentary style. The film benefits from the fact that Kelly, Cassavetes, and Edwards were not any kind of names yet on the big or small screen. And Hildy Parks was primarily a New York actress

The film compares well with The Desperate Hours which had a lot of big name players in it. While The Desperate Hours has a lot of style to it The Night Holds Terror far more realistic.

This one is a real sleeper, catch it if possible.

Enjoyed this 1955 film with great actors like Vince Edwards,( Victor Gosset) and John Cassavetes, (Robert Batsford) who were just starting their careers. In this picture Jack Kelly,(Gene Courtier) makes a very bad mistake and picks up a hitchhiker in the desert and Victor Gosset commanders his car and wants him to sell it for money and then meets up with Robert Batsford who is the boss of the kidnapping and then they decide to go to Gene Courtier home and hold his wife, Doris Courtier,(Hildy Parks) and two children hostage in their own home. Victor Gosset is crazy about women and can't seem to keep his hands off Doris Courtier and starts all kinds of problems with her husband. There is very high tension through out the entire picture and it was a great film for 1955. Enjoy

Gritty little suspenser that holds interest throughout. Writer-director Andrew Stone's and wife Virginia's reputation rests on a documentary-style approach to film-making. Making a movie about people on board a sinking ship?-- then sink an actual ship, The Last Voyage (1958). I believe it was Andrew Sarris who observed that it was a good thing they never made a film about the end of the world!

There's a lot of that documentary approach in this low-budgeter taken from an actual kidnapping case of the period. Kidnapping was much in the news in 1953 with the sensational abduction for ransom of little Bobby Greenlease, of Kansas City, I believe. And, of course, then as now, screen-writers love to chase the headlines of the day. So it's no surprise that several of these plot-lines turned up at about the same time, including the rather eerie Big House, USA (1955).

Here the screenplay recreates the abduction of the offspring of a wealthy LA-area family, Gene Couture. What makes the movie work is the inspired casting (probably a happy accident) that brings together three fast-rising young actors-- a sullen Vince Edwards, a moody John Cassavetes, and an appealing Jack Kelly as the victim. You really get the feeling from the former two-- who look edgy and act even edgier-- that anything can happen at any time. Together as the lead abductors, they're little short of the proverbial dynamite. When they take Kelly into the desert, you get the feeling he's a dead duck for sure.

Then too, the Stone's insistence on real suburban locations lends the proceedings a look and feel different from the usual. The procedural part gets kind of draggy as the cops enter the case and was likely inspired by the police mega-hit of the day, Dragnet. But at least it's consistent with the over-all documentary tone. Some buffs see the movie as noir. I don't, taking it instead as a particularly effective example of the "home invasion" genre that was also popular at the time. But however you cut it, this is still a darn good little 90 minute nail-biter.