Night Watch

Based on a play by the brilliant Lucile Fletcher ("sorry wrong number" ,who gave Barbara Stanwyck one of her best roles, "80 dollars to Stanford" ...) , this is a good thriller with many red herrings. The heroine is seeing things (in the night ,horrified, she sees a dead body ) ,and as she has a tormented past ,she might sink ,slowly but inexorably ,into complete madness.Or is it a set up? Her husband is considerate,but there is another woman in the house ,and she may be his lover : do they want to have her sent to a sanatorium? One of talented Laurence Harvey's last part :he was to die prematurely of cancer shortly after.Billie Whitelaw is ideally cast as a disturbing woman (see "the omen") which might (or might not) be dangerous.

An underrated thriller.

The end is important in all things, as we have learned from Ghost Dog, and this is absolutely true when speaking of Night Watch. After about twenty minutes you think you know exactly where the plot will end. It really seems that this is the director's and writer's fault, because they give away too many clues, so I almost instantly lost interest. But after the many dull scenes following the brilliant visualization of Lizzies nightmare comes the unexpected ending. And this makes the whole movie worth watching, but as I've already mentioned: it is mostly the nightmare-scene which deserves the credit.

Elizabeth Taylor reunites with her Butterfield 8 co-star Laurence Harvey in Night Watch one of her only if not the only venture for her in the horror genre. It also has a bit of Hitchcockian tension in it as well.

In this film Taylor and Harvey are a married couple who have settled down in a very posh part of London. Harvey is her second husband, the first died in an automobile crash with his young mistress.

Soon after moving where they are Taylor spots strange goings on like dead bodies at the place next door. But every time the police in the person of Inspector Bill Dean is called there's no evidence of anything. A lot like Doris Day in Midnight Lace.

Both her husband and best friend Billie Whitelaw try to support Taylor, but it's no avail, she just gets worse and more hysterical and the police are just getting more and more fed up.

The film has certain parallels to Midnight Lace and also to Gaslight. But don't think you've guessed an ending even with those clues.

As so many aging Hollywood actresses of the 60s and 70s went into these kinds of films, some did more than others. Apparently Taylor was only satisfied to dip an ankle into this pool.

Apparently Harvey was desperately ill with the cancer that killed him and he does look gaunt. There is a revealing rear shot in a shower and I'm betting that is not Harvey's bare backside. He does look gaunt. He had an operation that took a lot of intestine out of him and production was stopped mid way according to the Citadel Film series book on the Films of Elizabeth Taylor.

The next door neighbor Robert Lang has a role in all of this. If you think you know what will happen in Night Watch, believe me you don't.

Just bought NIGHT WATCH and watched it tonight when it arrived. I don't think I've seen it since, say, I was a teenager and it was on the late show!

But it's a Taylor film no one talks about.

I actually think it's great, in its way (but, as with every Laurence Harvey movie he does with Taylor, I always want to re-cast him with James Mason).

Anyway, yes, I think it's a smidgen underrated. And has a nice, London-y, shrouded early-'70s melancholy flavor and that neo-Victorian early-'70s thing what with the dark wood and the plush velvet-y furniture and the Tiffany lamps and the overgrown plants and deep shadows and the sprinkling of harpsichord in the score and the occasional fish-eye lens.

Great twist ending, too!

I admit I'm normally not a big Elizabeth Taylor fan, but this movie made me realize it's perhaps solely due to the fact she hasn't starred in many films in my favorite genre of horror! The character of Ellen Wheeler, which she depicts in "Night Watch", easily could have been played by either Joan Crawford or Bette Davis (if they had been, say, 15-20 years younger) and I am a devoted admirer of those two ladies. Taylor is truly excellent and convincing, but she can also rely on a very intelligent screenplay (adapted from a stage play) and an intensely unsettling atmosphere generated by directed Brian G. Hutton. If the premise of "Night Watch" sounds overly familiar or even derivative, it's probably because we have all seen the set-up numerous times before. Mind you, however, the film holds a few surprises in store that you most certainly have not seen before!

Even though she got remarried with the handsome financial expert John, and always has her best friend Sarah around the house for support, wealthy but ageing diva Ellen Wheeler is still recovering from a mental breakdown caused by her ex-husband. He died in a road accident, in the company of his much younger and ravishing mistress, and this still causes nightmarish illusions and sleepless nights to Ellen. During one of these long nights, she thinks she witness a brutal slaying in the abandoned house across the street. The police don't find any evidence of a crime and, naturally, nobody believes her due to her mental condition and her repeatedly hysterical requests to Inspector Walker to search for a body that presumably doesn't exist. Thus far the synopsis that every horror/thriller fanatic knows by heart, and we usually also have a pretty good idea where it goes from here. And partially it does, but I guarantee you that the denouement of "Night Watch" will differ from what you expect!

"Night Watch" is a vastly underrated film, especially because the red herrings and plot twists are very simple and straightforward, and yet so incredibly effective! I also must praise Brian G. Hutton, as well as his entire cast and crew, for managing to keep the story compelling and entertaining despite the clichéd framework. Films like this risk to become tedious very quick, but Hutton somehow upholds the mystery and the cast members restrain from putting down their characters as open books. You know you're watching a good suspense/mystery thriller when the complete lack of action isn't really bothering throughout 80-85 minutes. The Grand-Guignol climax is still more than welcome and, for once, you should NOT kick yourself or feel dumb for not being able to guess the end-twist.

PS: La Liz was quite good-looking at the age of 46, but can you honestly blame any husband for cheating with the unearthly beautiful Linda Hayden?