Improvvisamente, un uomo nella notte

In the Victorian England, the teenagers Flora (Verna Harvey) and her brother Miles (Christopher Ellis) have just lost their parents in a car accident in France. Their tutor (Harry Andrews) decides to leave the children alone in their huge mansion under the care of the old housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Thora Hird), the governess Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham) and the gardener Peter Quint (Marlon Brando). Miles and Flore are very connected to Peter, who misleads their education with twisted concepts of love and death, but the orphans believe and are fascinated by his knowledge. Peter is the lover of Jessel, and they use to have sadomasochistic sex. When Peter sees their kink bondage night of sex, he has a corrupted and perverted sexual initiation. When Mrs. Grose writes to the master of the house to fire Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, Flora and Miles plot a dark scheme to keep them together in the property.

"The Nightcomers" is a very dark tale about finding sexuality and losing innocence in a very twisted way. The performances of the cast are top-notch, but Marlon Brando leads the story with his usual competence. I have never had the chance to read "Turn of the Screw" or see "The Innocents" to make any comparison, but I really liked this unknown and underrated movie. The bondage scenes are very impressive, with Marlon Brando and Stephanie Beacham showing a great chemistry. It is impressive to see that Verna Harvey was twenty-years old in 1972. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Os Que Chegam Com a Noite" ("The Nightcomers")

Marlon Brando's THE GODFATHER comeback was more of a legacy accreditation for his entire resume, blending with the years-past STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and ON THE WATERFRONT types as if all the bad films in-between didn't exist... and perhaps this might be one that he could have avoided...

Strangely enough, the title NIGHTCOMERS would have befitted the adaptation of Henry James's enigmatic supernatural short story TURN OF THE SCREW ala 1961's THE INNOCENTS as two ghosts (our lovers here, when alive) come at night, appearing before the same children with their caretaker: the latter arriving at the tail-end and, like ROGUE ONE years later, connecting to its famous source... but was the James story (or its adaptation) relevant for an entire prequel/backstory?

In the director's chair is the (at that time) creatively offbeat Michael Winner, using his usual zoom shots and symbolic set-ups, who may have been envious of former collaborator Oliver Reed's art-films by time-period sex-exploitation director Ken Russell, who'd have fit better since NIGHTCOMERS more comfortably plays with sadistic lust than the kind of psychedelic horror popular during the early seventies, heavy on off-putting violence and short on plot: Which has Henry James's two spoiled, death-obsessed (and not very inspired) literary children residing in a rural gothic English manor of Bly...

Their parents are dead and an aloof uncle turns them over to Stephanie Beacham, a religious caretaker, deliberately contrasting to Brando's Quint as an Atheist groundskeeper... donning the same unkempt hair and Irish accent he'd use in THE MISSOURI BREAKS, another film in which he seems part of a totally different picture...

And here his frolicking, childish behavior is both infectious to the adoring kids as well as the movie's entire cadence: But had there been more sympathy and perspective on Beacham's naiveté, Brando's reckless rebellion would have provided more shock value instead of seeming so natural and commonplace: Basically, watching THE NIGHTCOMERS is like electricity being electrocuted.

The best thing is Jerry Fielding's brooding, haunting music, similar to his STRAW DOGS score. And yet, like the Brando thriller NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY, another maligned pre-GODFATHER outing, there is a comfortable surrealism that feels as if this particular NIGHT was also intended for a very selective cult-movie audience all along.

A prequel to Henry James's ¨The turn of the screw¨ wherein a worker named Peter Quint (Marlon Brando) trysts with the governess Miss Jessel (Stephanie Beacham)of two malicious children named Miles and his younger sister Flora (Harvey and Chris Ellis) who are in her care and located at Bly manor.

Yet another special version of the Henry James classic with drama, tension, sexual games and splendid exteriors. Good performance from Marlon Brando as sadist Irish gardener and Stephanie Beacham as the young, too-impressionable governess and submitted to masochist relations with Quint, whom she thinks is corrupting the innocent kids . Furthermore the watchful and voyeurs children possessed by evil who think which lovers unite in death , they are finely played by Ellis and Harvey. And the housekeeper performed by Thora Hird who believes Peter Quint influence on the young children was thought to be malevolent. The film packs evocative photography in a good restoring by Robert Paynter and sensational musical score by Jerry Fielding. The picture is acceptably directed by Michael Winner. He had important commercial success in the mid-70 with his fetish actor, Charles Bronson , achieving various box-office hits, as ¨Deathwish I and II, furthermore ¨The mechanics¨ and ¨The stone killer¨.

Other adaptations about ¨Henry James' The turn of the screw¨ are the followings : Turn of the Screw (1974) by Dan Curtis with Lynn Redgrave; (1989) by Graeme Clifford with Amy Irving and David Hemmings; (1992) by Rutsy Lemorande with Patsy Kensit, Julian Sands and Stephane Audran; (1999) by Ben Bolt with Jodhi May, Pam Ferris and Colin Firth. And of course the classic and best version ,the incredibly eerie rendition titled ¨The innocents (61)¨ by Jack Clayton with Deborah Kerr, Pamela Franklin and Martin Stephens where the protagonist begins to see the specters of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint .

Another film where Brando attempts an irish accent with comical results - thats about the only horrific thing in this film probably the most overrated actor of all time.

Dark and twisted but not in the good way. Heavy doses of female hysteria and misogyny. Just very mean spirited. Cruel treatment of animals as well. Supposedly about innocence lost. But only at the cost of the viewer.