Quando Descem as Sombras

This is an highly imaginative and entertaining spookfest with a focus on nightmares and dreams. It lacks William Castle's usual gimmicks to attract an audience yet stands out as a fine film effort.

When a blind man - suspicious of his wife's loyalty to him due to her dreams of another lover - dies in a bizarre laboratory explosion, his wife begins to have nightmares about him and begins to suspect she may be going crazy.

There's a good creepy atmosphere here and to think it's achieved without many of the expected gimmicks and thrills - the chapel-wedding sequence with the mannequins, spinning chandelier, candles being particularly effective.

Barbara Stanwyck is quite good in this but they do have her just stand still and scream too much in this movie. The ending too is not without its problems but still this film makes for enjoyable late-night viewing.

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.

Producer/Director William Castle, famed for his low-budget shockers complete with assorted gimmicks, had by now reached his "Star Stage." He had featured Vincent Price in two of his films, and in 1964 really scored a coup when he signed Joan Crawford for "Strait- Jacket." Thanks mostly to her drawing power (she would later do "I Saw What You Did" for Castle) the film was a hit - and her publicity appearances on behalf of it didn't hurt, either. So, for his next project, Castle signed both Barbara Stanwyck and her initially reluctant ex-husband Robert Taylor to headline "The Night Walker" from a script written by "Strait-Jacket's" Robert Bloch (who also penned the book "Psycho").

In this psychological mystery melodrama, Stanwyck plays the wife of a rich, blind scientist (Hayden Rorke) who suspects her of having an affair. He hires a detective (Lloyd Bochner) to determine whether his wife is only dreaming of a lover or actually has one. Shortly thereafter, he is killed in an explosion, and his now very rich widow is plagued with nightmares in which he is pursuing her (when she's not dreaming of her mystery lover, that is). Taylor is her late husband's lawyer whom she turns to for help when her dreams begin to drive her mad. And so goes the plot...

Most critics saw this as another "Horror Hag" movie, in other words, a lurid yarn featuring a Golden Age star, a cycle which began with "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" (with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford) and continued with "Strait-Jacket" (Crawford); "Lady In A Cage" (Olivia De havilland) and Ann Sothern) "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte" (Davis, De havilland and Agnes Moorehead) etc. This time around though, the still- beautiful Stanwyck was cast as a victim, rather than a villainess (as most of the veteran actresses ended up playing in these films were) and she generated a good deal of sympathy-(besides being a terrific screamer). The supporting players (Bochner, Judi Meredith, Rochelle Hudson and Marjorie Bennett) are capable and game, the production is well photographed and features a truly creepy score from the great Vic Mizzy ("The Addams Family, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken"). Famed voice-over king Paul Frees (for some reason credited as 'Ted Durant') sets the scene beautifully with a short but effective prologue. What really makes this work, however, are the still-potent talents of Stanwyck and Taylor, both of whom are really better than the material, but give it their all nevertheless. Alas, though profit participant Stanwyck toured with Castle to promote it, "The Night Walker" was a box-office flop, and it would take "Rosemary's Baby" which Castle only produced, to put him back on top. It's still an above-average film of it's type though, and pretty scary to watch alone at night.

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.

"The Night Walker" is a very strange film which is in some ways a bad film and in others it's quite good. The bad is the story itself. Although it has some great elements, it really doesn't make all that much sense (such as why didn't the lady ever seek out the police??) and it's best you just turn off your brain and enjoy this one.

The film is made by William Castle...so it's not surprising it starts off weirdly. The prologue is indescribly weird...like taking a hit of acid. You just have to see it to believe it. After, the actual story begins. It seems that a nutty old rich blind guy (Hayden Rorke) thinks his wife is cheating on him. Soon after talking to his lawyer about this, the guy burns up in a fire. Despite him being dead, the wife dreams of him and her dreams are incredibly vivid and disturbing. It has her beginning to question her sanity...as do appearances by a pretty young lover who doesn't seem to be real. What is really going on here?

Pairing Barbara Stanwyck and her ex-husband, Robert Taylor, was an interesting choice....and the film is filled with fantastically eerie camerawork and music...which, along with the husband's make-up, really terrify. If only the story were a bit more logical, I would have rated it higher, as the movie (much like Castle's "Strait-Jacket") is highly entertaining and creepy.