The Night Digger

As others have said, this movie was written by British poet/author Roald Dahl as a vehicle for his wife, American actress Patricia Neal. (I thought of it recently after seeing a similar American movie "Happy Mother's Day, Love George" that featured Neal and the couple's real-life daughter Tess Dahl). The basic story is pretty good. Neal plays a lonely spinster whose domineering mother rents a room to a traveling road worker (Nicholas Clay), and Neal's character finds herself drawn to the handsome, younger man, unaware that he might be a serial killer who has buried a string of female victims along the road he is building. . .

This definitely works as a vehicle for Neal, who is probably most famous for the Paul Newman movie "Hud" (even though her character in that was supposed to have been African-American, but such a thing would have simply been too incendiary in the early 1960's). She is very good in this. Unfortunately, she doesn't get a lot of help. Nicholas Clay would later play Lancelot in "Excalibur" and appear with an all-star cast in Agatha Christie's "Evil Under the Sun", but he was just too inexperienced here. For whatever reason, there was a plethora of handsome but psychotic young men in British movies at this time, and this role might have been better played by another "handsome young psycho" actor like Shane Bryant or Hywell Bennett (although neither of them might have been very convincing as a roughneck construction worker). If it have been made a decade or so earlier though, it would have been a PERFECT role for a young Oliver Reed.

The directing is also a little flat generally, but the first murder (following a motorcycle ride) is pretty inspired. The Bernard Hermann score is not one of his best, but it does add SOMETHING to the proceedings. This isn't great, but it certainly deserves to be more widely seen.

Another one of those great forgotten movies of the 1970s. I caught this on late night TV about 20 years ago and have never forgotten it.

It was about a young man named Billy (Nicholas Clay) helping out Maura Prince (Patricia Neal) and her elderly mother (Pamela Brown) in their crumbling old house in England. Neal starts to fall for him (despite their age difference)...but she's not aware of what he does when he goes out alone every night...

Spooky little horror film. When I first saw it it was edited for TV so there were some unexplained pieces (like a bit about something that happened to him as a child which explains what he does as an adult) and, I assumed the violence was gone. I was finally able to see the entire uncut film and loved it! It wasn't a blood and guts horror movie--it's an excellent psychological horror. In fact the two violent acts in it aren't even shown! It concentrates on Billy and Maura and their feelings and thoughts. Clay and Neal are such great actors that just their expressions tell you what they're feeling. The growing romance between them was touching and believable. Also there's an excellent score and the ending was a stunner! This film has an R rating for some dialogue and a lengthy nude sequence with Clay. Well worth catching just for Clay and Neal.

This movie is available on DVD through the made to order system with the Warner Brothers Archive Collection. It's complete and the transfer is pristine. Well worth getting. It might disturb you but you'll never forget it. Avoid the cut version on TCM.

Patricia Neal+Bernard Herrmann + Neal's husband Dahl.Plus Pamela Brown and Nicholas Clay.It does make a decent film,it does not make the classic thriller we could have expected .

Neala nd her mother ("you could have got married when you were YOUNG" said Clay to an infuriated Neal).A spinster who lives with her over possessive mother ,Neal's character recalls Nell's past in Shirley Jackson's "the haunting" (masterfully transferred to the screen by Robert Wise,then butchered some years ago).A good thing in the last minutes :the director does not show ,he lets us imagine what terrible thing happened .Today such a quality has become rare.

But if you have read Dahl's wonderful short stories ,you may be disappointed by his script,including pointless characters such as the minister and his wife who want to become a woman and a man respectively. Besides the two women's story and Nicholas Clay's do not hang very well.

In a isolated mansion outside of London, spinster Maura Prince (Patricia Neal) cares for her blind adoptive mother Mrs. Edith Prince (Pamela Brown). Dashing handyman Billy Jarvis (Nicholas Clay) shows up looking for work. Maura is frustrated that Edith has given her room to him and initially feels uncomfortable with his demeanor. There is a lady killer on the loose.

It's a fascinating juxtaposition between the stuffy English mentality and the glee about the demented violence. That old guy describing the series of missing women is hilarious. Patricia Neal is great. Billy is a disturbing character and getting naked only makes it even better. All that is missing is his brutal murders. The movie is cutting away from the kills. It's the era of its time. This is fascinating.

Roald Dahl has always been a good story-teller, and this movie, for which he wrote the screenplay, is no exception. It's a macabre love story with a somewhat unexpected ending. Very good acting and story-telling. I recommend this film for all Roald Dahl fans. 7/10.