Sunday, October 17, 2010

12. Dead of Night

Dead of Night
Various directors, 1945

A group of people gather at an old house, and wind up telling each other stories of encounters with the supernatural.

This anthology is best known for the evil ventriloquist dummy segment, and rightly so - it's fantastic. Unfortunately the rest of the segments range from mediocre (the haunted mirror) to downright terrible (the ghostly golfer, the Christmas party). The main problem is that everything is simply too reserved to be at all unsettling, at least until you reach the final segment, where Michael Redgrave gives a wonderfully unhinged performance as the ventriloquist and almost manages to single-handedly salvage the project. It's worth watching that, as well as the deliriously surreal nightmare sequence that serves as the conclusion to the framing story, but it's not really worth watching anything else.

3.5/10

No comments: