[Excerpt: "Dead of Night" review from britishhorrorfilms.co.uk]

Dead Of Night
1945

It would be safe to say that most of the films on this site aren't particularly frightening. Occasionally they may make you think, or shudder, or jump - but there are very few genuinely terrifying examples along the same lines as say, The Blair Witch Project or The Exorcist (which I don't actually rate, but some people seem to like).

Most examples of British Horror are camp (Scream And Scream Again, The Abominable Doctor Phibes), intentionally funny (Psychomania, Horror Hospital), unintentionally funny (I Don't Want To Be Born), or period pieces (Tales From The Crypt, Corruption) - in fact many of these examples have elements of all of these. Some are grim (Witchfinder General), but few are genuinely frightening - I can only think of three that have really scared me since I started this site - The Haunting, Night Of The Demon, and Dead Of Night.

Dead Of Night will not be to everyone's taste. It was made in the 40s, so it's very, very old. The acting can verge on the wooden, and much of the dialogue and ideas seem almost quaint. But it scared me the first time I saw it, and it still scares me now.


Story 1: Just room for one inside, sir
    After a particularly nasty car racing accident, our hero wakes up in hospital and within seconds he's fallen in love with his nurse and is calling her "darling". This being the 1940s when men were all tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking Brylcreemed racing drivers and nurses were all called Joyce, she doesn't seem to mind.
    
    It's evening, and he starts to read a book. Then suddenly notices that the clock says 4.15 - and it's daylight outside. Looking through the window, he's shocked to see a hearse parked right outside. The driver looks up, and cheerily comments: "Just room for one inside, sir".
    
    He sits down, and when he looks up the time is back to normal and it's dark outside. "Am I going crackers?" he asks himself, before shrugging it off in a stiff-upper-lipped kind of way.

    The next day he's discharged, but as he waits for a bus to take him home, he asks for the time and doesn't like the answer. He likes it even less when the bus conductor looks very familiar...

After the unsettling beginning to the film, this is horror painted with much broader strokes. But it's only an hors d'euvre... Back at the cottage, the Craig's dream is being broken again and again - this time with the arrival of the "penniless brunette" he predicted. All he can say is that his "dream becomes a nightmare" later on... "a nightmare of horror". But he can't remember why.

Story 2: Subconscious thingumajigs
    At a children's Christmas Party,  ...

Story 3: I thought you'd like to look at yourself...
    Peter (the man who has everything, apparently - including Googie Withers for a missus) gets bought a mirror by his wife. "I thought you'd like to look at yourself," she tells him. "Mmm... handsome couple." But then she notices a troubled look pass over his reflection. "What's the matter?"

    "Nothing," he replies. "I thought I saw something."

    ...

Story 4: I wish you were dead, old man
    It's bizarre. I can't see any modern woman being happy to be the prize in a game of golf, but that was the 40s for you, I suppose. Parrot and Potter are great golfing mates, but both of them love Mary (the menage a trois which led up to this situation has been glossed over,
    ...
    
Story 5: You don't know what Hugo's capable of...
    The police are investigating an attempted murder, only to be told by their suspect: "Hugo's the only one who can help me. He's more to blame for all this than I am."

    But, as we find out in flashback, "Hugo" is a ventriloquist's dummy.
    
    ...
    

But the horror's not over yet. Back at the cottage, Craig has remembered how his "nightmare of horror" ends, and it's something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As he's besieged by visions from the stories he's just heard (including a fully mobile Hugo) he wakes up, only for the whole thing to start again...

In every other case, a film that ends with "but it was all a dream" is a dreadful travesty of so-called "entertainment", but that's not so with Dead Of Night - mainly because it seems fitting that such a horrifying experience is a nightmare. And perhaps the most terrifying thing of all is that the poor sod is about to go through the whole thing again as "The End" appears on the screen and we can all go home...

To me, Dead Of Night is simply the most terrifying film ever made. I can't explain it, it just is. Every single story (yes, even the golf one) gives me feelings ranging from slight unease to cold terror. If you've seen the film, see if these sounds bring it all back to you (especially Hugo's voice). If you haven't seen the film, why not? And if you don't agree, fair enough. I am a bit of a nancy boy.

-- from http://www.britishhorrorfilms.co.uk/deadofnight.shtml
