Original subtitles

Hardly shedding a drop of blood,

Dead of Night is one of the finest British horror films ever made.

For it plays its scares with subtlety,

more interested in plumbing the uncanny

and truly unsettling the viewer.

Produced by Ealing Studios and released in 1945,

the film is a portmanteau collection of five tales

contained with an all-important framing story.

Uh, Mother.

This is Mr Craig. Oh. I'm so glad you're here.

How do you do?

Well, come along in.

Let me introduce you to the others. Mrs Cortland.

How do you do?

Dr Van Straaten. How do you do?

Very pleased to meet you.

And, er, Mr Grainger. How do you do?

And this is Sally O'Hara. How do you do?

Is Dead of Night one of the finest British horror films?

I think it is. There's a handful of genuinely everlasting films,

and Dead of Night is one of those,

I think in part because of its very unusual structure.

It is what they call a portmanteau

or anthology film of films.

But one thing Dead of Night has that most of those films doesn't have

is a really complex and well-thought-through linking story.

So you can see this as a film about

what happens when an architect arrives at a house

and then the end result of the horror that he faces there.

Along the way,

we hear a collection of stories from all the guests at the house,

and that makes up this kind of anthology of ghost stories,

like sitting around a fire and everyone telling ghost stories.

But really, there is an overarching film there.

Called to a remote country house,

architect Mervyn Johns senses he has been here before

but only in a recurring nightmare.

Among the guests is Frederick Valk's psychiatrist,

who firmly believes that deja vu has a rational explanation.

This stirs the others to recount their own encounters

with the other worldly.

It's very likely you have seen my photograph in the papers.

That's why my face seems familiar to you.

I don't think so. And even if it were,

is that any reason why I should keep on dreaming about you?

- No. - After all, you don't mean anything to me.

There may be an association of ideas.

I may be linked with something that means a great deal to you.

Such as?

I should have to psycho-analyse you to find that out.

But it doesn't end there. You see,

everybody in this room is part of my dream.

- Everybody. Gosh. - Good Lord, really?

- Very extraordinary. - You are kidding. - What, all of us?

I can only tell you that when I came into this room,

I recognised you all instantly.

Have we had anything like it before?

We have had a few.

There is a handful of films that have a similar structure,

but they are in fact usually just one story after another.

They don't have what Dead of Night has,

which that whole other story which knits the whole thing together.

I mean, if you think of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance,

for example, 1916.

That's a series of stories crossing historical boundaries as it were.

There's a couple of very interesting films by Philippe Duvivier,

who was a French director who went to Hollywood.

- He made his first film called Tales of Manhattan. - Yeah.

Which was a series of stories about an overcoat that would pass

from one person to another,

and the closest one actually to Dead of Night is Flesh and Fantasy,

which was made only a year or so before Dead of Night,

which is a kind of fantasy/supernatural story

or series of stories. And we'd had, of course,

books of ghost stories, hadn't we, in a sort of literary tradition.

- Yeah. - The idea of a collectionof scary tales was new.

It seems to me that actually ghost stories work best in short form,

if not actually short stories, then novellas.

I mean, you think of The Innocents,

based on Turn of the Screw, by Henry James.

That's a novella. It's not a novel. But I think it goes further back.

It goes back to us sitting around the fire telling each other

small ghost stories to frighten each other, pass the story around.

And this is really evoking.

This thing that's been a tradition for far longer than cinema.

Four directors worked on the project,

each bringing their own flavour to the chocolate box of the weird.

Basil Dearden, who also shot the framing story.

Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton,

and Alberto Cavalcanti,

who created two of the spooky encounters.

Over the course of the film, we sample deathly premonitions,

spectral children, a mirror that reflects another room entirely.

Two golfers, whose rivalry goes uninterrupted by death,

and the much celebrated tale of the ventriloquist's dummy

with a mind of its own.

And where was British horror at? It's 1945,

we had a particularly large amount of genre work in that field?

Absolutely not. I mean, British horror before the war had struggled.

It wasn't a genre that British filmmakers really excelled in

or were interested in. There was a couple of attempts,

but there wasn't a strong tradition.

And then during the Second World War,

there was an explicit ban on that, amongst others,

the kinds of films that might upset people.

So by the time Dead of Night began...

This was the beginning of something in effect. ..the genre was dead.

It was quite revolutionary then, of Ealing Studios,

to decide to make a horror movie.

Well, yes, they had a sort of a halfway house, literally,

because the name of the film was Half Way House.

Which was a story which by the end,

you realise that the two people in it are ghosts.

So that was the beginning of their experiment in that field.

It was a couple of years earlier. But yes, I mean it was...

Part of I think Michael Balcon made this speech

about Ealing is not just, as we have been during the war,

which is a propaganda... not propaganda, but you know,

telling a story to raise spirits of British people,

we are going to set out on a new path,

and this was one of the examples of what we can do.

Britain has many experienced and able producers.

Some of them, like Michael Balcon, have grown up with the industry.

With such men as these, and with technical staffs now reinforced

for those men already returned from the war,

and some recruited from Hollywood,

the British film industry is taking every possible advantage

of today's golden opportunity to show what it can do.

What I love about Dead of Night is it's not just a horror movie.

It embodies the Ealing ethos of teamwork.

Here you have a project with four directors,

you have all the actors who were brought on

from the kind of Ealing troupe. You know,

it was everything about Balcon's wish for teamwork in one film.

Yes. And it's also Balcon bringing up new directors to speed. So,

the senior director in this is Alberto Cavalcanti,

a Brazilian director who had worked with the studio for quite a while,

but he's almost mentoring three new directors,

one of the directors-It's Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden,

- and Robert Hamer. - And Robert Hamer, this is his first film.

This is his first job directing, you know, on screen.

And so the way that it's developing the Ealing family,

and they will then go on to make some of Ealing's

greatest and best-loved films.

What do we know of where it came from?

What was the original idea? Well,

I think the idea came originally from the success of Half Way House,

which he had made a little earlier. Basil Dearden made that.

And that was a kind of dry run for this one.

It was a ghost story. It wasn't a particularly shocking one,

but it started off with the same idea,

which is that you had this remote place, an inn in that case,

with a whole bunch of strangers sort of gathered.

It was one story, you know,

but Balcon was very happy to see that be successful.

It went well.

Just before that, Cavalcanti had made Went The Day Well?

Which was the last of the great Ealing propaganda movies,

- a village that had been invaded by Nazis. - It's a masterpiece.

It is fantastic. It's a horror film in some ways.

Well, that's it. There were seeds of a sort of horror film in that,

insofar as that, you know, there was real death,

and you had sort of villagers shooting Nazis

and also the sense of-And Thora Hird killing someone with an axe.

I know, I know, there were some really violent scenes in that.

But also the sense of betrayal,

There was a sense of betrayal in that because some of the people

in the village actually had gone over to the wrong side.

So those two are kind of precedents

for something that Balcon wanted to do,

which is actually to break away from the constraints of propaganda

and also to get away from the idea that, you know...

He wasn't a man who could be restrained very easily,

and to be told not to make horror films,

I think probably just prompted this.

These short bursts of possession and haunting are brought to life

by such stars as Googie Withers,

Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne,

Miles Malleson, and Michael Redgrave.

The central premise is a battle between the paranormal

and the psychological.

Are these merely delusions?

Is the entire film enclosed within a troubled mind?

The shocking finale remains hotly debated.

Whatever the case may be,

Dead of Night's quintet of terrors, is unforgettable

None of us exist at all.

- We're nothing but characters in Mr Craig's dream. - That's right.

Then when he wakes up, we shall all vanish into thin air.

Dear me, what a morbid notion.

I don't question that you have been subject to a recurring dream,

and no doubt it has a background vaguely similar to this.

That would be quite enough to account for your feeling

that you have been here before. It's quite a common experience.

And that's all there is to it? That's all there is to it.

And hadn't they been thinking about, at first,

doing M.R. James' Ghost Stories?

M.R. James, a very famous writer in terms of horror literature.

I think anybody who wants to make horror films, first of all,

thinks of M.R. James because, A, the stories are all there,

They're sort of familiar to people. If you haven't ever read them,

you'll sort of vaguely have an idea of them.

They are spectacularly frightening.

They also are short, you know,

so they are perfect to be expanded into screenplays.

The problem is, of course, they're Victorian, most of them,

and that means that if you don't have sort of unlimited budgets

or big budgets, which Balcon didn't have, or didn't want to spend,

then to have several of those would be a bit expensive.

So I guess that's why all of these stories are really contemporary,

but they're all set in the present day, if you like,

of the making of the film. There is a brief flashback,

there's references back to Victorian times in a couple of the films,

but everything takes place around the time that the film-

Well, it was a virtue out of necessity, wasn't it?

Once they modernised the concept of the ghost story,

the film became something different, it became much more..It did.

immediate, much more... almost cleverer.

Eager to try out different genres,

five stories were suggested from the likes of H.G. Wells.

A hospitalised racing driver foresees his own death.

A teenage girl meets a ghostly boy during hide-and-seek.

An evil mirror possesses its owner.

A love triangle slips beyond the grave,

and finally, a ventriloquist's dummy betrays its human owner.

- This fellow is almost human. Did you say almost? - That's right.

As if you've got a mind of your own. Maxwell,

this fellow is as stupid as you are.

Perhaps I had better explain the position.

No, no, no.

Now we should talk about the structure of the film

and how cleverly it develops its story.

Because there is a framing mechanism in which,

directed by Basil Dearden, in which Mervyn Johns, an architect,

comes to this remote country house. He's been called there.

And when he arrives, it's immediately familiar to him.

He says, "I've seen this before,"

and he says, "But it's in a recurring nightmare."

And already the film is setting up this uncanny sensibility,

you know, where are we exactly? Is this reality of not?

But within this kind of gathered group in this country house,

there is Frederick Valk's psychiatrist,

who is a scientist, and immediately says,

"You're experiencing deja vu,

and there is an entirely rational explanation to this."

Therefore, it sets up the film's overriding theme, doesn't it?

At the very beginning, we are meant to sort of take it with us

through this journey, in that on the one hand there is the paranormal,

the uncanny, the kind of dream logic,

and on the other side, there is this scientific debate.

You know, is it all delusion? Yes.

And it's a brilliant way of saying, "Well, here's the themes."

It is and not only that, it triggers the stories because Van Straaten,

the psychiatrist, is the rationalist. You know,

he's the man who first of all says to Mervyn Johns, you know...

He gives him the explanation for this,

and that prompts each of the guests to sort of...

Well, they sort of gang up against the psychiatrist,

and says, "Well, wait a minute, "How do you explain MY story?"

And then it sort of just goes on and on and on.

And he becomes more and more anxious as it goes on.

The psychiatrist gets more and more cross, you know?

And ironically, the psychiatrist gets, in my money,

THE best horror story to tell as his own personal horror story.

Ironically, he trumps them all with the ventriloquist's dummy.

Just this idea that he's being won over by the paranormal,

that he is sort of coming to like,

"Actually, maybe I don't know the truth of things."

Well, you've only come face to face with five of us so far,

not counting Eliot. That's right, five of you.

There is a sixth person who comes in later.

Can you describe this late arrival?

It's an attractive girl with dark hair.

Is that all you can tell us about her?

She comes in quite unexpectedly

and says something about not having any money.

A penniless brunette, hey? How romantic.

Do you fall madly in love with her, Mr Craig?

Have you ever told anyone about your dream?

No, I don't think so,

not even my wife.

Mervyn Johns has made a series of predictions about

how the evening is going to go, based on his dream.

So he said someone will come in and will have forgotten something,

someone will break their glasses. And as the film unfolds,

we see all of his predictions come true.

So we start to acknowledge that maybe there is more to this

than simply deja vu.

I mean, Mervyn Johns' performance, I think, in this is...

It's easy to walk away with Michael Redgrave as the star turn

and we'll come to him later, but the Mervyn Johns' performance in this,

I think, is brilliant. He's very, very puzzled

and very slow at the beginning,

and he gradually accelerates up until this moment when it's revealed

- that the film is really centred around HIS violent act. - Yes.

Do we think there's a significance in the fact that he's an architect?

Is it he's a rational man, a man who builds things,

and puts things together? Very interesting question.

I hadn't quite thought of it in that way, but yes,

I suppose so because he's, you know...

He's a relatively sane, normal human being,

with a, you know... A professional.

And you can tell when he's sort of...

Even when he's driving down the lane towards the thing,

he sort of does a double take.

So he's already been established,

and Mervyn Johns looks like a normal, you know,

that happy-go-lucky ordinary sort of human being.

He doesn't look like a sort of potential psycho

or anything like that.

He's just got that lovely, comfortable sort of look about him.

Rather Ealing look I would say. A real Ealing look, you know?

And so the moment you see that he's uncomfortable

and he's puzzled actually is quite disturbing.

It's a bit more disturbing than it would be otherwise.

Well, also that he's there to audition for a job in effect,

and he's there to do a job for them but he doesn't know... You know,

if you were to be a brand-new architect showing up at this house,

you would be a lot politer to the people in the room than he is.

He walks around everyone barely noticing them

because he's stunned to see that he recognises them all.

So he's a very "poor-quality introducing himself" professional,

and that sort of sets up, again, one of the dilemmas, why is this-

I mean, it is a film about structure. It's a film about architecture.

It is a film that you have to understand is it's sort of pillars

that go throughout it. Yes, that's true.

And we keep coming back to the framing story, don't we?

- We do. - So brilliantly. So betweenthe individual stories, we return.

It's quite easy to forget that the framing story is THE story.

All the rest of the stories are servicing

that particular sort of story.

So that's the sixth story,

but it is the whole film. And that's really interesting

because that shows you that the level of thought

that has gone into the script

means that unlike almost any other portmanteau films

or whatever you call them, this one is a whole, it's integrated.

Drawn from the company of Ealing players,

each account is populated by wonderful performances,

achieved with limited screen time.

Frederick Valk is a cynical man of science.

Googie Withers is a distraught newly wed,

or Ralph Michael, as her husband,

slowly being possessed by his mirror.

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne reprise their double act

from The Lady Vanishes to darker effect.

But it is Michael Redgrave's ventriloquist

who gives the stand-out depiction of a tormented mind.

You won't for a moment admit the possibility

- of foreseeing the future? Not for a moment. - Well,

you'd say I was a pretty ordinary down-to-earth sort of person,

wouldn't you? I refuse to commit myself. Why?

Well, when it comes to foreseeing the future,

something happened to me that knocks your theories into a cocked hat.

Something I'll not forget to my dying day.

OK, well let's start with the first story.

Directed by Basil Dearden, it is the briefest,

but in what way does it embody the themes,

the overall themes of the film? Well, it's based around a dream.

It's about a racing driver who is involved in a horrific crash.

Very quickly we establish that the horrific crash is pushed behind us

because the other driver survived,

they've come in, they've shaken his hand, everything is decent.

There is something still troubling this man as he lies in hospital.

They can't quite let him go from the hospital

because he's clearly ill in some way.

And he very much fancies the nurse.

He's constantly trying to get the nurse to show him some affection,

calls her darling. "Will you marry me?"

And there is this constant sort of balance between sort of lightness

and fear going on, even within the stories, isn't there?

- Yes. - Yes. - And even though it is quite light

and it is about a racing driver and a flirt,

there are moments where it gets quite frightening.

And the most frightening being when time stops,

the music stops, the clock stops, everything stops.

and he suddenly becomes aware that he's in complete silence.

Opens the curtains to his room and sees it's bright daylight outside,

and there's a hearse on the street below.

And there is a hearse driver who says, "Oh, room for one more, sir."

And he closes the curtains, and then the clock starts,

the music starts, and he says, "Oh, I'm back." Goes back to sleep,

doesn't think anything of it. Makes a full recovery,

heads out, is about to catch a bus.

The bus conductor IS the hearse driver

and says, "Room for one more inside, sir."

He decides not to catch the bus, and the bus suffers a fatal accident,

and it's sort of a happy-ever-after story in a way

unless you're ON the bus. Yeah, yes.

Yeah, it's about a premonition, isn't it? The premonition of death.

And that's the uncanny thing.

It's about the nature of dreams

- and what they give you, what they supply to you. - Yes, yes.

It's also kind of a prototype story

that would finally end up in films like Final Destination,

you know what I mean?

It's got exactly the same kind of movement towards it

- except he escapes. - But already wehave this layering, don't we?

- Because the outer structure could be a dream. - Yes.

And now we have a dream within a dream.

And that is done in like six minutes or something like that.

That's what the economy of these scripts

and especially the opening one is incredible,

you know, because you get all that.

And so you know where... You sort of suspect, OK,

you know where you're going, so the next one can be a bit longer,

and the one after that can be a bit longer still.

What Dr Van Straaten wants, is genuine first-hand evidence,

the kind that would satisfy judge and jury.

And neither of us has been able to produce that... yet.

Darling, where on earth did you spring from?

Brenda suddenly changed her mind about staying up in town.

Would you pay the taxi, darling?

I've spent my last penny on the train fare. Hello, Eliot.

- Hello, Joyce. - Oh, my dear, I amglad you... Your penniless brunette.

What is it, darling? Come on now, stop crying.

Did you get separated from the others?

Let's go downstairs where it's light and warm.

No. Stay with me.

It's better now you've come.

Isn't it silly of me?

I don't remember noticing you downstairs.

Are you one of the Headingly children?

My name is Francis.

Francis Kent. This is my bedroom,

mine and Constance's. Constance?

She's my half sister.

She's grown up like you.

I didn't notice her either.

All the other girls seem much younger than me.

I wish you were my sister. You're so kind and nice.

Why? Is she unkind to you, darling?

She hates me. She said she'd like to kill me.

Well, don't, you poor little thing.

So the second story is Cavalcanti's first.

He directs two within the overall structure.

And you could say it's the most traditional one, couldn't you?

Yes, you can because it's, you know...

It's set in this sort of a huge sort of Gothic mansion.

It's a Christmas party for kids basically.

And Sally Ann Howes, she enters a room,

and this is the other sort of classic trope,

ghost story trope, she hears a child sobbing.

Now that, you know, immediately sort of sends your antennae up.

"OK, something's wrong here." It's a sort of a ruff or something.

He's got an unusual dress. Well, because they're at a party,

they're all dressed in sort of things. So,

she doesn't think there's anything unusual. She just says,

"Why aren't you at the party, why aren't you downstairs?"

And he sort of... You know, she cuddles him

and everything like that. And finally, she goes back to the party,

tells the mistress of the house that,

"You know, I've just seen a little boy upstairs. Francis."

And she looks in horror, and says, "Well, you know, he...

he was the child who was murdered in that room."

And then the story comes out.

The extraordinary thing about this particular story is that it's based

on an actual case that occurred in 1860,

when a woman called Constance Kent,

who was the sister of Francis Kent... she killed him.

- She murdered him. - Right. - It's a story that's been revisited.

It's in a book called The Suspicions of Mr Whicher,

which was made into TV. It's something obsessive

about that story that keeps being told and retold.

Constance Kent has only just died by the time this film was being made.

She died a year before or something like that, at the age of 100.

Now this is Robert Hamer's debut as director,

the third film, the third film within a film,

and it involves a couple about to be married,

which is Ralph Michael and Googie, the wonderful Googie Withers.

And as a birthday present, she buys him this sort of Victorian mirror,

rather grand antique.

And in wonderful kind of ghost story,

in supernatural fashion,

it doesn't reflect the room that it's in,

it reflects another room entirely.

Although only for him at the beginning.

At the beginning, she sees a normal mirror,

but he sees this other room.

- And he grows more and more obsessed with it, doesn't he? - Yeah.

And there is not a particular reason from what we see in the mirror

for us to be scared, because it's just an old room with a fireplace

and candles, but there is something really unsettling about it,

and I don't know if you get, you know,

what it is about the set dressing or something,

but you don't think this is a happy room.

There's something about this room which threatens

- right from the outset. - I think it'sabout the contrast, isn't it?

It's a wonderful image. Yes, yes.

It's a contrast between they're kind of the rather sleek,

modern bedroom this couple have,

and then the camera will look the other way,

and you see this sort of almost like a window into this...

I think it's probably a pre-Victorian room.

It's quite an old, yeah... Maybe Georgian or...

It's a four-poster bed. It's got a four-poster bed.

And it's genuinely creepy.

Look in the mirror.

Look in the mirror.

What is it, darling?

It's worse than ever.

You're not there. But of course I'm there.

I tell you you're not. In the other room, I'm alone.

Look in the mirror and tell me exactly what you see.

Maybe in comparison to the end story, which we'll come to,

this is one of the darker tales.

He turns murderous. Yeah, he tries to kill her.

Yes, I mean, this is a film in which the woman saves the man,

and it's her determination and her drive to rescue her marriage,

her future marriage,

and her partner that drives forward. And that's why Googie is so great.

She's telling this story in the present day,

so we know she survives,

but there is something about it that's compelling because it's her,

and she's, you know, a phenomenally beautiful woman in this

and very determined, and she's taking command of the situation

with this rather drippy man who's just gazing into the mirror.

I love about the switch it does to the typical ghost story.

Yes, because she's very much a modern woman at that time,

so it's got a lot of layers, psychological

and sort of social that are embedded in the actual story.

And something that strikes me about this one and all the stories

is that they are about victims. You know, there isn't,

apart from the sort of shadowy stories from the past,

- there are no monsters, there are no villains. - No.

It's all about victims. Yes.

And in many cases, the question in some of these films is,

is it all taking place in the victim's mind? I mean,

this, I think, is the dialogue that the film is really exploring is,

is anything actually happening to these people?

And in some of the films, you can easily say no,

this is something happening in their mind. In others,

you say, well, there must be some supernatural element to this,

but that's it. It's toying with you. the question goes back and forth.

- Could there be-Are they just deluded? - Is the psychiatrist correct?

Yes. And of course,

he has his rational explanation after each story.

But at the same time,

you can see that Mervyn Johns is becoming

increasingly paranoid and worried.

It's jolly unpleasant when you come slap up against the supernatural.

I still get a shiver when I think of what happened

to a couple of friends of mine. Ghastly business.

It was when I was staying at my golf club at Wittlesham.

The stars of the club were George Parratt and Larry Potter.

Nothing could keep them from their game.

They were both pretty good, and they were deadly rivals,

but only on the links.

In all other respects, they were the best of friends.

Until...

Now the fourth story is often written about as the weakest.

Cos it's a comedy story,

it seems to be slightly out of kilter with the others.

- Yet I think it's actually strangely unnerving. - Yes.

I mean, there are so many things about this story which is, again,

the very, very fine line between comedy and horror.

It's played for laughs,

but the things that happen in it are really dark.

It's about two golfers who fall in love with the same woman

and who decide to eventually, for want of anything better,

play a game of golf, and the one who wins, will win the girl.

And one of the golfers cheats.

Well the other point is, the one who loses, must kill himself.

Yes, which is, what on earth is going on with that?

So as soon as the game is won,

the other golfer just walks into the lake

- until his hat is left floating on the lake, and he's dead. - Incredible.

And this is Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne,

- who have a kind of legacy as a double act, don't they? - They do, yes.

They were first seen in The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock's film,

as Charters and Caldicott,

They were best friends who were sort of cricket mad,

so they were constantly sort of batting back and forth.

And they then made another film together...

Night Train to Munich, yeah. ...Night Train to Munich,

and they were so popular

that they became a sort of double act through it.

They're not called Charters and Caldicott in this,

but they are the same characters, you know,

and they've just swapped golf for cricket.

Which is why when in the end when the ghost reappears

and haunts his friend and says,

the only way you're going to get rid of me is by giving up the girl,"

he says, "Well, OK, I suppose so," "And giving up golf."

Give up golf?

Never.

OK, so how do you think this different story,

especially tonally, fits into the whole scheme of Dead of Night?

I think it just...

First of all, it's a sort of predictor

of what Ealing Comedies are likely to become, I think.

But it's there to relieve tension a little bit,

just to give us a breathing space.

It's still... As you say, the elements of it are quite dark,

you know, it's kind of got suicide, death,

ghosts, sex. It's just,

it's couched in a way that is very, very funny. It's very amusing.

But all the same elements are in there that are in the other stories.

And interestingly enough, this is a story not told by any of the guests

- but the owner of the house... Yes. - Roland Culver.

And each of the different ghost stories progresses the main story.

So they move the tone of the film,

but also they move the way that the discussion is unfolding.

The first story is actually quite trivial and quite light

and almost is just playing around with the idea of dreams.

He feels like he's been here in a dream. Someone says, "Well,

I'll tell you about my dream, a weird dream I had."

And that is then by the time we get to the end,

we're in what appears to be a dream sequence of absolute horror.

The structure is important, isn't it?

There is a sense of escalation from one story to the next.

There is, but it's quite clever

because the first one is like a sort of intro.

And the second one is more of a traditional ghost story.

The third one is a contemporary ghost story,

which is really-But really draws on ancient traditional...

Really draws on ancient traditions of, you know, the mirror.

The fourth one, which, for some people,

- is the most contentious, is the comedy one. - Yes.

And actually, I think it's perfectly placed

because you need to sort of relax slightly

from the rising tide of anxiety and fear, before-

It's why Shakespeare put the porter scene in Macbeth after the murder.

Yes, exactly, exactly the same reason.

Because then they hit you with the final one,

which is, of course, the most terrifying.

Ignore him, Sylvester. Just ignore him.

I'm the one who gives orders around here. He's only-Hugo, please.

Pipe down, you.

Listen my friend- No, no.

Say, what kind of a routine is this anyway?

Go away, will you? Leave us alone.

Go away. Get out of here.

OK, OK. I'm going.

You ought to get your head examined. Good night.

Ow!

Hey, my friend, don't leave me. Take me with you.

Maxwell, let go of me. Hey, get me out of here.

Hey, hey, hey!

Hey, that guy in there is nuts, huh? But nuts.

Shot with two rival units over a mere four weeks,

each director makes delicious use of background details,

things to throw us off balance.

Each story is delivered with its own distinct atmosphere and style.

For instance, Crichton's whimsical tale of rival golfers

in love with the same woman is blackly comic

and a little racy for its day.

While Cavalcanti's study of an artist succumbing to madness

could almost be film noire.

Apart from my bit of nonsense, the curious thing is that all of you,

even Sally, seems to have had one of these extraordinary experiences.

Well, perhaps they aren't so extraordinary.

Perhaps they happen to most people. Oh,

you mean there's a ghost as well as a skeleton in everyone's cupboard.

- Ha. That's a pretty thought. - Andwhat's the ghost in your cupboard,

Doctor? Well...

There was one occasion in my professional career

that made me wonder.

And then the psychiatrist says, "Well, OK,

well, I have had one experience,

which I suppose could be considered supernatural

and I can't quite explain," and that goes into...

the one that everyone remembers.

And this is the most famous of all the five stories.

If anyone knows anything about Dead of Night,

they will think of this story. Yes.

Well, what happens?

It's about a ventriloquist, played by Michael Redgrave,

brilliantly, one of his greatest screen performances,

certainly of his early ones,

who is basically becoming possessed by his dummy, Hugo.

We don't know... He's obviously...

He's obviously a bit of an alcoholic as well.

Yeah, you get the sense he's unstable, quite apart from-

The idea that this guy is unstable is right at the very beginning,

you know, even when he's doing his act.

I mean, it starts actually with him in hospital anyway,

or in a psychiatric ward,

and then the story goes back as to what happened.

This is jealousy as well,

because a fellow ventriloquist comes to Sylvester

to sort of congratulate him on his act, you know,

which is pretty tough.

You know, the act that he does with Hugo in the nightclub,

when he sort of insults women and is sort of really flirtatious,

the dummy that is, well, you think,

you know, makes you feel very uncomfortable.

I mean, it makes you feel...

The discomfort of these opening sequences are, you know,

really paramount to the way you respond to it.

That is my assistant. Oh, glad to know you, Mr Frere.

A very uncouth character, I'm afraid.

Mr Sylvester, how'd you like to work with me?

I'd like it fine, Hugo, but- But what?

Well, how about Mr Frere here?

You're sort of teamed up with him, aren't you?

Him?! My good man, think nothing of it.

I'm just about through with that cheap ham anyway.

Temper, temper.

You'll be sorry for this later, you know?

And this is very much setting up the concept of the split personality,

isn't it? Absolutely, totally, because you...

As it goes on, you can tell...

And Sylvester comes and sees him in his dressing room,

and he's not sure whether he's talking to the dummy

or the ventriloquist, because Michael Redgrave, by this stage,

is so wired in his paranoia,

and so sort of that, A, he is coming to steal the dummy, Hugo,

but also that he's sort of...

He's allowing Hugo to control his own life.

There's an extraordinary moment when he goes a bit...

He goes really over the top,

and you know he's still working the dummy.

But there's a great sense- And the dummy actually bites him.

Yes, yeah. And when he takes his mouth away,

he's got teeth marks, you know? Yes. There's so many elements

to the relationship between Michael Redgrave and Hugo,

and there's the-Well, they look like each other, to begin with.

Well for a start, yes. And he's even got a picture of him on...

And then there's one very sort of straight forward story, which is,

is the dummy possessed and therefore a sort of a living creature,

which is in some way controlling Michael Redgrave?

The supernatural reading. Yeah.

And there's also a sort of a homoerotic reading,

which is that he's very jealous...

I mean, Michael Redgrave is almost in love with Hugo.

He hates the idea that someone will take Hugo away from him,

not just because it will damage his career

but because this is his lover,

his dummy, his person.

But it's strangely egotistical, isn't it?

Because he sort of loves himself, Hugo is him.

And then so that, it's very complex, I mean, very, very modern-

It's a groundbreaking performance, isn't it, by Redgrave?

A groundbreaking performance and story.

It's been retold many, many times since,

but I think each time it's retold,

it doesn't have the layers that this short version has.

They pack more into this short version than any of the retellings.

You're still there.

One of the most complete examples of dual identity

in the history of medical science.

You mean that half the time Frere was Frere,

and the other half he was his dummy?

Exactly.

And in the end, the dummy got the upper hand entirely.

This is the conclusion. We should try and explain the conclusion,

that it comes back to the overarching story,

and, well, it sort of reaches a kind of frenzy

in which, well, a lot of the elements that we've been told

suddenly arrive in the main story,

and it's an astonishing montage of very, very disturbing images.

including Hugo getting up of his own volition and walking,

which is an image no-one forgets.

Nobody. Once you've seen that, it cannot be unseen.

It sort of points you back towards Mervyn Johns' character, doesn't it?

- It says well, could this all be part of his psyche in the end? - Yes.

It's strange because technically,

we are moving from... noire,

the noire look, into something else.

We're looking into German Expressionism.

We've got crazy angles, things are starting to become really surreal.

I would say it goes so far as sort of Russian cinema as well,

with the kind of montage effects

and what happens in that sort of final sequence

or sequences of dream,

where Mervyn Johns is actually caught in a vortex of imagery,

all of which has happened before, and he can't get out of it.

I just want to talk about the timing.

It's 1945. We've had a devastating war,

many people have lost loved ones,

but there's this idea of trauma

that some men have returned from the war not the same as they went away.

But civilians also have been bombed, children are hugely traumatised,

the whole population is traumatised, really.

Yeah, so there is a kind of thematic enquiry, isn't there,

into damaged minds? Yes.

And also I think in that,

you know, the interrogation of between the rational mind

and the irrational belief.

And so that a lot of people who have survived

and who have lost people will still have a faith that they,

you know, they may not be dead or they've gone somewhere else.

And I think that that conflict that, you know,

that death isn't the end, that there may be something else,

is sort of threaded right the way through the film, really.

Otherwise, why would they all come up...

Why would all these people come up with their own stories,

for which there is no explanation?

Apart from Van Straaten's psychiatrist, who, you know,

becomes increasingly sort of, well, boring really,

because... And, you know, gets of course sort of,

- gets his just deserts in terms of the film. - Yeah.

Cos it also allowed for the whole idea

of a psychological interrogation through the psychiatrist,

you know, because that would have been a modern concept.

I mean, it's not totally modern,

but it gave the chance of them to,

the screenwriters, and there were several screenwriters,

to actually use that idea of exploring dreams,

nightmares, and the effect on probably trauma,

which is, of course,

what a lot of people in the audience would have been feeling

- after the war. - Yes. It's a switchfrom the monster on the outside,

the kind of the Dracula and the Frankenstein and the ghosts,

into the monster on the inside... Absolutely.

...what you're struggling with yourself. But I think it's...

there's something about the absence of the event of horror.

There is something... I spent my '80s watching slasher flicks

and, you know, Chainsaw Massacre

and The Exorcist on dodgy videos around my friend's house,

so I was steeped to the gills in the video nasty.

And then I saw this,

and I found it genuinely unsettling.

This and The Haunting, two old black and white films

which deal with nothing much at all

but just allow you to construe what you want from the human mind.

And that's where you find the horror, I think,

and that's why I find it...

far more frightening than any of those other films.

"Unsettling" is the key word, isn't it?

Because it feeds your imagination, it doesn't show you everything.

It hints at you, it nudges you,

and you come away, you are haunted by Dead of Night, aren't you?

And as you say, you never forget it.

A landmark in the genre,

you can see the film's influence in the horror anthologies of the '60s

and '70s.

Redgrave's twisted performance would help inspire Psycho.

Indeed, its disturbing touch could be felt as far afield

as The Twilight Zone, and Twin Peaks.

Decades ahead of its time,

here is an exploration of the very nature of supernatural storytelling

and an enquiry into psychological damage in the aftermath of war.

Within its tales within tales,

passages within passages,

rooms within rooms,

Dead of Night stays with you forever.

That's just what you need, darling.

It will help you get rid of those horrible nightmares.

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