Dead of Night is the work of four directors–Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer–across five episodes, and a framing device.
Starring Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Sally Ann Howes, and Michael Redgrave, this upscale British anthology set the bar high with its supernatural conceits and downbeat endings.
Its two most effective chapters involve an antique mirror, possessed by the its previous owner, and a powerful ventriloquist’s dummy, who forces his owner’s hand to murder.
Produced by Ealing Studios, the film features five segments within a frame narrative during which a group of guests assembled at a country manor recount their own individual nightmares.
Dead of Night is one of the few horror films made in England during the 1940s, as that genre had been banned from production in Britain during World War II.
It was also one of the few horror efforts from Ealing Studios, who were primarily known for producing comedies.
John Baines’ stories were reused for later films and the ventriloquist dummy episode was adapted into the pilot episode of the CBS radio series “Escape.”
“The Hearse Driver” is based on the short story “The Bus-Conductor” by E. F. Benson, originally published in The Pall Mall Magazine in 1906.
“The Christmas Party” is based on the 1860 murder of Francis Saville Kent, for which his half-sister Constance Kent was convicted in 1865.
“The Golfer’s Story” is based on the short story on “The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost” by H. G. Wells.
Universal distributed the film in the US in truncated cut that excised two segments, “The Christmas Party” and “The Golfer’s Story,” which resulted in incoherent narrative and continuity errors.
