Dead of Night
Short description
An architect travels to an English country house where he discovers that both the building and the guests are part of a recurring nightmare. As the group shares various accounts of supernatural encounters, including stories about a haunted mirror, a ventriloquist's dummy, and a ghostly child, the man is gripped by an increasing sense of dread. He believes he is trapped in a dream and must endure these unsettling tales before he can wake up.
Produced by Ealing Studios, this horror thriller was co-directed by Basil Dearden, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer, and Alberto Cavalcanti. For Cavalcanti, this was the tenth film of seventeen he directed, following Film and Reality. For the other three directors, this was the first film listed in their respective chronologies. The movie features a large cast of 28 credited actors, including Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Googie Withers, Frederick Valk, and Anthony Baird.
The film is generally well-regarded by viewers and professionals. It holds a rating of 7.2 on TMDB based on 312 votes. Film critics gave it a higher score of 8.3 based on 44 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- The original structure of the film led British scientists Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold to the hypothesis of the Steady State Cosmology.
- The American distributor considered the film too long and cut two of the five plotlines (those involving Christmas and golf). As a result, American audiences never understood the purpose of Michael Allan's character's actions in the Christmas story. Following this incident, the film was restored to its full version.
- The story told to the protagonist, Sally Ann House, about the murder of Francis Kent by his own sister is based on real events. In 1860, Francis Kent (who was about four years old) was killed in his own home. His sixteen-year-old half-sister, Constance, was accused and subsequently tried for the murder.
- As Gugu Withers (who played Joan) later recounted, the scene with the broken mirror had to be filmed in a single take, as the film's budget did not allow for multiple takes (and the replacement of mirrors in between).
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