For those hording toilet paper

The anthology film reaches way back. Amicus might be known as a precursor to the horror anthology shows like Tales from the Darkside and movies like Creepshow, but Dead of Night, in ’45 is probably the grandfather of them. Melvyn Johns is an actor I found a total delight in A Christmas Carol ’51, and his mercilessly looping nightmare, a repeated dream that never ends, déjà vu that signals disorientation and confusion, fear and anxiety, instigates storytelling from a group of 6 who he meets at a cottage; their convergence is a polite, sunny, friendly meeting of minds as Johns tells him he knows their faces and remembers them from a dream that  continues to recur. Six characters tell Johns of their own nightmares…these nightmares become part of his own in what I consider to be one of the best “wrap around” endings of all time not just in anthology horror but classic horror. Twists at the end are commonplace and expected, but Dead of Night made the twist a gold standard…few can match it to me.

The first tale concerns a race car driver barely surviving a serious crash that leaves him in hospital. “Just room for one inside, sir.” He looks out his hospital window and sees a man driving the hearse who looks up at him and pronounces that eerie phrase. He leaves hospital but that experience doesn’t leave him. A double decker bus has that same driver from his dream in the hearse carriage wondering if he would like to board since there was just room inside for one more passenger. Taken aback by the coincidence, the race car driver doesn’t board the bus and watches at a distance in horror as a second vehicle causes it to careen from a bridge killing those inside! Jeepers! There have been movies (like the awesomely creepy chauffeur in Burnt Offerings) following afterward with a figure driving a hearse expecting characters to join him…obviously, he is to be avoided.

The second tale is one I grow to appreciate more each year I watch this. A Christmas party right out of a Norman Rockwell painting has a massive house with lots of happy kids playing a game of hide and seek. A girl encounters a weeping boy while hiding in the “haunted attic” and the two instantly hit it off. He talks of a half-sister who hates and wants to kill him. She offers a kiss on his cheek and kind affection he perhaps never received from the half-sister who gives right the opposite. “I’m not frightened! I’m not frightened!” Frances Kent was not a boy among the children who lives in the attic but a certain specter the girl had no way of knowing was a ghost! There’s something about that ending I consider rather effective; it has a residue to it that doesn’t leave me. He doesn’t seem like a ghost; in fact, the child is very real. So the ghost didn’t feel like a ghost after all. I think that gives it extra potency. To encounter a ghost and not even realize it…kind of gives me the creeps just dwelling on it.

“A mirror is just wood and glass.” A fiancé gives her potential future husband a mirror, and it torments him by showing him a completely different room as if from a totally different time and place. No one sees that room but him. His girlfriend tries to convince him to accept that the reflection isn’t real but a figment he needs to address and defy. With her help, the room goes away, but while she’s away, he once again sees it. He feels as if the mirror is “calling to him”, like it will have him eventually. Well, can you guess what happens next? It isn't as simple as that. There's an occurrence that seems to "follow" the mirror, dealing with a jealous, enraged husband untrustworthy of a wife he thought cheated. That mirror is tied to a type of curse thanks to the husband's suicide. That husband "left a part of himself" and that seems to draw towards the mirror's new owner. A residue of that heightened feeling of the jealous husband remains and could pollute an innocent man. I think this was a rather neat development that explorers "haunted objects", quite the rage in paranormal circles.

A game of golf ends badly for one golfer (it resulted in a lost wager over a girl's affections; yes, the two were golfing for the betrothal of a young woman both cared for and wanted to marry!), although his “cheat and liar” buddy seems fine. However, his buddy’s ghost, after some “spirited haunting”, can’t seem to figure out the proper “hand signals” to send himself back to the hereafter. Perhaps the transport might accidentally be figured out by the mortal instead! This comic tale among the bunch is considered to be the odd man out, but it isn’t all that big a deal. It’s pure silliness, but I never felt personally it overstays its welcome.

But the final tale is what leaves the most lasting impression. A good deal of that is the exceptional work of Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist tortured into alcoholism by his dummy, Hugo. The scientific explanation is that Redgrave has a “dual personality”, the Hugo side a predominant force whose existence seems to be separate from Redgrave. Redgrave needs Hugo but the same cannot be said of the dummy. And that is the crux of the tale: Redgrave sees a fellow ventriloquist as a threat because Hugo has went out of his way to convey a desire to leave their act and partnership for a rival. Hugo, to Redgrave, is essential to his very welfare. I think Redgrave’s ability to convince that he seems to both speak in the role of the ventriloquist and Hugo yet seem to indicate two completely different personalities at odds is a triumph in performance; it shows a man coming unglued psychologically and mentally. When it seems like Redgrave “kills” Hugo, and, in essence, commits suicide, this segues into a shocking revelation. Redgrave’s final piece of acting—Hugo proving that he has taken control and that his crushed dummy’s head didn’t do away with his personality—is sensational.

Finally, the film has Johns--killing a psychiatrist often conversing with the attending characters at the cottage about his educated opinion regarding the recurring dream that seems to keep them in a loop-- falling into each tale that made up Dead of Night, and the director of the wraparound successfully warps the angles, creates a flurry of dreamlike hysteria, and features Johns always on the run, becoming one with others’ nightmares.

The ending has Johns wake up as if it were all a bad dream he has now put to rest…but he will just find himself in it all over again as the opening scene now has closing credits. This is a classic folks. Does the trick in the dead of Friday night.