Fear in the Night (1972) - film review

Not long after suffering a nervous breakdown, Peggy finds herself married to Robert Heller, a teacher at a public school.  On the night before she joins Robert for their new life together, Peggy is attacked by an unknown assailant with an artificial arm.  Robert assures her that she imagined the attack but Peggy is convinced it was for real and fears that someone is trying to kill her.  The couple arrive at the school where Robert works and Peggy is surprised to find the school is deserted and in pristine condition, as if no child had ever set foot in it.  Whilst Robert is away, Peggy explores the empty classrooms and is surprised by the headmaster, Mr Carmichael who, despite his politeness, strikes her as someone sinister, someone with a dark secret.  She later meets Carmichael’s young wife, Molly, to whom she takes an immediate dislike.  When Robert is away from home one evening to attend a conference in London, an intruder breaks into the couple’s cottage.  Peggy’s worst fears are confirmed.  It is Carmichael, the man with the artificial arm.  Stricken with fear, Peggy takes up a rifle and shoots him dead.  The nightmare has only just begun...

Fear in the Night was the last in a series of low budget suspense thrillers that Jimmy Sangster scripted for Hammer, an effective but some somewhat mechanical reworking of H.G. Clouzot’s classic French thriller Les Diaboliques (1955).  It is practically the template for the two television series that Hammer would make in the 1980s: Hammer House of Horror and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.  Sangster had been a key player in Hammer’s success in the 1950s, writing the screenplays for the early Gothic horrors such as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958).  After he left Hammer in the early 1970s, Sangster moved to America where he pursued a successful career as a television scriptwriter.

Fear in the Night was one of three films that Jimmy Sangster directed for Hammer.  He made his directing debut with The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), which featured Ralph Bates as a young Baron Frankenstein.  Hammer had high hopes for Bates, seeing him as a potential replacement for its main stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  Although Bates featured in several Hammer films, including Fear in the Night, he never achieved the profile or popularity enjoyed by Hammer’s star players.  When Hammer stopped making films in the late 1970s, the actor would make regular appearances on British television, starring in prestigious dramas such as Poldark and Penmarric, and the popular sitcom Dear John, which he made just before his premature death from cancer in 1991.

The two biggest names on the cast list of Fear in the Night are Peter Cushing and Joan Collins, neither of whom needs any introduction.  Joan Collins was experiencing a career dip when she appeared in this film, the kind of low budget production she would probably have shunned had things been different.  Collins had risen to stardom in Hollywood in the 1950s but, just as quickly, she fell into virtual obscurity by the early 1970s.  The actress would get a second chance at fame later in the decade, when she appeared in The Stud (1978) and The Bitch (1978), paving the way for her greatest success, as soap queen Alexis Carrington in the hit series Dynasty throughout the 1980s.

Fear in the Night is a polished and compelling production.  It is atmospherically shot and well acted, but it offers few real surprises, particularly for anyone who has seen Sangster’s earlier (and virtually identical) Taste of Fear (1961).  Ralph Bates is never entirely convincing as the innocent husband and Judy Geeson’s dolly girl hysteria becomes tiring after a while.  Meanwhile, Peter Cushing and Joan Collins are both criminally underused, which is particularly frustrating as theirs are the most interesting characters, both having the potential to add more depth and complexity to the plot.  Sangster admitted that the film had to be padded out with lengthy scenes of Geeson roaming the deserted school to ensure the film had an acceptable runtime – another reason why the film doesn’t quite hit the mark.

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