Starring Michael Redgrave, Mervyn Johns,Sally Ann Howes and Googie Withers
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton , Robert Hamer and Basil Dearden
UK 1945
102 mins
Our final film of 2019 is a traditional ghost story for Christmas - or rather five of them! 'Dead Of Night' is what is known as a portmanteau film - an anthology of short stories linked by a theme. It was made in 1945 by Ealing Studios - based just a few miles from Acton. The studio famously specialised in comedy - producing such beloved classics as 'The Lavender Hill Mob', 'Passport To Pimlico' and 'The Ladykillers' but this movie is in a very different genre - although one of the five tales is distinctly comic in tone.
An architect wakes from a disturbing nightmare and then sets off to inspect a job at a country house in Kent. There he meets a group of people who he feels strongly he has met before - each of them has a different supernatural story to tell...
Some of Ealing's most celebrated talents were behind the camera - Charles Crichton (who many years later would make 'A Fish Called Wanda') directs one story and Robert Hamer who made the wonderful 'Kind Hearts And Coronets' another. Each brings their own sensibility to the tale being told.
The most famous episode in the collection is 'The Ventriloquists Dummy' - in which Michael Redgrave plays a man who believes the doll in his stage act is beginning to take him over. Redgrave's edgy, febrile performance and the sinister characterisation of Hugo the dummy make this a creepy chiller that will stay with you for a long time...
As a one off we are screening the film at the excellent West London Trades Union Club - it benefits from a very reasonably priced bar and on the eve of election day there is bound to be nervous tension in the air...
