Released in 1972, Fear in the Night was the last in an unusual run of psychological thrillers made by Hammer – titles such as Nightmare, The Nanny and Maniac were a far cry from the Gothic trappings and Kensington gore of the more lurid titles associated with the studio throughout the 1960s.
Fear in the Night, written and directed by Hammer mainstay Jimmy Sangster, punches well above its weight. Despite its tiny budget and restricted claustrophobic locations, it has compelling performances from its four leads – Judy Geeson, Ralph Bates, Joan Collins and, of course, the inevitable Peter Cushing, without whom any Hammer was likely to deliver significantly less impact.
Geeson plays Peggy Heller, a 22-year-old recovering from some sort of nervous breakdown (a flashback device showing her in therapy is curiously abandoned halfway through the film). She’s recently married the supportive Robert (Bates), a teacher at a remote boys’ boarding school. The night before she is due to leave her London flat and travel with Robert to the school, she is attacked in her home by a one-armed man with a prosthetic hand.
Shaken and upset, she nevertheless makes her journey the following day (with a brief stop at the grim and misty Granada Services), and the pair install themselves in a cottage across the road from the school building. Robert still has duties to attend to even though the school is empty for the holidays, so Peggy explores her new environment. In the eerily deserted school, she meets headmaster Michael Carmichael (Cushing) and his wife Molly (Collins), who regards Peggy with some disdain. When Robert has to travel to London to attend a conference, Peggy is left alone in the cottage… and has to deal with the threat of an intruder, armed with Carmichael’s rifle, which Robert has persuaded her to bring into the house. When Robert returns the next day, Peggy is confused and disorientated, and it seems that the headmaster is missing…
Whilst it doesn’t reinvent the psychological thriller wheel, Fear in the Night is a cut above thanks to its confident script and imaginative direction – the title sequence plays out over footage of deserted schoolrooms and grounds, culminating in a shot of a body hanging from the branches of a tree. It’s hard to imagine a better hook, and the story that plays out is delivered by four actors at their peak.
Cushing, in what’s really little more than a cameo role, is clearly relishing the creepy ambiguity of his character and the rich dialogue, and the film reminds us how good Joan Collins could be with the right material. Here she’s a pre-Bitch bitch, disdainful of Peggy for reasons that become apparent later on in the film. Bates, once a likely new Hammer leading man, plays well with Geeson’s timid, terrified “final girl” prototype, and the film’s twist, which starts to reveal itself at around the hour-mark, still packs a punch.
Due to the nature of its plot, Fear in the Night might not have an enormous rewatchability factor, but this handsome new 4K/Blu-ray set, supported by a Kim Newman analysis and a ‘talking heads’ look back at the film, along with commentaries, posters, trailer, and a souvenir booklet, gives the film a remarkably contemporary edge. It more than does justice to an often-forgotten film that drew the curtain down on a very particularly sub-genre in the history of Hammer.
FEAR IN THE NIGHT is available now on 4K/Blu-Ray from StudioCanal.
