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HMAD: NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT (1973) You could have been one of us, you silly man. Now you’re going to burn!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the first 2009 Horror Movie A Day.
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf, recorded on the home DVR or streamed via Instant Netflix and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day.]
Well well well. Here we are again. Another October, another excuse to revel in horror movies.
Last October I transformed my regular A Movie A Day column into A Horror Movie A Day. It proved to be popular and helped me personally really get into the Halloween spirit. Halloween’s always been my favorite holiday and it was really cool taking that festive spirit and spreading it over the entire month of October.
I’ve compiled a very diverse list of horror films to wade through this month… everything from Troma to Ingmar Bergman.
But what better way to start than with an obscure Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing flick?
NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT (alias THE DEVIL’S UNDEAD, alias THE RESURRECTION SYNDICATE) is an early ‘70s Amicus-style horror film. The actual production company is Charlemagne Productions which only ever made one other film, 1976’s TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER, also starring Christopher Lee.
But the tone really is of the latter day Hammer and Amicus horror flicks with a surprising WICKER MAN element throw in.
Basically you have Christopher Lee as a Colonel investigating a rash of suicides. Now we know these suicides are not suicides at all thanks to an opening montage of these elderly people being murdered in ways that, on the surface, appear to be self-inflicted.
And Lee suspects these suicides aren’t what they seem because one of their ranks was an old war buddy of his that wouldn’t take his own life in a million years.
Lee calls upon his good friend Sir Mark Ashley, played by Peter Cushing. Ashley is a scientist and a very clinical man who is very reluctant to be drawn into this hypothetical tomfoolery. The facts are the facts are the facts in his eyes.
Oddly enough neither one of these men are the main character… in fact, I’d be hard pressed to tell you just who the main character of this movie is. It’s one of those movies where the main character is the entire cast of supporting characters outside of one notable exception: a little girl called Mary Valley played by young Gwyneth Strong.
We first meet Mary on a bus being driven by an annoyed man and carrying three members of the Van Traylen fund as well as a dozen orphans. We come to find out that the Van Traylen fund is the beneficiary of the wealth of those who were thought to have committed suicide. The main object of this fund is to run an Orphanage on an island off the coast of Scotland.
The orphans are on a field trip to London when we meet Mary and this pissed off driver. He goes to light a cigarette and the flame shoots up into his face as Mary watches on. This causes an accident which puts Mary in the care of a London hospital and under the watchful eye of the caring Dr. Haynes (Keith Barron).
For a bit it looks like Dr. Haynes is the main character as he investigates the accident and Mary Valley’s backstory. When unconscious she’s afraid, screaming about fire and generally upset. There’s something fishy going on with the super secret organization funding this orphanage and Dr. Haynes is worried about the girl.
And why wouldn’t he be? She’s cute as a button, sweet as can be and incredibly sympathetic thanks to the great child performance given by Gwyneth Strong. Something is tormenting her, but her conscious mind doesn’t seem to be aware of it.
When her mother comes barging into the hospital looking for her daughter things really start to spin in weird directions. Why do you think Mary was taken away from her mother? Was she abusive? Nope. Okay, drunk then? Nope. Did she murder two people in cold blood? Ding-ding-ding!
Diana Dors plays Mary’s mother and she’s a bit on the loony side. She served her time and apparently now collects psychic paraphernalia and sticks it in her car windows. I’m not kidding. She’s got tarot cards glued to her side windows.
Dors becomes the threat after a certain point in the film, but is she a murderer hunting her child or is she a red herring? I think more experienced horror fans will spot which movie they’re getting pretty easily, but that doesn’t make the film any less enjoyable.
I was surprised to see it saddled with an abysmal 3.3/10 on IMDB. Look, I’ve seen some shitty horror movies, reallllllllllyyyyy shitty horror movies and in no way does this movie deserve Uwe Boll numbers.
The mystery of this movie works, the tone works and the ending is actually pretty shocking. There’s a final horrible line that you’ll have to overlook (Somebody literally says “I curse your cruel God!”), but other than that the dialogue is pretty well written.
There’s not a terrific pace to the movie, but it’s far from a drag. It’s also really fun to see Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing getting to play genuine friends that don’t have some sort of hidden secret or macabre obsession. They’re both humans and both on the side of light trying to solve a (then) modern day story of the occult.
Final Thoughts: I can’t explain why the film has such a horrible rating other than maybe it has only been seen by people that can’t appreciate this type of filmmaking. I could see a horror fan who thinks the SAW films and Rob Zombie movies are the end all be all of horror unable to enjoy this flick, but anybody who likes this era of horror, especially British horror, should enjoy the movie. That is if they get a chance to see it. It’s not out on US DVD and you’d have to hunt through eBay to find a VHS. It’s not the kind of flick you’d see playing rep houses or included in retrospective screenings of Cushing or Lee’s career bests. In short, it seems to be a forgotten film and that’s a shame because it has a lot to offer and ending that should evoke a strong reaction.
Last year I split HMAD between a movie I hadn’t seen a recommendation for a favorite horror movie of mine where I mentioned flicks like Night of the Creeps (which gets the DVD and Blu-Ray treatment this month, finally), Who Can Kill A Child?, In The Mouth of Madness and Sleepaway Camp.
I liked how that worked out, so I’ll be doing that with each entry into HMAD this year. I’m going out of my way as I watch each movie to pair it with something that would make a good double-feature.
In my look at NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT I mentioned being surprised by a WICKER MAN-ish feel so why not pair this one with THE WICKER MAN, which Lee starred in the same year as NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT.
Lee’s on the side of darkness in this one playing the iconic Lord Summerisle, a strange Pagan cult leader on a small island famous for its harvest of apples.
A detective journeys to the island in search of a missing girl and gets swallowed up by early ‘70s naked, dancing British weirdness.
Neil LaBute tried to remake this movie with Nicolas Cage and despite giving us a great youtubed all over the world nutty Cage cut scene involving bees in his eyes what we got was a wet fart.
The original movie isn’t for everyone, I will say that right up front. It is kind of my ideal description of the term cult movie. The word “cult” can sometimes be overused. I’m guilty of doing that, but one thing I will never do is use the word “cult” in place of the word “shitty,” which is what I see many people doing.
THE WICKER MAN is bizarre, somewhat experimental, but it is not shitty. In fact it’s quite a fascinating twisting of expectation. Edward Woodward seems to be on a fairly straight forward missing girl case that takes him into a world that every one of us secretly fears exists and one we might accidentally wander into some day.
That’s a fairly common horror formula, but there’s something more real about this movie. There’s no zombies or vampires, but there are human beings that don’t think like the rest of us, their minds controlled by a religious idol in the form of Lord Summerisle.
Lee gets a chance here to blend his charm and creepiness in a radically different way than his Dracula, which had that scale tilted way more in favor of his creepiness.
His scenes with Woodward comparing gods and Lee’s carefree dismissal, calling Woodward’s god dead (“can’t complain, had his chance and in modern parlance, blew it”) raise some really fascinating religious conversation, especially when you consider how similar Lee’s cult is to some extremist factions of mainstream religion.
Woodward’s role isn’t as showy as Lee’s, but it’s more layered. Sgt. Howie starts the movie as a person of authority, invulnerable and untouchable in his own eyes, but bit by bit, scene by scene this is proven untrue until he’s reduced to a terrified, powerless being, begging for his god to help him.
Dark, bizarre, sometimes inconsistent, but always fascinating THE WICKER MAN is something that everybody might not love, but everybody should see.
Director Robin Hardy has completed photography on THE WICKER TREE (formerly titled COWBOYS FOR CHRIST) which I understand isn’t exactly a sequel or a remake of his original film, but we are supposedly getting Christopher Lee back as Lord Summerisle. An older Lee is fine, just don’t give me a new Britt Ekland naked dance scene. I’m perfectly fine with the one she gave the world in 1973…
Here are the next week’s worth of HMAD titles:
Friday, October 2nd: BEWARE! CHILDREN AT PLAY (1989)
Saturday, October 3rd: CAMERON’S CLOSET (1988)
Sunday, October 4th: AFRAID OF THE DARK (1991)
Monday, October 5th: THE PIT (1981)
Tuesday, October 6th: BRAIN DAMAGE (1988)
Wednesday, October 7th: BRAIN DEAD (1990)
Thursday, October 8th: VISITING HOURS (1982)
See you folks tomorrow for my thoughts on the Troma cheesefest BEWARE! CHILDREN AT PLAY!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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Click here for the full 215 movie run of A Movie A Day!
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I'm saving it for Halloween night myself, never seen it but its reputation is pretty fucking cool.
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...that the imdb ratings are from idiots for idiots, so why even bother with looking them up?
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Came out on DVD about six months to year ago.
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Oct 01, 2009 3:49:28 PM CDT
nice Quint, and thank fuck you're taking it easy on the 30s/40s
by takingscorpioscalls
No one wants to read about that shit. Otherwise great work!
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C'mon. 90% of the film language was invented in that period.
Man, a bunch of Philistines on this site. -
At least I remember it being awesome - saw it in the 80s. I remember Ironside delivering an interesting performance.
And I second EYES WITHOUT A FACE. I've seen it and can vouch it is pretty damn good. -
Oct 01, 2009 3:58:07 PM CDT
The soundtrack to the Wicker Man is one of my Top 20 albums
by seppukudkurosawa
And that's mostly because it includes what I think is the most beautiful song of all time, the original version of Willow's Song (as opposed to the bowdlerized thing in the movie with different vocals). You'd be hard-pressed to find an album more focussed on sex -and that includes a thousand New Romantic bands. From the Christopher Lee-sung ditty about a woman who's slept around so much that her husband can't pleasure her, to the creepy pubescent trance about jumping around a big penis, Maypole... Even Barry White's albums had the occasional song about something other than getting it on.
By the by, Hammer rocks! I don't think they're the kind of movies that you give a rating. You either appreciate their brand of overacted campness or you don't. That being said, they've definitely had some clunkers... Check out The Vengeance of She (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063765/), or, rather, don't! -
heh,whoever hasnt seen it yet,he should run to his nearest videoclub rent it asap.great stuff.
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In my opinion this is his best film. Most people would argue Basket Case, but for some reason Brain Damage always stuck out in my mind as his best. The druggie/psychedelic vibe to it really made it stand out on it's own and gave Henenlotter room to really explore the surreal, which is obviously his forte. Great movie! Oh, and I was VERY disappointed with Bad Biology...had so much potential
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Welcome back AMAD/HMAD. And yep, the original WICKER MAN is a thing of strange beauty.
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Cool movie. Ironside plays a crazy "street" dude with a knife, Shatner pops in and out as a cocky doctor.
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..and so does the original WICKER MAN. I'll never understand the hate for movies just because they're old. Talk about the 30s/40s all you want, Quint. I'll certainly read it.
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If by no-one you mean you then fuck off because some of us love 30s/40's films.Dead of Night being a prime example.
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You can read about it when that was all Quint was writing about in the past AMADs. GawdDAMNIT.
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suck a fatty.
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great choices
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Maybe you should call this something else? There has been a "Horror Movie a Day" for a long time now.
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Dooku and Tarkin made MANY films together. They made some damn good horror films for Hammer.
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Some of my favorite films of Quint's lists have been from the 30's and 40's.
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would love to hear more about foriegn horror, classic or cult. like asian stuff in the 70s or 80s, not so much the remade stuff.
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NOT the one with Walken an the angels. the one that had the fucked up animals that were all malformed and inside an and shit? saw that at a drive in when i was a kid and i still think of that damned bear. poster had some fucked up bear mutant embryo thing on it...thanks mom an dad
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For the UK readers, Wicker Man fell out of rotation in the USA in the 1980's. It wasn't a staple of most local "Elvira/Count Floyd" type shows, not much play on HBO or other pay cable channels. It didn't make a strong comeback until the Special Edition DVD release several years ago. An amazing movie with amazing themes that people are way too scared to explore properly these days.-----later-----m
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It was my first "real" Horror movie growing up. Before then I'd seen Freddy movies, which by then were just comedies & stupid stuff about Trolls under the bed etc, but nothing like this & it scared the shite out of me!
The ending alone was a first for me & definitely ahead of its time! There I was, maybe 10 yrs old, waiting for the "Hero moment", the moment where The Equalizer gets free & saves the day. The phrase "fuck me!" doesn't do justice to how I felt watching it all unfold.
Great, great movie! Im memory, I assumed it probably hadn't dated well, until I saw the Cage version. I re-watched the original to get the taste of the remake out of my mouth & if anything, the weird styles, bonkers dancing & 70's weirdness actually enchance the story & make it even more horrific. You c -
It was my first "real" Horror movie growing up. Before then I'd seen Freddy movies, which by then were just comedies & stupid stuff about Trolls under the bed etc, but nothing like this & it scared the shite out of me!
The ending alone was a first for me & definitely ahead of its time! There I was, maybe 10 yrs old, waiting for the "Hero moment", the moment where The Equalizer gets free & saves the day. The phrase "fuck me!" doesn't do justice to how I felt watching it all unfold.
Great, great movie! Im memory, I assumed it probably hadn't dated well, until I saw the Cage version. I re-watched the original to get the taste of the remake out of my mouth & if anything, the weird styles, bonkers dancing & 70's weirdness actually enchance the story & make it even more horrific. You c -
I'm not calling anyone a "C" lol.
I was gonna say you can almost imagine that such a cult was real, having seen stuff like Manson & Koresh etc because of the basic, almost realistic 70's look & the mix of real life 1970's, juxtaposed with the weirdness of the cult on their little Island. -
I wish they had made more movies like this.HORROR EXPRESS is the only other one, they were a great team.
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Of other movies you are reviewing BRAIN DAMAGE is the only one worthwhile. The others are pretty blah.
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Unless The Pit is falling under the "so bad it is good" category...Blah doesn't begin to describe it.
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would make a great double-feature
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Quint, I believe it's time to let loose. Bring out the horror! I'm gonna try to watch each recommendation immediately following your review... Lead on Cap'n
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Quint, could you do a review of "The Asphyx"? I haven't seen that movie in... seventeen years or so.
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I'll stick with the originator of this idea horrormovieaday.com since they've been doing it every day for 5 years.
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Even better I don't think I've seen any of the movies on this list, cept Brain Dead. I've seen the covers in my old video store rental place over and over again. Be interesting to find out if I missed any gems.
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I agree with you on The Asphyx, love it. Saw it on tv a long time ago, back when they still showed great movies late at night. And it's finally coming out on dvd this month.
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was Christopher Lee's short lived production company, formed with Hammer producer Anthony Nelson Keys - To The Devil A Daughter was a Hammer/Charlemagne production and was Hammer's last horror movie.
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Quint, you're gonna love Brain Damage...That's it. They've gone cloudy again. Better keep rubbing.
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Was the the origial title of Peter Jacksons DEAD/ALIVE. I saw it under the BRAINDEAD title at a horror marathon in Columbus Ohio many years ago.He had to change the title because of this movie which I've never seen, but heard it was crap.
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Quite a surprise to see this obscure movie as the first entrance in this new run of HMAD. Back in the late '70, I owned this movie on 4 reels of Super8 (about 18 minutes each), but it became lost in one of the many changes of directions my life took. But I still remember it fondly and I do wish there was somebody out there who would release it on DVD.
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There's is a dvd, if you want to shell out $45 for a Japanese release:http://bit.ly/hfUJ0
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Actually, after clicking through, that link is pretty useless. It is out there, but that site can't help you. Sorry.
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... just to have something to say? Cushing and Lee appeared in 25 films together you doofus.
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Nice Quint, welcome back with the 'Movie a Day' column! Your (blank)MA(blank) columns are the best read on the internets! (Queue theme song from 'Welcome Back Kotter')
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But Britt revealed on the Jonathan Ross show that it was just some hooker that got her gear out in that famous scene. Your entire mastabutory life is now in the hands of someone else. Sorry dude.
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I say "Welcome back" to this feature. Good work, mate.
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Was Christopher Lee's production company. Formed in order to develop projects Le was interested in, it never quite took off. It's name derives from Lee tracing his ancestry to King Charlemagne.
TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER was released by Hammer. Their next to last film.
Personally, I think both are underrated especially NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT. It's not as good as it could've been, but it's still an effective little shocker.
THE WICKER MAN....my God, I could go on about this. The finest examination of Christianity Vs. Paganism I have ever seen committed to film. It makes an interesting double bill with THE DEVIL RIDES OUT,a.k.a.THE DEVIL'S BRIDE. -
Chicken Thunder, I read something about that. But that's just her butt stuff. You clearly see her top half, including her face. She just wanted a butt double... and as I remember it's not exactly the most flattering double, either.
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I have the Peter Jackson version (the uncut international version of Dead Alive) on both DVD and an old VideoVortex VHS. The Paxton/Pullman one I lucked out on and found on VHS used at a video store. Bother are very different movies, but both are well worth the watch.
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So look forward to that. Thanks for doing this again, Quint, it's one of my favorite things on this site!
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Still freaks me out, especially everyone being so happy and calm, while someone burns to death. Trust someone on You Tube, however to put to the theme of Benny Hill! http://tinyurl.com/yagasno
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Especially, with lawnmower scene, and the kung fu Priest! Too bad, he ended being killed, though.
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it's funny yeah, but it pisses me off how much it shits on the original, the theme of competing Religions and Religious wackos is just as relevant today as it was then, but the remake instead has some stupid "men vs women" bullshit that makes no sense
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a bucketful!
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Oct 04, 2009 4:48:34 PM CDT
Remake of the Wicker Man among the worst films of all time.
by basement_cheetoh_eater
Dianna Weist was HORRIBLE. And Nick Cage was simply boring and didn't provide a single ounce of nuance. Terrible.
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