‘I know that there’s something waiting for me on the other side of the mirror…’
The anthology film has become a staple of the horror genre over the years with Creepshow, Tales From the Darkside and V/H/S all being popular examples. While the 1945 Ealing Studios film Dead of Night certainly wasn’t the first horror anthology film, it was one of the most successful and it helped to popularise the subgenre. As with all anthology films, some of the segments here are more successful than others but at it best, Dead of Night still retains a potent, visceral terror that has cemented its reputation as a timeless classic…
The overarching story sees a group of guests at a party each relaying a ghost story after an architect arrives (played with wide-eyed mania by Mervyn Johns) and declares that he has dreamt of this very night many times before. Frederick Valk plays the sceptical man of science Dr. van Straaten. The first tale concerns a ghostly hearse driver; the second, an apparition of a young boy; the third presents us with a haunted mirror; the fourth, a daft tale of a golf cheat; and the final and most effective segment (as well as the most famous) introduces us to Hugo – a haunted ventriloquist’s dummy.
The great thing about Dead of Night is that even the least effective segment is still entertaining. Indeed, the whole thing is wildly compelling, including the wraparound story, an element that sometimes feels like an afterthought in other horror anthology films. The dialogue is excellent and is a big part of why the film feels so fresh, and Dead of Night manages to be both amusing and genuinely terrifying. There were moments, particularly towards the end of the film, that really got under my skin… images and tableaus that felt very modern and very unsettling – a timeless horror classic.