I Watch Films: Fear In The Night
Peggy (Judy Geeson), a fragile young woman after a nervous break down, has married a school teacher (Ralph Bates) and is going to live with him at a country school. The night before she is due to leave she is attacked by a man with a prosthetic arm and passes out. There’s no evidence. Everyone thinks she’s having another episode.
Out at the school, there’s noises of boys and lessons but no actual pupils. The head master, Peter Cushing, is spooky. His wife, Joan Collins, is bitchy. There are mysterious goings on.
Nothing is quite as it seems in this Hammer studios film, leading to a disorienting middle section in which it is not at all clear what is going on, how much is in her mind and what genre the film is actually in. Anyway, good performances from the four central characters, Geeson vulnerable, Cushing spooky, Collins arrogant and commanding, Bates rugged and sensible, at least until things change in the last act.
Watch This: For a 70s thriller that is old enough that the twists are almost new again
Don’t Watch This: If the whole thing hinging on a woman’s hysteria turns you off
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