Review: Nothing But the Night

A Scotland Yard Colonel (Christopher Lee) teams up with his pathologist friend (Peter Cushing) over a series of supposed suicides of elderly orphanage trustees that the Colonel suspects aren’t suicides. Meanwhile, A doctor (Keith Barron) and a reporter (Georgia Brown) a young girl (Gwyneth Strong) has just survived a bus crash, but her recollections of the incident involve fire – there were no flames involved in the crash whatsoever. That crash did however involve the deaths of three more trustees of the orphanage. The plot thickens. Meanwhile, the girl’s birth mother (Diana Dors), a prostitute and convicted multiple murderer shows up at the hospital demanding to see her estranged daughter. Duncan Lamont plays a doctor, Kathleen Byron and Shelagh Fraser play people from the orphanage, and Fulton Mackay turns up as a Scotland Yard Chief Constable.

 

I’ve been wanting to see this 1973 Peter Sasdy (“Taste the Blood of Dracula”, “Countess Dracula”, “The Devil Within Her”) mystery for many years being a fan of in particular Christopher Lee. For some reason it was on a triple-pack of noir-thrillers alongside “The Venetian Bird” (from the 1950s) and “Green for Danger” (from the 1940s), the only real connection I could see was that they were all British and all distributed by The Rank Organisation. At any rate, this one proved to be the only dud of the three, oddly enough. A critical and commercial flop, it was the first and only film produced by the company formed by Christopher Lee and Anthony Nelson Keys (best known as a Hammer producer of such Lee films as “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, “The Mummy”, “The Gorgon”, and “The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll”) called Charlemagne Films. Based on the Novel Children of the Night by John Blackburn, I think Lee was likely trying to get away from Hammer’s brand of horror with this only lightly supernaturally-charged outing. Unfortunately, whether the fault lies in the original text or the treatment of it by screenwriter Brian Hayles (largely from a Brit TV background as well as “Arabian Adventure”, co-starring Lee), the results here are an almost total bust. It’s a confusing mess for the most part, that you just can’t find your way into.

 

Lee’s clearly having fun acting opposite his good friend and colleague Peter Cushing, and probably enjoying not having to play a monster here. His fun is likely not contagious however, in what plays mostly as a confusing and largely dull police/medical procedural until an incongruous finale that plays like a combination of “Village of the Damned”, “Cocoon”, and a dry-run for Lee’s subsequent classic “The Wicker Man” (released in the latter half of the same year in the UK). I suppose the ending is in some ways rather ballsy when you consider what you’re actually seeing on screen. However, by that stage you won’t likely care much. Interest is intermittent at best, with Lee and Cushing really only co-stars, whilst the leads are old pro Diana Dors, a rather dull Keith Barron, and the rather fetching, stylishly dressed Georgia Brown as a dogged reporter. Brown (who looks a bit like Russ Meyer babe Erica Gavin) tries really hard to keep you invested, but it just never hangs together. Scottish actor Fulton Mackay has a fun small part, and Lee and Cushing deliver whenever they can, as does a pre-“Star Wars” Shelagh Fraser, but they and the very underrated Kathleen Byron aren’t in the film nearly enough to count. Diana Dors is always amusing as a sort-of British latter day Shelley Winters, but the second half of the film merely has her skulking about in footage that looks like it’s one scene replayed over and over of her hiding in the bushes. As fun as she is, the film gets far too distracted with her character who ultimately isn’t as important to the whole thing as she might first appear.

 

Clunky, confusing genre-hopping mess with a fine cast mostly wasted on a project that at least conceptually could’ve worked. It’s been botched, especially the out-of-nowhere supernatural twist. Georgia Brown is pretty good in the lead and Diana Dors is in fun Diana Dors form, but this is pretty dreary stuff. A real missed opportunity to have Lee and Cushing in a great quasi-Sherlock Holmes mystery. Pretty shoddy, to be honest.

 

Rating: C-